There’s a bunch of new movies out there that I’m dying to see, but last week I didn’t make it to any of them. So here are some movies I’ve recently watched on DVD.

CORALINE
“Coraline” is one of those films that was pretty much made for me, as it combines two things I greatly enjoy: a creepy kids story, and eye-popping animation.

Based on a fantasy/horror novel by Neil Gaiman, “Coraline” is about a lonely young girl who discovers a doorway that leads to a parallel world where everything’s better: The parents are nicer, the food is better, and the talkative annoying neighbor kid is mute. The girl, named Coraline, keeps returning to this fantastic place, despite warnings from her cynical and world-weary cat. This being partly a horror story, Coraline soon discovers that the parallel world mother has some fairly sinister designs; suddenly, her real parents don’t seem so bad. The plot of “Coraline” is the stuff of nightmares, and although the film looks like a kids’ movie, it’s not — a 15-year-old girl I know saw it, and had some really bad dreams. But the animation is amazing, the story is clever and original and if you’re not a frightened teenage girl (or boy) you’ll probably enjoy it.

ALSO WORTH WATCHING: “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach” Before directing “Coraline,” Henry Selick made these terrific stop-motion animated films.

TAKEN
I like a slick action movie as much as the next person, and so I was excited about “Taken,” the 2008 film in which an American girl is kidnapped while vacationing in Europe, and her dad (Liam Neeson), who happens to be a retired spy, comes to her rescue.

The film is directed by Pierre Morel and produced by Luc Besson, who, having directed films such as “La Femme Nikita” and “Leon: The Professional,” is sort of the king of slick action movies. But I didn’t really like “Taken.” Maybe I was just in a sour mood when I watched it, but I’ve tired of films and TV shows where all you have to do to get the information you need is torture someone. In any case, the ease with which Neeson tracked down his daughter seemed totally ludicrous, even for a slick action movie. Neeson, I might add, is the film’s one redeeming virtue; in a film that’s totally ridiculous, he manages to be convincing and believable, which is no small feat.

ALSO WORTH WATCHING: I’m a big fan of Morel and Besson’s previous collaboration, the 2004 film “District B13,” which is set in the future and involves a nefarious plot to blow up Paris’ worst ghetto with a nuclear device. The main reason to see the film are the thrilling action sequences, many of which feature parkour, a physical discipline in which practitioners attempt to run a route as efficiently as possible by jumping off buildings, leaping over fences and swinging from pipes.

ROCK AND RULE
I’d read lukewarm reviews of “Rock and Rule,” an animated fantasy from 1983, but I couldn’t resist it, mainly because it stars Lou Reed as the voice of a burnt-out rock musician with a strong resemblance to David Bowie.

The film features music by artists such as Deborah Harry, Cheap Trick and Earth Wind and Fire, and the animation is fairly striking. The main flaw is the plot, which, whenever I try to describe it, makes me start mumbling. “This aging rock musician wants to recapture his glory, and so he kidnaps a young singer because her voice can unlock a pathway to another dimension and then mumble mumble mumble ...” Anyway, if you like animation and rock and roll, you might want to check out this weird little item, because there’s really nothing else quite like it.

ALSO WORTH WATCHING: “Rock and Rule” is the product of a bygone era, when animators such as Ralph Bakshi viewed animation as an experimental medium for adults, and made cartoons that featured scary urban landscapes, bad language, sex and drugs. I haven't seen most of Bakshi's films, though his X-rated “Fritz the Cat” is buried deep in my Netflix queue, but I have seen and can recommend “Heavy Traffic,” about a young cartoonist and his surrealistic journey through the mean streets of New York City.

TOWELHEAD
This 2007 film tries so hard to be provocative that it quickly wears out its welcome; it’s one of the few films that succeeded in making me mad.

Directed by Alan Ball, the scribe behind “American Beauty” and the TV show “Six Feet Under,” “Towelhead” is a rather pathetic entry in a genre I generally like: The Suburbs, and How Everybody Who Lives There is Totally Screwed Up. It tells the story of a 13-year-old Arab-American girl named Jasira who moves to Houston to live with her father during the first Iraq War. The father is a vicious, repressive sort, the neighbor seems unhealthily attracted to her, and the kids at school are mean to her. My complaint isn’t the material, but the way it’s filmed and scripted; a scene of molestation, for example, seemed prurient and voyeuristic, not thought-provoking or challenging. I also had some difficulty with the character of Jasira, an unrealistic mix of innocence and sophistication who seemed to embody the fantasies and ideas of an older male screenwriter, rather than an actual 13-year-girl.

ALSO WORTH WATCHING: “Welcome to the Dollhouse” This bleak pitch-black comedy does a much better job of capturing what it’s like to be a junior high girl. I’m also a big fan of director Todd Solondz’s other films, which are provocative, but not in a way that feels cheap. In his little-seen 2005 film “Palindromes,” a 13-year-old deliberately gets pregnant and runs away from home. What makes the film both bizarre and memorable is that the girl is played by eight different actors of different ages and races.

THE CHILDREN
Here’s the rare horror film that actually succeeded in freaking me out a little. (Just a little, though.)

In this 2008 British film, two families with five children get together at a country house for the holidays. The children start getting sick; as the virus spreads, they begin attacking the adults with scissors, sleds and other household devices and implements. The parents respond by totally freaking out and refusing to recognize that their children are trying to kill them. “The Children” is a nasty little horror freak-out that actually succeeds in capturing how unnerving children can be, and how parents love their children so much it can blind them to certain realities. (Like, your kids are trying to kill you!) I’m sure “The Children” is scarier if you actually have children, but it’s pretty creepy even if you don’t.

ALSO WORTH WATCHING: How about the ultimate bad-kid film — 1956’s “The Bad Seed”? I also like the 2001 Japanese film “Battle Royale,” in which a group of middle-schoolers are brought to an island, given weapons, and forced to fight each other to the death. “Battle Royale” was never released in the U.S., but has since gained a big cult following.

THE TAKING OF POWER BY LOUIS XIV
Directed by Roberto Rossellini, this 1966 film, which was produced for television, meticulously details how Louis XIV became the Sun King.

It depicts the death of his chief minister, and how Louis, regarded as a playboy with little interest in governance, assumed control of France, arranging for the arrest of his chief rival, banishing his scheming mother from his cabinet and moving his entire court of Versailles, so that they will grow dependent on him, rather than compete for power with him. People more accustomed to the soap-opera-y approach to European history found in costume dramas such as “The Duchess” and “Elizabeth” may find “The Taking of Power by Louis XIV” a little too dry and technical; the film is stunningly detailed, but feels more like a documentary than a feature film. (Which was probably intentional. Rossellini, I read, had decided that cinema was dead, and that he wanted to make films that would educate people and air on TV.)

I liked the film's documentary approach and found the whole story pretty compelling, even if it did send me scrambling to the Internet to learn more about French history. Although, that’s probably not such a bad thing.

ALSO WORTH WATCHING: The Criterion Collection just released three of Rossellini’s earlier films in a set called Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy. The set includes two films I’ve seen, “Rome Open City,” which was filmed in the ruins of World War II and is considered a signature work of Italian Neorealism, and “Germany Year Zero,” about a 12-year-old boy and his efforts to keep his family alive during World War II. Both films are very much worth watching; I’ve moved the film I haven’t seen, “Paisan,” into my queue.

Got a comment? E-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.