A hopeless mother clutches her baby, surrounded by waves crashing about in a fierce storm. You hear the voice over of a child warning the audience of the dire circumstances, a matter of life and death. The screen fades to black, and Kubo and the Two Strings begins.

This opening scene serves as the thesis of the movie: Cinematic, dark and overall, entertaining. It’s a shame most will dismiss the movie upon first glance at the bright stop motion, because saying that Kubo and the Two Strings is one of the best animated movies of the year would be an understatement; it is one of the best major motion pictures of the year.

Laika Entertainment, the studio behind Kubo, released similar stylized movies like Coraline and Paranorman, both of which received much critical acclaim. Kubo keeps up Laika’s successful run, being all the more impressive considering this is Travis Knight’s directorial debut.

Knight does a great job directing an unique story, one that deals with serious issues such as family conflict and death, as well as genuine fun scenes filled with action and humor. Although the movie deals with a variety of issues, all of them feel balanced and flow together in a cohesive plot.

Without spoiling much, the story follows a young boy who has a troubled past and ends up having to go on an unexpected journey with his unexpected friends. The young boy, Kubo (Art Parkinson), is joined by Monkey (Charlize Theron) and an unknown beetle soldier (Matthew McConaughey) who follow him into danger as their journey progresses.

Kubo’s animation continues to be unique like all the other Laika movies, however, Kubo goes far and beyond and gives some of the most beautiful animation I’ve ever seen. Sunsets reflecting upon ocean waters as well as other shots of objects with an incredible amount of detail are some of the highlights of the movie. Moreover, the cinematography proves to be impressive too. Shots such as long pans add a cinematic edge to this movie that helps transcend viewers into the film.

The movie features the voices of Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, and Rooney Mara, who all give great performances. The voice of Kubo, Art Parkinson, gives an exceptional as the young protagonist. All of the characters in the movie are definitely fleshed out with the voice acting, delivering memorable performances.

The most stunning thing about this movie is it’s originality. There is much more than unique art style in this film; it’s the story, the themes the movie throws out, the soundtrack, almost everything in this movie is great.

Although this movie is near perfect, the movie does get a little too preachy at the end. The whole film engrosses you into the story and towards the end there is a scene that just preaches at you saying “This is the point of the movie, listen to me explain to you why you are watching this,” which is annoying.

Regardless of my nitpicking, the movie kept me engrossed from start to finsh. As the screen dimmed to black, and Regina Spektor’s cover of As my Guitar Gently Weeps plays, cuing the credits, I knew that I just finished watching one of the best movies of 2016.