MirrorMask & Tony Takitani: 2 Movies You Should Really See...Right After You Check Out Jessica Alba In a Bikini

OK, heads up, people. We’re entering fall movie season. While this is usually the time of year where the studios finally start releasing good movies in hopes they’ll be remembered come Oscar season, we haven’t quite gotten there, yet. Granted, “A History of Violence” is getting some of the best reviews of the year, and most people seem to like (but not love) “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride,” we still have to deal with crap like “Into the Blue” (who decided that Jessica Alba was able to carry entire movies by herself?).

And while new movies like “Capote” and the new Wallace & Gromit film are receiving all the hype, there’s still a few summer leftovers needing some attention.

The first is ”MirrorMask,” now playing in a few select cities (luckily, Chicago, where I live, is one of them). It is written by Neil Gaiman, who just topped the New York Times fiction best-seller list with ”Anansi Boys.” A well-known writer to fantasy/sci-fi fans, Gaiman may find himself in Ray Bradbury-like territory: being pigeon-holed into specific genres with stories that might be able to transcend their boundaries into mass appeal. Bradbury didn’t write just science fiction, that’s just the medium he used to write elegant metaphors of the human condition. Some might be able to say the same thing about Gaiman. Whether Gaiman is able to ascend to Bradbury-like success is another story.

Anyway (whew, talk about digressing…), “MirrorMask,” directed by Dave McKean, while a solid effort, is easy to recommend because of the fact that it is unlike anything you have ever seen before on a movie screen. Think "Alice in Wonderland" meets goth punk on acid.

A rebellious 15-year-old girl, Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) wants to run away from her circus family so she can have a life of her own. She finds herself in a strangely familiar nightmare, trapped in a world seemingly created from her own drawings that cover her bedroom wall. The world is full of flying fish, rainbow-winged cats, suspender-clad porcupines, and other, even more abstract creatures. Almost everyone, including Helena’s goofy sidekick Valentine (Jason Barry), is wearing a mask. It’s Helena’s search for the title object to save the Queen of Light that becomes the metaphor of a young girl trying to reconnect with her dying mother.

As striking as the visuals are, it’s unfortunate that more attention wasn’t paid to the human characters. Helena is at first a completely realistically-written young teenager. But when she finds herself in this strange new world, she barely reacts to it. I mean, I’d be freaking out if I was talking to a creature with a shoe for a head, but she doesn’t think twice about it. And Valentine seems to be from another movie altogether. His contrived “goofy sidekick” routine is as flat and one-dimensional as the mask he wears.

Despite these few flaws, if you really want to treat yourself to a different kind of movie experience, I would definitely recommend this movie.

On the other side of the spectrum is ”Tony Takitani.” This seems to be playing in even less cities than “MirrorMask” and was only in Chicago for a week. It’s based on a short story by Haruki Murakami that appeared in The New Yorker in 2002. Like Gaiman, Murakami is a one-man writing machine, having also written numerous novels like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. His stories are also being adapted for the stage in “After the Quake,” coming to The Steppenwolf Theater this month.

The brief, 75-minute movie tells the tale of Tony (Issey Ogata), an artist who grows up lonely but rich and marries a woman who’s obsessed with buying as many beautiful clothes as she can afford (her collection of shoes alone could put the sisters from “In Her Shoes” to shame). The tale takes a depressing turn that becomes all the more interesting due to how the characters react to it. It becomes a touching study of how lost love invades our memories and our future.

This is not a movie for everyone. It’s short, sad, and beautiful in its own way (a way completely opposite from the beauty in “MirrorMask”). It’s so visually sparse that one becomes fascinated with the details, like an odd camera angle over a car or lingering close-ups of actors’ faces.

I have to admit, the simple score (it sounds as if someone is abstractly plunking away on the higher end of a piano) and soothing voice-over narrative made me just a wee bit sleepy, but it was to my own detriment, as I didn’t want to miss a single moment of this haunting, utterly original film.

But now that we got those artsy films out of the way, I’m off to a double feature of “Into the Blue” and “Transporter 2.” Who’s with me?