REVIEW: Kubo and the Two Strings

Brought to us from Laika studios, Kubo and the Two Strings is a stop motion animated family feature.  Laika specializes in stop motion, and from the visuals in Kubo, you can see that they are very good at what they do.  It does not take long for the viewer to get completely immersed in the world that is created, and it only gets better as the movie progresses.  This is also one of those special movies where seeing it in 3D actually makes a difference to the story telling.  So many 3D films are just as good in normal formats, but Kubo uses the technique to make the world and the story all the more magical.

The tale is about a young, one-eyed boy named Kubo (Art Parkinson) who has an ability and power to create moving origami through the use of his guitar.  He is a story teller in the village square, hooking the residents to his every word, but never seems to know how a story should come to an end.  His life is turned upside down when he does not heed the words of his mother to get home before dark, and the truth of his past comes to track him down in the form of The Sisters (Rooney Mara).  They are his aunts, and they are after him at the command of Kubo's grandfather, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes) to take his remaining eye.

In one final act of protection, Kubo's mother uses the last of her magical abilities to send him far away.  She also transforms a monkey shaped magical charm into his protector, voiced by Charlize Theron.  Kubo must seek down a fabled set of armour to be able to protect himself from the Moon King and The Sisters.  Along the way, the come across a samurai beetle (Matthew McConaughey) who has had his memory wiped and is up for helping Kubo on his quest.

The story is a sweet one, as Kubo and his youth must face the grown up task that is set before him.  He has to rise above his age to be something that he is not, going from the teller of the stories to the main character.  His inability to know how a story must conclude is something that he must confront at the end of the film to find triumph and safety.

Much like Big Hero 6, this is an animated film that is not just good as a family film, but a good movie, period.  There is a lot of fun humour that comes from many different directions, such as gags, facials, and punch lines.  It also excels in its action sequences and brings a great deal of entertainment in choreographed battles.  The layout and story flow that happens through the action scenes surpasses the abilities of many main stream blockbusters.

The true heart of this film comes through in the voice acting.  It is genuine and sincere.  Art Parkinson embraces the character of Kubo and opens the door to invite the audience into his heart.  Theron and McConaughey have a chemistry between them that builds towards a relationship that appears true and time weathered.  Notably, Rooney Mara is chilling in her performance as The Sisters.

It is a beautiful movie.  The animation and the story itself create a world that the audience is a part of.  The magic seems real and has a flow to it.  The use of lighting is exceptional, as it assists in the telling of the story by bringing out the wonderful colours of the world as well as dimming things down to invite the darker aspects into the fold.

I do not simply recommend this film to families, but to everyone.  There is something neat about a story about story telling, and how real life needs story tellers to assist in the great feats of humanity.  It is a coming of age tale that has a note of resonance for all ages.  It is a very special kind of movie that doesn't come along that often.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars

Her

When it comes to movies about romance, relationships, and love, many different approaches have been taken and a lot of times we find the same stories being rehashed and tossed upon us.  We get the same, uninspired films about love that are more based off of the concept of passion than off of genuine care and commitment.  Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze, approaches it all from a bit of a different angle, and in fact looks at human social interaction with each other as well.

The plot of the movie is that our protagonist Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is recovering from his marriage ending and is beginning to understand his own social faults that assisted in the failed relationship with his wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara).  The character of Theodore is indeed a complex one and is captured by Phoenix who delivers vividly the essence of someone who craves love and to enjoy the adventure of the fullness of life but is incapable of true openness and honesty.   It is set in the not so distant future, and onto the market comes an artificially intelligent operating system, which Theodore ends up installing on his computer, which gives birth to Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), the identity that the operating system assumes.  Theodore develops a connection with Samantha, and a romance begins between the two of them.

While the plot is a little far-fetched, it is brought out in the movie easily in a way that does not cost a huge degree of suspension of disbelief from the audience.  We end up seeing a lot of scenes that physically only consist of Joaquin Phoenix, but the dialogue between the two, as well as the delivery of their lines, creates the reality that Samantha is indeed there.  This is a very important hurdle that the movie needed to get over, because without Samantha properly coming to life for the audience, the movie is doomed to fail.  Spike Jonze needs to be credited greatly for the achievement of this, as well as the wonderfully nuanced performance of Phoenix, and the voice acting of Johansson who allows a great depth of emotion to be inserted into her delivery.

While we are watching this oddly formed relationship grow, we see the same struggles undergone that all people end up running into.  Perhaps this commentary by Jonze that there is no perfect mate that technology can create, that even the best advancements in science still fail in the same areas as humans do.  The couple runs into intimacy issues, hidden feelings, jealousy, and everything that is likely to poke its head into the lifespan of a couple.

While Theodore is going through this, his friend Amy (Amy Adams) is suffering through her own relational sufferings and also turns to the companionship of an artificially intelligent friend.  It is easy to watch this film and criticize the ridiculous foundation on which it is based, but do humans not do this sort of thing already?  In some ways, are some people not already married to their phones, tablets, or computers?  Do some people related better to others through electronic media than they do face to face?  How much more crazy is simply adding the AI aspect of the film, and does it actually rationalize the obsession with technological relationships better than any argument than we currently have?

Ultimately this film ponders on our connection with technology and how perhaps that changes us, as we get scenes of people just walking through crowds, amoungst other humans, but just buried into their own portable devices.  When the technology is gone, when we let it go, what beautiful and wonderful things are there for us?  Spike Jonze looks at all of this with a lot of heart and passion, pointing to the complexities of the human experience and the beauty of growth and companionship that our world, both aided by and with the absence of technology, has for us to embrace.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars

Ain't Them Bodies Saints

It is not a secret that the genre of Westerns is one that has, for the most part, ridden off into the sunset with very little of note coming from Hollywood over the last few years.  There have been a few quality films such as Django Unchained and True Grit, but it is not the profitable genre and movie making machine that it once was.  One of the biggest flops of 2013 was a Disney attempt at a Western in Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, which, even though it vastly underperformed its expectations (making a domestic total of $89 million), still managed to land in the top ten highest grossing Westerns before being adjusted for inflation.  That could give us a good sign of how dry the well is running.

For fans of the fading dynasty, there is indeed some hope as Ain’t Them Bodies Saints brings some much needed freshness in style and content.  I call it a Western, but some might argue that with the movie being set in the 1970s.  While that is the case, the costumes of the film are so well chosen that they are still able to give a feel of a true cowboy movie.  Many visual aspect of this tale bare resemblance to beloved gunslinger movies of old, and it was able to blend both the modern and the antiquated in a romantic fashion.

It is not just the styles and set pieces that harken back to Westerns of old, but there are many plot points from the genre that work themselves into Ain’t Them Bodies Saints.  It is drenched in Western folklore with outlaws, lawmen, posses, the retired gunman, and the saloon.  Around every corner is the essence of the Western, yet it is not completely overwhelmed by it.  It may seem hard to believe that the modern and the old could be blended to this degree, but director David Lowrry works some visual and thematic magic with this movie.

Perhaps I am seeing what is not actually there, and making up this tie-in to Western mythology on my own.  Even if I am wrong on that point (I can’t help but feel that I am right) the movie is still a treat.  It is much like a dance, which has all of its components moving to a rhythm, all coming together to tell a tale.  It has some wonderful cinematography in it, catching a lot of warm colours as well as spending time focusing on people in movement.  A number of scenes follow people walking from behind, looking past their backs towards their destination.  Only rarely do we see the front of people when they walk, at times when our attention needs to be focused on what they are walking away from.

The movements of this movie are enhanced by the dynamic acting performances of the cast, who bring real soul to the story of life, love, and crime.  Casey Affleck plays Bob, a criminal whose life catches up with him and envelops his love Ruth, who is played by Rooney Mara.  While Affleck is a bit of a baby face, he is able to assert himself in this film as a truly dangerous character, one who has much love but will also never hesitate to pull the trigger.  Mara’s portrayal of Ruth drives the film in its story of life moving forward, as she is a young mother who needs to now think about the best interests of her daughter yet still is bound to Bob and we get the sense that she will be forever loyal to him, making it completely unlikely that she will ever truly be able to progress fully.

There are a few shootouts in the film, but they are not the point of the story.  The story really is about Bob and Ruth, true love, and how that fits into their lives as they know them.  It is a movie that is able to take the romanticism of the Western and keep it alive with a much different style of tale, something which the best Westerns out there have been able to do.  I am not saying that it is on par with Unforgiven, but I am saying that it is worth a viewing for what it attempts to do.  It is both visually beautiful with a haunting, yet charming story, and it is most likely to be far from a waste of your time.

Rating – 3.5 out of 4 stars

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

So, after a day off I am returning to take a peek at The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a North American re-make of the 2009 film of the same name, both are based off of the book by Stieg Larsson.  David Fincher stepped into the director's chair for this film, which is a mystery/thriller about a publicly shamed journalist (Daniel Craig) who is hired by a rich man to uncover some unpleasantness within the history of his family.  While he is working on the project, he teams up with a computer hacker (Rooney Mara) who is quite dark, quite disturbed, and has a dragon tattoo.

In some ways if follows the format of a typical mystery/thriller with the basic information gathering, interviewing, with moments of suspense thrown in amoungst it all.  While having the feel of a typical movie of the genre, it still works to be its own film as it never rushes anything and progresses at a pace to give us a real sense of characters and setting.  It also avoids some common cliches such as scenes of misdirection and jump scares.

It is set on an island in Sweden, where Mikael (Craig) goes to stay while investigating the rich family who also live on this island.  When we first are introduced to it, it is very bleak, with snow and a cold wind that we can almost feel.  We start to get an understanding of the isolated lifestyle of the family, as well as a vibe that while it may be a beautiful location, there is a cold harshness around it.  There are a lot of scenes shot in drab colours, and only a few where there is a fresh vibrance.  It seems this goes well to provide an environment for Lisbeth (Mara) to fade into.

Lisbeth is really what makes this movie work, as her character movies from being a peripheral part of the movie to the ultimate point of connection for the audience.  She has been deemed mentally unfit by the state, lacks all social abilities, and displays next to no emotion.  It is in Rooney Mara's performance that this character comes to life, as she nails this very nuanced role.  It is a real testiment to a story and to the acting when the near emotionless person becomes the one the audience feels the emotion towards.  It is because we are given glimpses of a very wounded survivor under the gothic exterior of the character and, even in her strength, see a tremendous vulnerability.

There are some who may not enjoy this film, that is for sure.  It has a run time of two hours and thirty eight minutes, and it is not exactly action packed.  As well, there are some scenes of nudity and sexual acts (some consensual and some not) that could be discomforting for some. 

Now, while those elements could deter some folk, I would say that they all have their place within this film.  The movie runs long because it is, in all reality, about the girl with the dragon tattoo on her back.  She is someone who keeps everyone at arm's length, and we need that time with her to be let in to gain a feel of her thoughts and emotions.  And while there are not car chases, we are treated to engaging scenes that are well shot, well scripted, and well acted.  As for the nudity, it is a bit of a must for this story as well.  It is how we see Lisbeth when she is being violated in the most horrific ways, but also how we see her as she starts to almost connect her sexuality with her emotions.

This film gets high praise from me, and it just solidifies my fandom in both David Fincher and Rooney Mara.  While Mara has not been around for a long time, she is showing some amazing acting skills in a number of different roles and is someone who will be receiving an Oscar soon enough, and got a well deserved nomination for her role in this film.  So much power from this movie comes at the very end, where no words are needed and it is just the scene as well as the posture of Mara that left an emotional fingerprint on me that has me yearning to see the next installment in this trilogy.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars