Kubo and the Two Strings boasts seven Oscar nominations in its voice cast, and that’s normally great, but none of these actors are known for their voices. English accents are often fetishized in Hollywood, but Ralph Fiennes is one of the Brits known least for his voice, and they make him do an American accent anyway. Great voice casts are usually an easily attained boon for animated features, but it manages to be a waste here. Photo courtesy Focus Features.
Kubo and the Two Strings is one of those frustrating movies that starts off great, then gets worse and worse as it goes on. I’d go as far as to say it’s probably better than I’m giving it credit for because the ending is so much weaker than the start.
The story follows Kubo (Art Parkinson), who has grown up in solitude with his mother, a powerful but severely depressed enchantress. Her sisters (Rooney Mara) and father, Raiden the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes), stole Kubo’s left eye when he was an infant, and he lives his life hiding from the night sky in fear that they will come and take the other. One night trying to commune with his late father’s spirit, Kubo stays out past dark. The twins find him, and his mother sacrifices herself to save him. Kubo’s only hope to fight the Moon King is to find three artifacts of legend with the help of a monkey (Charlize Theron) brought to life by his mother’s magic and a giant amnesiac beetle (Matthew McConaughey).
Photos courtesy Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.
Ben-Hur holds a unique place in cinematic history for a wide variety of reasons. It’s a movie you’ve definitely heard of, but it’s only on the fringe of what I’d call an enduring classic. It’s highly emblematic of the time it was made, so much so that it’s often the go-to example of what movies were all about in the later stages of the Classical Hollywood era, but the fact is it’s three and a half hours long and most of it doesn’t hold up. Movies have evolved rapidly in the 57 years since its release, and one key scene aside, it represents something audiences just aren’t looking for anymore.
But at the same time, it’s cinematic holy ground. The film brought in 11 Academy Awards, a feat matched only by the fantastic success of Titanic and the honorary nostalgia around the third Lord of the Rings movie. It was a technical marvel in its time, and it remains just as fantastic because the techniques that made it so would begin to fall out of favor just a few years later. Remaking something with that level of success is sacrilege, even if the movie could use an update.
God bless Dick Cheney’s America. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
Steven James
@StevenLeeJames
War Dogs, the latest from writer/director Todd Phillips, tries to be a black comedy that makes the audience emotional, a crime movie, an entertaining comedy that puts exaggerated characters into grounded situations, a political satire and an odd-couple film, but fails at all of those.
During the Iraq War, 22-year-old college dropout David Packouz (Miles Teller) is a massage therapist working in Miami Beach. Desperate to support himself and his now-pregnant girlfriend, Iz (Ana de Armas), he agrees to work at AEY Inc., an international arms dealing company run by childhood friend, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). At first, the two bid on smaller U.S. military contracts, but later get a $300 million Pentagon deal to provide the Afghan military with ammunition, putting them in danger with suspicious and underhanded people.
War Dogs contains a lot of elements that don’t mix, which leads to most of its problems. It tries too hard to be sexy, features a great classic rock soundtrack that pops up every five minutes and does not fit into the scenes in which the songs are being played, has an inconsistent tone and lacks a cohesive story. Phillips tries something a little different by trying his hand at a crime film, but his attempt falls flat with all of the problems that are in most of his movies.
Photos courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Steven James
@StevenLeeJames
This decade, Mickey Mouse has taken some of his most beloved properties, starting with 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, and forced them onto the streets so he can get his money. The Mouse has done this with both original characters and ones he borrowed from previous source material. Including Pete’s Dragon, five of the seven Disney films released this year are either sequels or remakes, with The BFG the only one of those not originally owned by Disney. Say what you will about the quality of these movies, characters from The Jungle Book, Alice Through the Looking Glass and Finding Dory had to go stand at shady street corners throughout 2016 in the aftermath of the Mouse taking an evil turn.
Despite the wave of unnecessary remakes and sequels, Pete’s Dragon is a movie that refuses to talk down to children and presents them with complex situations and enough entertainment that most will love the movie. Adults too can watch Pete’s Dragon and also enjoy the story and the performances, as well as the difficult situations, whether or not they are fans of the original.
Reel Entropy 