Initial Reaction: Video Review - WAR DOGS & KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS

As the summer movie season winds down so typically does the quality of the movies being released, but this year on the last big weekend of the summer it seems the opposite has occurred. Throughout the summer there have been more than a handful of big disappointments both artistically and financially. Some of my most anticipated movies of the summer including Jason Bourne, X-Men: Apocalypse, and of course Suicide Squad have been able to turn a pretty penny while being rather generic whereas smaller fare I was eager to see including Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Free State of Jones (remember that one?), and The Nice Guys were unable to break out financially. Then there are those like Steven Spielberg's The BFG, the long-delayed sequels Alice through the Looking Glass and Independence Day: Resurgence as well as this past weekend's Ben-Hur re-make that failed both critically and commercially (though I acknowledge BFG has it's supporters). All of this is to say that in a generally terrible summer movie season this final weekend turned out to be better than expected as my partner in crime and I very much enjoyed both War Dogs and LAIKA studios latest offering, KUBO and the Two Strings. While Suicide Squad reigned supreme for a third straight weekend and Sausage Party again came in second at the box office there was never much expected in terms of big box office from any of the three new wide releases. That said, the Todd Phillips directed War Dogs starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller as two twenty-somethings who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan debuted with an estimated $14.3 million on an estimated $40 million budget. Finishing fourth with an estimated $12.6 million was Kubo and his two strings. This is the lowest wide opening release for any of the LAIKA's five feature films, which now show a trend of declining multipliers over the course of their last three releases. The film will release internationally over the next few months and will need to do well to make up for its $60 million budget given it will likely end its U.S. run around the $37 million mark. As always, be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube channel as we have a new review (or reviews) up each week!



Read my full War Dogs review here.



Read my full KUBO and the Two Strings review here.


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