Kubo and the Two Strings - Limited Edition Steelbook 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray [4K UHD]

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!

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.

This movie is one of the last bastions of stop motion animation, and the work of the parent company is well renowned for their work on Coraline. This movie deserves your time and attention, and the company deserves as much as they can get to work towards their next project.

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.

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.

I really enjoy this movie but I do find it a little violent (scary) for the very young ones. Great plot. My older ones enjoy the story. Recommend for children who are double digits or closer to.