Movie Review: LION

Lion is a 2016 awards season film about a young boy, Saroo, in India who gets accidentally separated from his home and eventually adopted by a family in Australia and his quest, as an adult, to find his family again. The film is directed by Garth Davis and stars Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Rooney Mara, and Sunny Pawar. Overall, I didn’t enjoy the film but it has some qualities that might redeem it and make it worthwhile for some audience members.

Movie Review: KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS

Kubo (Art Parkinson), a young, one-eyed boy living in a small village in a fairy-tale-like Asian land, embarks on a journey with Monkey (Charlize Theron) and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey) to find an ancient sword, helmet and armor in order to defeat his aunts and grandfather who have become cold evil spirits, seeking Kubo's second eye and who Kubo's mother turned against in the past.

Having in the past not thoroughly enjoyed Laika's past efforts like ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls (for story reasons), Kubo and the Two Strings comes in as a definite improvement on them, with a far more touching narrative which adds a brilliant tribute to Asian cinema, even though some of the story problems I had in the past still emerge from this animated beauty.