Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
When the most recent Academy Awards rolled around, the contest for Best Animated Feature largely came down to a duel between Disney hits. There was the billion-dollar furry recruitment video Zootopia, and the aquatic musical spectacular of Moana.
But there was another film in that conversation. A smaller, odder movie that made only a fraction of either of Disney’s juggernauts box office hauls. But despite its lower profile, this film had already amassed a dedicated legion of fans who exalted it to high heaven.
That film? Kubo and the Two Strings.
The fourth (and very possibly final) film from Laika Studios, Kubo follows the eponymous musician/storyteller, a young boy who cares for his sickly mother by night and by day dazzles the locals in his village with his wild stories of his long lost father’s mighty duels with the wicked Moon Spirit.
But it turns out Kubo’s stories are more than tall tales. One day, he breaks his mother’s rule and stays out past sundown, triggering the arrival of destructive forces and sending Kubo hurtling on a journey alongside Monkey (Charlize Theron) and Bettle (Matthew McConaughey), a journey to confront his family’s strange past and defeat an evil that has stalked him all his life.
Continuing Laika’s commitment to pushing the stop motion form as far as possible, Kubo uses an incredible assortment of techniques and effects, including building the biggest stop motion puppet ever, a 16 foot, 400 pound skeleton monster.
A box-office disappointment, Kubo nonetheless struck a major chord (I apologize for nothing) with those who saw it, and seems destined to be a film that grows more and more renowned as time goes by.
Does Kubo live up to that hype, or did we find it to be…out of tune (WE APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING)?
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Next Week’s Pick:
How can one film column cover Kubo and the Two Strings one week, and The Neon Demon the next? WE GOT RANGE, THAT’S HOW.
The latest hugely divisive film from the hugely divisive Nicholas Winding Refn, The Neon Demon features Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Abby Lee (“The Dag” from Fury Road), Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves as a sleazier-than-sleaze motel owner who frequently expounds on “Lolita shit”.
Artistic triumph or exploitative trash? Neon Demon is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Submissions can be sent to [email protected]
Our Guests
Brendan Agnew
There are few films that I connect to so immediately the way I fell in love with Kubo and the Two Strings. LAIKA Studio’s fourth (and, for my money, best) stop-motion animated effort came with something of a buy-in earned from their previous movies (though the lily-white main cast gave me pause, and honestly, it’s not an issue that can wholly be ignored even in so otherwise great a film), but Kubo almost seems like a thematic capstone atop their previous stories. Even from a studio so concerned with exploring the themes of loss in “family” films, this is a heavy one.
The tale of a boy who tells the stories of his father because that literally all he knows of where he came from, and uses magic he learned from his mother but which she is less and less able to command as her mind slips away, could easily fall into overwrought or downright miserable territory, but the film balances a series of dramatic sucker punches with both highly effective humor and some wickedly awesome action scenes.
(Sidebar: Charlize Theron as a monkey is arguably both the funniest and coolest thing to come from animation last year)
But when it’s time to break out the feelings, Kubo is downright devastating. The moment that the film’s namesake is revealed, when the title character faces a truth about the inescapable loss and suffering and eventual death of this world, the film delivers a thesis on the power and worth of stories that would have made even an otherwise bad movie worth the sit.
As the ending of this one? Well, like the boy said, that really is the least of it. (@BLCAgnew)
Trey Lawson:
Kubo and the Two Strings is, first and foremost, gorgeous. It is seriously some of the best stop motion animation I have ever seen, and I am amazed at how seamlessly it blends stop motion puppetry and CGI animation. In addition, Kubo is one of those wonderful films that in content and thematics works both as a children’s film and as a film for adults. It is a film about family, and about loss. It’s a Bildungsroman. It is action-adventure, and at times it is incredibly funny. Most importantly, Kubo is a film about the importance of storytelling and memory. Kubo is a boy whose family exists to him entirely through his mother’s memories. He spends his days entertaining crowds with tales of quests and monsters, before going on an adventure of his own. It literalizes the power of storytelling as actual, visible magic and transforms us from passive audience members into active participants in the telling of that story. In its use of that central metaphor, and in linking that broad concept to the relatable, emotional story of Kubo and his family, Kubo and the Two Strings operates (insofar as an animated family film can) on the level of poetry. More than simply watched, it is a film to be experienced, but remember — “if you must blink, do it now.”(@T_Lawson)
The Team
I was a little late catching Kubo. I grabbed a ticket to a Sunday morning screening and found myself sat in a near empty theater next to a father and his young daughter. The girl, around 6 or 7 years old was sat next to me, and it made for my most joyous cinematic outing in years. Her gasps at stunning visuals, her laughter at Beetle, her tears at multiple points in the film, even her hand movements at times, mimicking Kubo’s sword fighting. The credits rolled, Regina Spektor’s cover of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ played. She didn’t move. Engrossed throughout, and after. I’ll admit I stayed a while too to pull myself together. Then she asked her father if they could go see it again. I’ve rewatched the film since, and that sense of wonder is still there. Kubo is a soaring achievement in every respect. Wonderful storytelling, blending life lessons and mythlogy, married to animators at the height of their craft. One of the most joyful cinematic experiences of 2016, or even any year. (@Texas_Jon)
I like to troll Brendan and Austin as often as possible. They seem to share this sentiment with me, which I appreciate. And with that, just to get Brendan going, I want to trash Kubo but I can’t. Not honestly, at least.
Kubo is a tale of two distinctly different levels of quality, one being stellar and the other being mediocre at best.
So.. what is stellar? The animation. They took an age old technique in stop motion and turned it into something unique to the point of feeling revolutionary at times.
I initially wondered if I was so awed by the animation that I missed out on the story. I was so unsure about what I may have missed in it, that I left it unrated in my Letterboxd. I rewatched today and it turns out… the story really is mediocre, at best. It feels empty and uninspired, all the while trying really hard to be meaningful and deep. It felt as if so much attention is paid to the stellar animation that the team forgot to hire a good writer.
So, while I cannot troll Brendan on the level that I really want to, I can’t help but wonder just what makes him think that this story is effective. Then again, I truly dug Monster Trucks, so what do I know? (@ThePaintedMan)
Why does this movie affect me so, Justin? There’s any number of reasons, with the easiest being that Kubo just happens to touch on a number of thematic ideas that I have an innate weakness for (family; legacy; and, most crucially, the importance of Story and storytelling) in ways that are direct, heartfelt, and sincere.
Or maybe it’s just that I have a pre-existing love for stop-motion animation, dating back to a childhood spent fascinated by everything from the Wallace and Gromit shorts to Henry Selick’s twin 90’s triumphs of Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, and Kubo pushes the form as far is it can feasibly go, resulting in a film that is, frame by frame, mesmerizing.
Or maybe, maybe it’s because in a world and culture suffused with snark, with sneers, with smirking nihilism, Kubo is a children’s film that dares to argue that pain, loss, and grief are fundamental to being human, that life is defined by this sort of darkness, and worth living anyway. That’s a huge, huge idea, and Kubo illustrates it while also being a rousing, exciting and funny quest films.
It’s a masterpiece, plain and simple. And that really is the least of it (Agnew already played this card but too bad). (@TheTrueBrendanF)
The Kubo Blu-ray has some astounding making-of materials that really hammer home what an impossible marvel and incredible feat of human ingenuity and engineering its incredible stop-motion animation is. In terms of craft, Kubo takes its place at the forefront of one of the most back-breakingly arduous styles of filmmaking our species has devised. Furthermore, it seems to have genuinely tried to integrate authentic Japanese culture into its narrative.
That narrative, though, is probably the film’s weakest aspect. There are threads of horror, adventure, sacrifice, and family, not to mention awesome monsters, but as much as I loved the visual feast, I was never swept up by the story (point, Moana). OK, so apparently I’m a monster, but I also very quickly grew exhausted of hearing Kubo’s sad little exasperated whispers. Sorry, kid.
Overall, though, this is a case in which the good far outweighs the bad. I appreciate so much of what Kubo is doing, and look forward to sharing it with my own children when they’re old enough. (@VforVashaw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-6qJzeb3A
Get it at Amazon:
Kubo and the Two Strings — [Blu-ray] | [DVD] | [Amazon Video]
Laika Collection — [Steelbook Blu-ray] |[Blu-ray] | [DVD]
Watch it on Netflix:
https://www.netflix.com/title/80099365
Next Week’s Pick: