Kubo and the Two Strings [Blu-ray]

This animated feature is an excellent movie and fully enjoyable and satisfying for both kids AND adults. This movie doesn't have any of the adult TV show/movie or new references that animation movie makers seem to have to put into an animated movie to get adults to watch with their kids and it doesn't need them! This movie may look like a completely CGI animated movie, but it is NOT! The majority of this movie is done "Old School" with different types of clay and mechanical puppets in a more modern style of Ray Harryhausen OR Nick Park/Aardman (Wallace & Grommit) stop motion animation! This movie amazes on sooo many levels! The modern and old style Asian soundtrack is another really imprressive part of this movie that really helps to propel this feature to another level of interest as another element and plot supporting device! The attention to the tiniest of details and a very well thought out plot is what helps keep your interest in this movie, as highly fictional and fantastical as this animated feature is. I never saw this movie in the theaters (I really wished I had), but watching this movie with my wife on our 50 inch screen TV gave us a real great sense of what this movie was like in the theaters. Our interest in this movie was piqued when we seen excerpts of this movie in commercials for "Save our Forrests" ! This movie is an impressive feat that you should either rent to watch or own! If you are a big fan of animated feature films, this is a must have to own feature worthy of being added to your animated movie collection! This IS an excellent and wonderful movie to watch and experience!

This is a great animated film telling an epic story in an unusual, but accessible way. It's all about stories and how we tell them and how they shape us. It's probably better for middle school aged kids up through adult though. I tried showing it to a friend's 8 and 6 year old daughters and they couldn't keep up with the story and lost interest. Still, for a bit older kids, it's a great imaginative and artistic film that I highly recommend!

Wow, this is Laika's best film yet. What an amazing and talented studio. I'm nearly envious of their creation here! That should tell you just how technical and intricate this stop-motion/cgi picture is. Not only is it culturally arresting with the Japanese influence, it's also a natural and satisfyingly human trip through a boy's adventure in life and death with his family. It has all the tones and emotions one expects from a great picture, and I am stricken with heartache that this one is not more popular than it is. But this is a mass of people that will take a random and terrible comic book film to 500m easily. Whatever. While the script here isn't quite as funny or clever as say Moana, the soul that went into this is perfectly clear for anybody with an artist's heart and mind. Kubo rings true at every angle for me. And wow what a beautiful interpretation of Japanese fantasy. One thing everyone needs to do is watch all the documentary videos. It is entirely fascinating how they put these films together. It takes a lot of work. On a busy day they were doing almost 20 frames. ALMOST. The large and complex puppets have rarely been used in this type of animation, and the team wholly succeeded with infusing the story with a perfectly molded visual style that captures so many moving details you will want to watch it twice to take in everything. The 3D bluray has a nice lenticular cover and comes with a normal bluray as well. I enjoyed this film in both formats. What a great film. It didn't do quite as well at the box office, but to me marketing for this was extremely poor. I hope for their next film they find a better service to get the word out. Laika is an extremely talented studio ever since their first release with Coraline. You got to see this one too. It's an even better film.

I love this movie. It is such a fun story, so well told. The art is amazing, the roles are well done, and it keeps you entertained the entire time.

excellent condition

Watched this with my 4th-grader son and my wife -- we enjoyed it, laughing at times and crying at times. Kubo has heart, no doubt about it. Very imaginative, too. It's great to have a team of animators who are decidedly different. If this story was made by Disney, everything that makes it cool would evaporate. What makes it special, quirky, heartfelt is Kubo's strengths. At times, it almost seems the filmmakers are trying to hard to be different. The story is very basic, but the writing at times confounds me. There are times the dialogue sputters and you think, "Couldn't someone have given Charlize Theron or Matthew McConaughey something better?" (Actually, McConaughey does his best to breathe life into his character -- Theron is too hard, too annoyed to be a loving monkey.) We watched it on amazon, so I bet the DVD would have the extras I'm actually dying to see: how did they make this? My favorite thing about the film is its look. Because it's not cell or computer animation, the clay figures they use have a special earthy or ethereal quality. The Moon King, in his pale-lit light, is truly cold and creepy. Kubo has a kind of loving care to him -- his face beams with love. It's hard not to love the little guy.

We live in the future, and it is incredible. I’ve found stop-motion animation to be a fascinating medium, not only for its “dirtiness” when compared to CGI, but also because of the painstaking care it takes to produce a full-length feature with this process. Animation studios like Aardman and Laika are really starting to take advantage of all the tools at their disposal to create some awesome stop-motion movies. We’ve come a long way since the films of Henry Selick, the most famous one being The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Through Selick, we now have a handful of fantastic films through the Laika brand. While their previous work, The Boxtrolls (2014) had started the trend away from more morbid themes and plots, Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) shows just how capable the stop-motion medium is to tell a fantastic story. With an origami motif existing throughout, Kubo and the Two Strings is a fantastic example of what 3-D Printing can do for the stop-motion animation industry. In fact, the almost transparent qualities of the characters allowed the light to more realistically interact with their bodies, immersing the viewer even further into the story. People who haven’t had much interaction with 3-D printing probably didn’t notice it, but I certainly did. Even though the plot may have been a bit “video game”-ish at times, the structure was almost faithfully that of a classic fairy tale. The themes of love, loss, family, duty, and honor are all present in this Japanese setting, thus hammering home the emotional impact of the characters’ actions with each turn. I was certainly in tears during several segments because of how touching they were. With this plot, the style of animation, and the technical achievements to make it a reality, I would be shocked if Laika does not win their first Oscar for Best Animated Feature next year because of this film. A visually stunning, modern fairy tale that shows off the amazing talents of the Laika team, I give Kubo and the Two Strings 4.5 stars out of 5.

Pure magic, a stop-motion animation masterpiece. The best film (animated or live action) in 2016. A sad, beautiful, funny and inspiring story of a boy's journey to manhood. Particularly touching is the fact that Kubo has a disability as does the mother he cares for so lovingly. Accompanying Kubo on his journey are Monkey (voiced by Charlize Theron), a fierce and rather bossy champion and Beetle (voiced by Matthew Mcconaughey) a charmingly goofy character who has lost his memory but none of his bravery of devotion to Kubo. Lots of action, lots of humor (the jokes are always witty and the humor never crude) and lots of moments where you may have to rewind to catch all the dialogue because you were sobbing too loudly. A stunner.