There is also a tactile element to the animation that we do not normally see in CGI: feathers, fur, and trees move with heightened realism. I am certain, however, that the main characters are all stop-motion creations, which means they move with buoyancy and heft. I do not know how the animators blend stop-motion and computers, but the effect is totally immersive.

Kubo and the Two Strings is also a technical marvel. The imagery is striking and bizarre: Knight borrows from Japanese folk art and the angles of silent German Expressionism in order to create landscapes that are welcoming, impossible, and dangerous. Younger viewers may be restless, and yet these moments are necessary so we ache and thrill alongside each new discovery. The first act teases the possibility of adventure, focusing mostly on the sad routine that defines KuboвЂ™s life. Screenwriters Marc Haimes and Chris Butler take their time with KuboвЂ™s everyday life. Along with the help of an absent-minded Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), Kubo encounters terrifying monsters and finally learns his true legacy. Kubo barely survives, and discovers a strange protector: a talking monkey (Charlize Theron) who explains that Kubo must mirror the path of his favorite story. One day Kubo attracts the attention of his sinister aunts (Rooney Mara), who attack KuboвЂ™s mother and the nearby town. KuboвЂ™s mother is a tragic figure вЂ“ she is either completely lucid, or catatonic вЂ“ and fragments of memory are KuboвЂ™s only window to his past. At around age ten, he supports himself and his mother as a storyteller he always attracts a crowd because he uses a magic string instrument to reanimate origami warriors. The narrative is stripped to its essentials, in terms of ambition and heroes/villains, so Knight uses that simplicity to his advantage. Director Travis Knight sets his film in an exaggerated, austere vision of feudal Japan, one where magic coexists with agrarian life. LaikaвЂ™s latest Kubo and the Two Strings is no different. But because their films are always visual delights вЂ“ with strong characters вЂ“ they arrive with wisdom, too. Their characters are hardly cute, at least not in the Pixar sense, and their stories draw from painful childhood feelings: alienation, rejection, and loneliness. Their films use a mix of computers and painstaking stop-motion techniques. Laika does not conform to the trends of modern animation.

Hamsterball gold