Second Hand Movies Done Dirt Cheap: Kubo and the Two Strings (2016, Dir Travis Knight, 1 h 42m)

Whilst I've always intended this section of A Foot and A Half Per Second to take a look at the length and breadth of cinema, you may have already noticed that this is, yes, the second Studio Laika film in a year. All I can say is...oops? (It's also good to see where Travis Knight, the man who saved Transformers from Bay-shaped mediocrity, started out). Say what you like about their box office receipts (at time of writing, Missing Link, despite its utter beauty, is almost certain to continue Laika's under-performance at the box office), each and every Studio Laika film is a visual treat that pushes the entire medium of animation forward, in beautifully wrought, emotionally resonant adventures.

Kubo and the Two Strings, however, may be the best of the lot, in its Japanese folktale of a young tale-telling, shamisen-playing boy, Kubo (Art Parkinson) racing against his villainous, and positively demonic relatives (Ralph Fienes as the Moon King, and a dual role by Rooney Mara as twins Karasu and Washi), with the aid of a mismatched duo of a monkey (Charlize Theron) and a cursed samurai-beetle (Matthew McConaughey), to claim his legendary father's sword and armour, the only thing that can help him defeat his adversaries, from a series of terrifying and visually stunning foes. Yet, for all its anime and samurai-styled battles, all its monsters and narrative scale, Kubo is strongest at its most intimate, most powerful at its most personal, and most resonant at its most emotional, where its strongest weapon is not a sword, but memory and family.

As with every Laika film, one needs to talk first about its visual style-compared to Sellick's defined style in Coraline, and the similar visual styles of Paranorman and The Boxtrolls, taking a certain influence from horror movies and cartoons, there is a certain, rather obvious Japanese-ness to not only the puppets but the entire world. In a less nuanced approach, this could have been either insensitive, at worse offensive-Laika, however, show their love for Japanese art, myth, and cinema openly. The puppets, for example, take influence from Japanese forms of puppetry, most notably the form of puppet theatre known as bunraku, particularly in Kubo's narration and use of a shamisen closely echoing and combining the narrator and musician necessary for a bunraku play, but also other forms of Japanese theatre.

Kubo's twin aunts, for example , have identical noh-style masks, that only add to their threatening appearance, and their slow destruction, particularly in a dramatic fight between Monkey and Karasu, break the emotionless visage to reveal threat and anger. Meanwhile, in perhaps the film's most visually impressive addition to animation, the japanese art of origami comes to life with the power of Kubo's shamisen, morphing between forms and creating everything from the miniature Hanzo, that guides the group along the way, to the extended opening sequence in which Kubo retells the story

The influence of Studio Ghibli's Miyazaki, and Japanese woodcut artists, from Hokusai to Hiroshige, are clearly seen not only in the landscapes, that are evocatively Japanese, from great lakes and stark mountains, to a ruined castle and a boat made of leaves. The village, in which the film begins and ends, is exquisitely detailed, as are its residents, from its graveyard, in which several key scenes, including the finale, take place, to the marketplace where Kubo plies his trade as a storyteller, whilst even scenes that last a few seconds have beautifully rendered settings that match the best of stop-start animation with cutting edge technology.

 Yet the influence of the woodcuts of the Ukiyo, of the fantastical floating world, are perhaps best seen in the three monsters, two of which guard the legendary items that Kubo must find to complete his quest. Most impressive of all is the truly colossal-a truly awe-inspiring, nearly 200kg, 5 metre high, 3D printed-skeleton that guards the Sword Unbreakable, and the battle between Kubo and his allies and this colossal monster riffs off everything from Ray Harryhausen's iconic work from Jason and the Argonauts to videogames such as Shadow of the Colossus, whilst the search for the second item, in which Kubo comes face-to-face, (or rather eye to eye) with the horrifying and hypnotic "Garden of Eyes" is an astonishing visual spectacle, in no small part because Laika manage to do the nigh impossible for animation, and stage an entire battle underwater.

All of this adds nigh perfectly together to create a film that is sumpteous as it is evocative-combined with the score of Dario Marianelli, mixing the ever present shamisen, most notably in a nicely culture-crossing cover of "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" that closes the film and features Regina Spektor, with taiko and other traditional Japanese forms of music, only adding to it. Yet, it is in its story that Kubo shows its strongest hand-there's something of the traditional Japanese folk tale without a doubt, but in its depiction of ancestors, at the annual Bon festival, and in its entire plot hinging around the concept of stories, storytelling, and memory, so Kubo taps, at once into something that is at once quintessentially Japanese, and unquestionably universal. What matters, in short, is family.

Its characters are, to lesser or greater extent, extensions of these themes-Kubo, as the story teller, is the most obvious of these, his connection to his father through the stories his mother tells him recalled in front of a captive audience. Yet, his inability to complete the story, to always leave his audience wanting an ending he cannot deliver underlines the entire problem with Kubo's life-his knowledge of his father is second-hand, the bond between them refracted through his mother, and her slowly failing memory. It is thus, only with a quest with Monkey, a figure who represents the last of his mother's magic, and Beetle, who appears to be a follower of his father, and the final battle between his repressive and manipulative grandfather, that he is able to finish his own story, and with it, realise the importance of story, and its recollection of memory, and its importance.

His two companions are equally characters of memory-Beetle, shorn of memory, and of purpose, is only able to find it again by serving as Kubo's protector, and his eventual identity, whilst Monkey herself is also expanded by the unveiling of her identity-with it, comes an enjoyable colouring of the comedic elements in Kubo, as the bickering between Kubo's two guardians turns to something far more familial, and deeply emotionally resonant with viewers young and old, as a family is reunited. Together, this surrogate family of adventurers grow closer knit and, through  their connections, the very nature of their interweaving stories is explored.

It is their shared past that makes their bonds stronger, and with the ending of Monkey and Beetle's stories, so Kubo not only has an ending to his parents' stories, but can continue on his own. This is excellently shown in the film's visual story-telling, from the isolated shots of Kubo and his mother at the beginning of his journey, remote and stark, to the more relaxed and quasi-intimate moments of Kubo with Beetle and Monkey, together, or as a trio, to that at the end of the film, with his family reunited, and Kubo among the villagers he helped protect. Nowhere is this bond seen better than in the climatic scene where Kubo restrings his damaged shamisen in order to defeat the Moon King with its magic, with his mother's and his hair, and his father's bowstring, Kubo and his family together at last, even in spirit.

The other character that brings this across perfectly is Raiden, the Moon King. Laika have often been a studio that build perfect villains, from Coraline's Other Mother to the Boxtroll's Exterminator, and Raiden is no different, reflecting, as his peers do, the adult fears that Laika's films often convey in their narratives. Raiden, in short, represents the fear of being forgotten, his immortality and blindness making him cold and cruel, weaponising his daughters to rid the world of heroes, and thus cut their stories short and to the wind. Fiennes gives him at once an artificial warmth, a temptation to Kubo to become like him, "immortal and infinite", which Kubo rejects, perfectly encapsulating the film's key message, that "stories have an end", and an icy coldness, a mercilessly dangerous figure who yearns to make Kubo like him at all costs, seen in his transformation into a monstrous primordial dragon, to do battle with his grandson.

Yet, it is in defeat that the film arguably pulls its finest moment, with Raiden, having lost his memories, consoled by the village he threatened, told that he is a good man that does many good things-the strength of Kubo's story is such that its villain, reduced to mortality, to a story that, indeed has an ending, is not only welcomed but celebrated, where connections between people, and, through memory, connections with the past are all powerful. For a film to end on such a mature and intelligent note is unusual, for a film largely aimed at a younger demographic even rarer. Indeed, for his short time on screen, it is arguably Raiden who goes through the biggest change, and it is he who is emblematic of the film's key theme-of memory, and of tales.

Kubo and the Two Strings is a rare film indeed, a pitch-perfect mix of stunning, groundbreaking visuals that push, as Laika always does, the envelope of what stop-start animation can accomplish, a triumph of a physical method of making animation at a point where films of this type are ever increasingly a virtual process, losing charm and ambition in the process, and a culturally respectful, beautifully poignant, and surprisingly heartwarming tale of a young man learning that the stories he, and other people, tell, are more important, hold more power, and bring both families and communities closer together than any magical weapon or enchanted armour ever could. What Kubo is, in short, is a timeless tale, for young and old; in Kubo's own words, "The most powerful kind of magic there is"

 Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)