Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Kubo and the Two Strings

With Coraline, Laika Animation established themselves as the most inventive stop-motion animation studio in history. With their successive films, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls, their creativity has known no bounds. While Boxtrolls might not have been on par with Coraline or ParaNorman, their latest effort, Kubo and the Two Strings surpasses them all.

Pixar once had a monopoly on feel-good, heart-rending animated pictures that told great stories, redefined a medium, and created lasting impressions on their viewers. Few other studios have accomplished that. Laika now joins them and, compared to recent output, has even surpassed them.

The story is that of a young boy whose mother has whisked him away to safety where venturing out at night puts him in danger of being attacked by the family she’s struggling to keep him away from. When her sisters show up to claim the boy and take his remaining eye, she sends him away to a snowy wilderness where he must begin a quest to retrieve three mystical items that can help him defeat his grandfather with the help of his guardian monkey brought to life by his mother and a samurai cursed to live as a beetle.

There are many Japanese and Western influences on display here, but the film comes to life in the staggering stop-motion animation employed. This is a film with an intense amount of artistic creativity that comes off without a hitch. The miracle workers at Laika are unparalleled in their craft and each new effort, even when weak on story, is a beautiful concoction of whit and imagination. They’ve surpassed Aardman in terms of genuine quality and have even managed to come even with Disney and Pixar in terms of quality. Matter of fact, compared to recent Pixar efforts, Laika has easily outperformed them.

This is a film that should win an Oscar for Best Animated Feature and losing would be quite disappointing to anyone who believes that Disney and Pixar should not have a monopoly on the medium.