dir. by Travis Knight
Laika's work in stop motion has always been fairly prestigious. Films like Coraline and ParaNorman received no shortage of critical acclaim, their unconventional form of craft often being placed among such great studios as Ghibli and Pixar. In films like the aforementioned, the studio's craft often complemented the films' disturbing visuals, creating films which, while not strictly horror, were able to construct a fairly unsettling tone in the former and an effective genre homage in the latter. Kubo is in some ways a departure, taking the form of a sweeping epic journey more akin to a fantasy film than their earlier works, but this change in tone is revelatory, because Kubo and the Two Strings is the surest realization of their craft to date and stands a good chance of going down as their masterpiece.
