Check This One Out! - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Check This One Out! - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Taylor Gentry: "That boy is about to seek revenge over the town that muredered him. He knows this, he says, because he himself is the heir apparent to that throne of terror so long held by the likes of Voorhees, Myers, and Krueger. This man's name is Leslie Vernon."

    Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is directed by Scott Glosserman (The Truth Below) and stars Nathan Baesel as Leslie Vernon, Angela Goethals as Taylor Gentry, Scott Wilson as Eugene, Robert Englund as Doc Halloran, Zelda Rubinstein as Mrs. Collinwood, Bridgett Newton as Jamie, Ben Pace as Doug, Kate Miner as Kelly, Britain Spellings as Todd, Krissy Carlson as Lauren, Hart Turner as Shane, and Travis Zariwny as Dr. Meuller.

Ladies and gentlemen, the new crazy guy with a mask!

     Leslie Vernon is inspired by all the pop culture slashers in films like Jason (Friday the 13th), Freddy (Nightmare on Elm Street), and Michael Myers (Halloween) so he decides to let the audience take a peek through what a slasher, like those killers, has to do to prepare to go on his murderous spree. The way he lets us through the looking glass is by way of documentary. He invites a film crew, led by Taylor Gentry, to follow him around and capture all of the details leading to the night he makes himself legendary. This is an original take on the slasher genre and, dare I say, a bloody good one!

Whoa. This is super meta. Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) and Leslie Vernon. This is literally insane!

    I've taken a break from recommending the beautiful to now recommending the gory and beautiful. Time and time again, modern slasher movies have tried to make a name for themselves, but it never turns out the way they, or we as an audience, want it to be. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a fantastic twist on the slasher genre and, my God, I'm so happy that these kinds of films get to see an audience, even if it's a small one. This film is considered a horror cult classic because, c'mon, have you really heard of this movie? The majority of you will probably say no. That's totally alright, but now I've told you. Please see this movie if you like originality in cinema! Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is filmed as a narrative movie would be filmed (with spurts of handheld), but what is so strange and creative is that it doesn't play out like a traditional slasher flick until the end. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed watching this movie from start to end and that is mostly due to Leslie Vernon himself. He is such a compelling character. Not in a protagonist way, obviously, but in a mysterious way. You can see it everything he does, from his silent and care-free mannerisms when he kills the innocent to his breakdowns of slasher movies (i.e. how the killers kill everyone just in time, how they get from place to place so fast, etc.). What Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon can offer you is something that not many movies, that I can think of off the top of my head, can offer you: an original take on horror films. If you haven't read my review of Don't Breathe, which came out to theaters a couple of weeks ago, then you should know that originality is something that I love in horror movies. This is mainly because it's so hard to do nowadays. This movie was made in 2006, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that Leslie Vernon is weird, crazy, interesting, and cool.

Not the old lady!

     For those who love horror films, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is one you should definitely watch. For those who don't like the same old s**t that Hollywood is spewing out over and over again, this is one that I can, without a doubt, tell you that this film is original AND fun. The only people I don't recommend this film to are children. There are two main reasons: there are references made to older horror films such as Evil Dead, Hellraiser, Poltergeist, The Shining, and more, which would all fly past their little heads, and there is just enough violence, language, and sex to persuade parents not to show this to their young ones.

Plus, Leslie would for sure give your kids nightmares. He's f***ing crazy!

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is rated R for horror violence, language, some sexual content and brief drug use

Click here to watch the trailer

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is now available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital download

    Thank you for reading, everybody! I really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to my blog and follow me on Facebook and Twitter to receive updates on new reviews and trailer drops. Also, if you've already seen Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, comment and let me know what you think of it. I'll post another Check This One Out! next week. Thanks again!

Morgan Review

Morgan

Morgan: "I feel...alive."

    Morgan is directed by Luke Scott (directorial debut) and stars Kate Mara as Lee Weathers, Anya Taylor-Joy as Morgan, Toby Jones as Dr. Simon Ziegler, Rose Leslie as Dr. Amy Menser, Boyd Holbrook as Skip Vronsky, Michael Yare as Ted Brenner, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dr. Kathy Grieff, Michelle Yeoh as Dr. Lui Cheng, Vinette Robinson as Dr. Brenda Finch, Chris Sullivan as Dr. Darren Finch, and Paul Giamatti as Dr. Alan Shapiro.

I wrote a review earlier this year of  a movie called The Witch, which is great. Anya Taylor-Joy is in that one too. Watch out for her. She's going to be one of the good ones.

    Lee Weathers, a risk-management consultant, is assigned by a company to assess and report the well-being and the likely dangerous aspects of an artificial humanoid being named Morgan. While others make the decision of whether or not she should be terminated after a bloody and violent event, Morgan, new to finding her true feelings and her potential to kill other people, goes on a rampage. Morgan's "family", the doctors who have taken care of her, must do whatever it takes to help her in the best way possible, but not without casualties.

Yeah...like I said, bloody and violent.

    Secrecy makes people, at least the ones that I know, curious. Personally, it makes me curious and want more. The trailer for Morgan is shrouded in secrecy. All I knew was that it's a science fiction/thriller film about a girl who isn't a really a little girl and has somewhat superhuman abilities. I also knew that some s**t was going to happen in the film because blood appeared throughout the trailer. So as I usually do, I learned more about this movie by watching it. What I can say is that I feel like there is still a good amount of questions that haven't been answered (even new questions that I didn't think I'd ask). I would never fault a movie by having the "more questions than answers" ideal that some movies have. I think it tried to answer most of the questions in the first half of the movie. However, the first half of the movie (mind you, it is 1 hour and 32 minutes long) is slooooooow. Morgan sets up a lot of character background in the first half and it's not very action-like. The second half of Morgan is very much an action/sci-fi/thriller film. It's cool as hell to see the hand to hand combat between a young humanoid girl and an adult who works for a mysterious company. There's also a good amount of brutality that this little girl can do so that in itself is pretty damn cool. Here's the thing: I'm fine with films that like to use the first half of the movie to set the rest of the movie up, but none of the characters are truly interesting or gravitating. I found no character that I could actually relate to and that's pretty unfortunate for a film that uses its first half to let the audience know a little bit more about that characters that have a role in the entirety of the film. The idea of this artificial being able to outsmart and outfight humans is unusual, especially with gorgeous cinematography and good actors at the helm. The only movie that I can think of that did that extremely well in recent years is Ex Machina (except that that was with a beautiful robot performed by Alicia Vikander) I just can't get over the fact that the characters themselves are people that I wouldn't want to go on a road trip on, if given the choice.

Now this is a scene in which you have to laugh. Why aren't you laughing? Dammit! You're all so straight-faced!

 

    I briefly mentioned it, but I think it deserves more mention: this movie looks really good. Morgan, the main focus of the film being about a violent girl, uses a cloak of beauty to add to add to the atmosphere. I don't think it'll get a lot of mention, but the cinematography really is high quality. I mean, I'm not a cinematographer, but I'd like to think that Morgan uses this form of art to a very high caliber. After all, only the best for the son of the legendary Ridley Scott. There are moments near the ending of the film where a forest is shown. Parts of it look dreary and not very likely for a film to be in production (most of the time those are the best places) and parts of the forest look almost dream-like. It's almost like somebody took the dreams of Paul Bunyon and revealed them to us. Seriously, I love how this movie looks. Director of Photography Mark Patten shows his glorious love for this art in Morgan and it does not disappoint. Now that I think about it, it adds to the aura of Morgan: a confusing mixture of beauty and horror, but still engaging and leaves you wanting more.

Just look at that gorgeous still!

    I can't say I loved Morgan or disliked it. I enjoyed it for what it turned out to be. What I appreciate is its ambition to take the sci-fi genre a bit further into films we need. Artificial humans are a possibility. I know it sounds crazy, but cloning is present in today's world so cloning people isn't far off from cloning sheep and other animals. I can see this as a feasible scenario to show us how we have to treat it carefully. Am I reading too deep into this? I honestly don't know. Morgan is a movie about a rogue humanoid being that kills people. Well, whatever. We see crazier things on the daily news anyways. I do, however, stick to my thought of this being ambitious. There are times when I feel like Morgan is perhaps being too ambitious with the way the story is told, but that's mostly because of the pacing and the characters not being on par with the whole idea of the film. It's a film about ethics, whether you choose to believe it or not. I can't say it's the best film or even one of the top films that deal with ethics, but it's entertaining and it keep you curious enough to wait until the twist end, which I won't spoil. All I'll say is that I had an idea at the beginning, but I wasn't 100% sure (just about 80%).

I mean, c'mon. Honestly, what looks crazier: the top or the bottom two pictures? Yeah. That's what I thought.

    Timing with pacing and undesirable characters that you'd be likely to see at a doctor's office waiting room really take Morgan down a big peg, but if you're interested in seeing a movie that uses secrets as its selling point, then you should watch it (or at least stream it or something when it comes out to DVD, Blu-ray, and digital download). I commend the filmmakers for the ambitious material they decided to shoot and maybe Morgan will help pave the way even more for better films that involve human-like beings and humans battling it out in drama/thriller/sci-fi films, but this film just doesn't cut it. If you have a choice of watching Morgan or Ex Machina, a movie with many similarities, I'd make the recommendation of Ex Machina because it does have all of Morgan's positives (improves on it) and none of its flaws. However, choosing Morgan is still a fine choice.

3.5/5

PRO

• Cinematography is beautiful
• Ambitious premise

CON

• Pacing is off (very slow in 1st half; action packed pacing is 2nd half)
• Uninteresting characters

Morgan is rated R for brutal violence and some language

Click here to watch the trailer

Morgan is in theaters everywhere now

    Thanks for reading, everybody! I really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to my blog and follow me on Facebook and Twitter to receive updates on new reviews and trailer drops. Also, if you've already seen Morgan, comment and let me know what you think of it. Thanks again!

Don't Breathe Review

Don't Breathe

Money: "Just cause he's blind don't mean he's a saint, bro."

    Don't Breathe is directed by Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead 2013 remake) and stars Jane Levy as Rocky, Dylan Minnette as Alex, Daniel Zovatto as Money, and Stephen Lang as The Blind Man.

So Kevin Federline, the girl covered in blood in Evil Dead, the older brother who couldn't keep an eye on his sister in Prisoners, and the bad guy from Avatar take up the majority of the screen time?...Sounds pretty cool!

    Alex, Rocky, and Money are three friends that rob houses to steal jewelry or small valuable objects to make some money on the side. They plan to go to California when they have a lead about a blind veteran sitting on a great deal of cash in his house. Soon after they find out, the three thieves enter his home. However, with tense and sometimes even disturbing events, these friends learn that they messed with the wrong man and he'll do anything he is remotely capable of to keep his money and his secrets from leaving the house.

By "remotely capable", I mean he'll shoot you, stab you, strangle you, or pretty much do anything to kill you.

    "........" is what a lot of the audience was saying in my theater while watching this movie. There were those occasional bursts of laughter when everyone yelled in fright at the same time, but they were laughing because the moment of fear got everyone. I'm seriously in shock at how good this movie is. I mean, I saw the trailer and I immediately set my timer to the date it was going to be released because the trailer has all the signals of originality. What I'm shocked by, is that Don't Breathe exceed my expectations in a landslide. I'm not even joking when I say that I was curling my fingers and toes (I could also feel my intestines moving around in discomfort) because of how tense the moments of action and the moments in between were. It's so refreshing to see that there aren't any of those clichéd jump scares, "don't go in there, you idiot!" scenes, or characters that aren't interesting, but you kind of have to root for them because they're the main characters. The jump scares in Don't Breathe work because they build up the tension and the work with the characters point of view. The movements of characters into rooms or opening doors are feel like real choices that I or you could actually make in this sort of situation, and the characters are actually sort of complicated, if you think about it. Sometimes you root for the blind man, sometimes you root for the thieves. The all have their believable backgrounds, but none of them are uninteresting. Really though, Don't Breathe is a mind blowing to me. I thought I had seen it all, in terms of incorporating new elements in a horror/thriller film. I'm totally relieved that there are good people out there making good films for people to enjoy.

Sometimes I can't even tell if he's the hero or the villain.

    As all good horror movies go, the audience should feel tense and uncomfortable for the majority of the film. They should feel scared like they're actually in the movie; attached to the film in some way. Don't Breathe really brings out the nervousness in a person, at least for me it did. The title itself is a good example of living up to its name. For the entire film after the first 15 or 20 minutes, I was squirming in my seat trying not to breathe (as if I was actually in the movie). Every scene built up tension to the next scene, then to next one, then to the next one. I honestly can't say I wasn't engaged or didn't have clammy hands in any part of the film. I was f***ing anxious! A good amount of that has to do with the direction and the writing of Don't Breathe. There is one particular scene (also partly seen in the trailer) that has two characters, Alex and Rocky, stumbling on top of objects in a basement with the lights off. The two actors wore contact lenses that restricted their eyesight greatly. This is what I think should be done for all movies: going as deep as possible to be put in the exact situation as their characters. I could feel the tension of the actors in that scene, as I'm sure they felt. That reminds me to give praise to the camera work. All of the shots in Don't Breathe felt genuine. What I mean by that is that it adds to the atmosphere of almost being there with lots of one-shot scenes. I think this is as close as you can get to handheld/found footage films. This on top of all the other nail biting moments in Don't Breathe make this film a modern horror classic.

How freaky would it be to make your getaway from your murder in pitch black? I'm guessing very.

    Don't Breathe has its faults in the way it ends. I wouldn't say it's a bad ending. I kind of like how it chose to go with its twist ending, but there are about two or so endings it could've taken. It dragged on a bit too long with getting to the credits. I am a little upset and disappointed about that because it could've been a bit shorter, but with a short 1 hour and 28 minutes as its running time, there wasn't much the film could've done to prevent that. It's unfortunate because we can't really have a movie be like 50 minutes and we really can't have it be a long ass 2 hours. It's the risk a film, especially a horror film, takes when it seems to be great in all the ways imaginable, but the flaw is in how it chooses its ending because of running time. I don't want to blame it solely on how the writers choice to extend the film to make it a bit longer because I really can't see any other way around it. I'm just glad Don't Breathe didn't drag on for as long as it could have. It did what it had to do to please the audience and critics. Plus, the ending that was chosen isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. I'm really just saying that I thought the movie was over at one point when it actually wasn't.

Ending #1: Money kills the blind man in his sleep. The end. We would have 20 minutes consisting of background stories for nothing.

    All in all, I am so pleased that my expectations were exceeded. Don't Breathe is a white-knuckling film that leaves you guessing where the younger characters will hide or run from a blind man trying to kill them. It's original as hell and therefore a film that needs to be seen by people who are always complaining that Hollywood isn't making good and original films anymore. All you need to remember is that you shouldn't mess with people who you think are easy targets because it may turn out that they can kick your ass and stab you with gardening scissors...that just took a turn for the dark. Sorry. Don't Breathe is dark in every sense of the word, anyways. Go see it!

4.5/5

PRO

• Original idea
• Tense and nail-biting as hell
• Camera work

CON

• Dragged out ending

Don't Breathe is rated R for terror, violence, disturbing content, and language including sexual references

Click here to watch the trailer

Don't Breathe is in theaters everywhere now

    Thanks for reading, everybody! I really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to my blog and follow me on Facebook here and Twitter here to receive updates on new reviews and trailer drops. Also, if you've already seen Don't Breathe, comment and let me know what you think of it. Thanks again!

Check This One Out! - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Check This One Out! - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sam: "Why do I and everyone I love pick people who treat us like we're nothing?"

Charlie: "We accept the love we think we deserve."

    The Perks of Being a Wallflower is directed by Stephen Chbosky (The Four Corners of Nowhere) and stars Logan Lerman as Charlie, Emma Watson as Sam, Ezra Miller as Patrick, Mae Whitman as Mary Elizabeth, Nina Dobrev as Candace, Dylan McDermott as Charlie's Father, Kate Walsh as Charlie's Mother, Johnny Simmons as Brad, Erin Wilhelmi as Alice, Adam Hagenbuch as Bob, Nicholas Braun as Ponytail Derek, Zane Holtz as Chris, Melanie Lynksey as Aunt Helen, Paul Rudd as Mr. Anderson, and Joan Cusack as Dr. Burton.

Oh man! I didn't realize that Logan Lerman is made out of cardboard! Give that inanimate object a damn Oscar!

    Charlie is a shy and socially awkward teenager starting his first year of high school. He has just come back from a mental health center to get better, but everyone he was friends with has changed and he is now a wallflower, someone who watches everybody and their actions from the sidelines; never actually being involved (basically everyone who deals with social anxiety). Fortunately, he meets two seniors, Patrick and Sam. Now we watch lovable Charlie live the joys of relationships and love, while also dealing with the mistakes he makes with his new found friends and his mental illness. It's life in a nutshell through the eyes of a beautiful human being (who also happens to be a freshman in high school).

That milkshake scene almost made milk come out my nose because it was so funny...I wasn't drinking milk at the time...maybe I should go see a doctor.

    Damn, I've been watching a lot of beautiful films lately. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is no exception either. This movie actually is personally more beautiful to me due to the portrayal of mental illness and its host's interaction with it and life. It's rare to find those films that can accurately represent an illness as complicated as depression and turn it into a funny, charming, sad, and heart-warming study case of a movie. Thank you, Logan Lerman for allowing us to see the hurt and confused person behind Charlie's happy and kind shell. This is hard for Hollywood to do, for some reason. They usually show the mentally ill as dangerous or crazy, whatever that means. Anyways, it's not only the portrayal of mental illness that drew me closer into the story, but it was also because of the dialogue. Holy crap, were the characters so real! To those who've seen The Perks of Being a Wallflower, you might think that the dialogue might be a bit theatrical or filled with forced emotional context/conversations. I can easily counteract that with one word: clique. What I mean is that the group Charlie is a part of with Sam and Patrick are outcasts and weirdos; they don't fit in with the jocks or the nerds. To be honest, they're kind of emo. However, the more and more I think about it, their interests can fit into the whole spectrum of high school cliques. That's actually why I love this movie so much: the main characters are real. Everybody has different interests and passions. A star quarterback on the varsity high school team (typically considered a jock) could love reading comic books (activity typically associated with geeks) or the guy who sits at the lunch table by himself/herself playing Minecraft (typically considered a geek) can really love playing soccer and be very skilled (an activity typically associated with jocks). This movie doesn't conform to stereotypes. It reflects the reality of people in high school. We really should have more movies like this. On top of that, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is also a romance film. Yeah, you heard right! This is literally just life throughout a year in high school. I think I may be just a bit biased, but these are the kinds of films that get to me because I can see some events that happened in my life in a variety of scenes in this genre (coming of age).

I never had a daredevil clique in my school. They were actually just called dumbasses, but in the movie it looks as hell.

    If this doesn't interest you, then the soundtrack will. Why is it that coming of age films usually have terrific soundtracks? Whatever. I'm not going to fight it. It unfolds my love for these films even more so I'm not complaining. I have been watching a string of these movies lately and I think The Perks of Being a Wallflower is among the best of the ones I have seen (there have been probably 7 or 8). Please, please, please take 1 hour and 45 minutes to watch this film. It will make you cry, laugh, and think. Isn't that what you want out of a movie? Maybe a couple of explosions here and there, but hey, they can't always beef it up with violence.

Logan Lerman will be disappointed if you don't see it.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, drug and alcohol use, sexual content including references, and a fight - all involving teens

Click here to watch the trailer

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital Download

    Thanks for reading, everybody! I really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to my blog and follow me on Facebook here and Twitter here to receive updates on new reviews and trailer drops. Also, if you've already seen The Perks of Being a Wallflower, comment and let me know what you think of it. I'll post another Check This One Out! next week. Thanks again!

Kubo and the Two Strings Review

Kubo and the Two Strings

Kubo:  "If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see. No matter how unusual it may seem. If you look away, even for an instant, then our hero will surely perish."

    Kubo and the Two Strings is directed by Travis Knight (directorial debut!) and stars Art Parkinson as Kubo, Charlize Theron as Monkey, Matthew McConaughey as Beetle, Rooney Mara as The Sisters, Brenda Vaccaro as Kameyo, Ralph Fiennes as Moon King, George Takei as Hosato, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Hashi.

Our heroes are a monkey, a beetle man thing, and a kid...awesome!

    Kubo, an imaginative and spirited boy, accidentally calls upon the Moon King who, throughout Kubo's life, wants Kubo to join him in immortality; to basically spit on the humans he has grown to know and love. Now the world he knows has come to a crashing halt because he is on his own without his mother, who has protected him from the Moon King, to try and find the armor of his long lost warrior of a father that can protect him from the evil that's chasing him. Along the way, Kubo meets strange accomplices that join him on his mission, but many obstacles, that which no kid should have to witness, stand in his way.

One of those obstacles are two evil sisters that look creepy as hell.

    Laika is the company behind Kubo and the Two Strings, along other stop motion animation films like ParaNorman, Coraline, and The Boxtrolls. With these powerhouse films on their resume, Laika should have no problem continuing this greatness or even exceeding it, right? RIGHT??? Yes. Kubo and the Two Strings is really friggin' good. I enjoyed this movie from beginning to end, starting off with the captivating visuals. Holy moly, is stop motion animation so satisfying to see in this day and age of film. Of course there are some 3D aspects to this film, like lighting or even the magic that comes out of the instrument's strings that Kubo plucks (I don't want to assume it's a guitar, mandolin, or other strings instrument if I'm not totally positive). However, despite there being some 3D animation, almost 95% of Kubo and the Two Strings is done with clay or wood. This looks absolutely gorgeous. I can't even take a guess as to how many hours the animation department took to make all the details look this perfect. I'm afraid if I guess, the number will be too low. Stop motion animation is in my top 5 favorite subgenres of films, therefore I do give the film some slack if it's not up to standards with movies like The Godfather or Citizen Kane. Even though Kubo and the Two Strings isn't a perfect movie, I don't have a problem saying that almost everything about it is fun and entertaining, especially the animation style.

Even Kubo's amazed at the world surrounding him.

    I was on the fence on whether I liked the incorporation of important mature subject matters in a kid's movie or the animation more. It was a close call, but I want to put the animation above that. The thing is, the more I think about it, Kubo and the Two Strings uses the animation to its advantage to get the mature themes to kids. The action is awesome and it's just what a kid wants and is used to, but the theme of dealing with death and grieving about it is blended with it's fantastic form of showmanship. I'm not even joking, this film is one color change away from becoming a dark fairy tale filled with scary monsters and death. Luckily, Laika sure knows how to maintain a color palate suited for children and adults. This keeps the children entertained while subconsciously wondering about grief and what it means. Yeah, I'm sure you're thinking that isn't a good idea and it sounds like the opposite of what we should be teaching kids; to not be depressed, however, it's important to show the youth to be prepared for life and that not everything is going to be fine and dandy. Good things come out of bad situations and Kubo and the Two Strings shows us that. We can celebrate death, we can mourn for those who have died in our past, we can do whatever we want to deal with a loss, but in the end, we just have to remember them for the good times and be happy that we even met those people. That lesson is in a damn kids movie!

Mom! I can handle it! You don't have to treat me like a little kid! Gosh!

    I said earlier that this movie isn't perfect. Well, I abide by that, however the only problem for me is the pacing of some scenes. Now I'm just nitpicking. I normally don't like to do that. I mean, the entirety of the Kubo and the Two Strings is fun, it's engaging, it's heart-warming/heart-wrenching at times, and it's beautiful to look at. There were just those moments where I had problems following the footsteps of our heroes. There's are many scenes where someone blacks out or throws something (to the audience) and it suddenly cuts to black. Fade in and the climax of the event has just passed and we never get to see the action of the outcome. We just see the outcome. I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but as an example: there is a scene where Monkey is fighting one of the evil twin sisters that's hunting Kubo on a boat in the middle of a storm. They fight, Monkey talks smack or something, she lunges towards the evil sister trying to kill her and then...cut to black. Kubo and Beetle swim to the surface of the water to the boat, Monkey is on a broken plank of the boat holding the evil sister's mask. This happens like 6 times throughout the movie. I understand that this is a kid's movie and there shouldn't be any blood, but come on. There should be some sort of continuous fight scene that doesn't cut out any awesome details or dialogue. Anyways, I'm feeling way too hung up on such a minor thing. Overall, this little flaw didn't take away any of the fun I had during Kubo and the Two Strings.

He's got him!...What? WHAT?! Why'd it just cut to black?!?!

    Adult thematic material, truly enchanting stop motion animation, and fun action are what makes Kubo and the Two Strings a marvel. There might be some scary parts for kids, what with all the monsters and spirits, but most kids should be able to handle this film. I don't understand how Laika does it. There are way too many factors as to how magical the experience of Kubo and the Two Strings is. I also quickly want to mention that there is a great score here. This film is titled after a kid and his two stringed instrument. Do you think the score is going to be terrible? If it was, I would be very disappointed, but it wasn't so I am not. YAY!  Please don't skip out on, what I think is for sure, one of the best film of the year.

4.8/5

PRO

•    Amazing stop motion animation work
•    Adult themes mixed with children's film shell
•    Fun and cool action scenes

CON

•    Some pacing issues

Kubo and the Two Strings is rated PG for thematic elements, scary images, action and peril

Click here to watch the trailer

Kubo and the Two Strings is in theaters everywhere now

    Thanks for reading, everybody! I really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to my blog and follow me on Facebook here and Twitter here to receive updates on new reviews and trailer drops. Also, if you've already seen Kubo and the Two Strings, comment and let me know what you think of it. Thanks again!