SNL Review January 20, 2018: Jessica Chastain/Troye Sivan

January 21, 2018

jmunney Saturday Night Live, SNL Weekly Recaps, Television , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Will Heath/NBC

This review was originally posted on News Cult in January 2018.

NewsCult Entertainment Editor Jeffrey Malone watches every new episode of Saturday Night Live and then organizes the sketches into the following categories: “Love It” (potentially Best of the Season-worthy), “Keep It” (perfectly adequate), or “Leave It” (in need of a rewrite, to say the least). Then he concludes with assessments of the host and musical guest.

Love It

What Even Matters Anymore – Too many SNL game show parodies give away way too much of their premises in their titles, and that can be frustrating. But when it is infused with as much real-world anger as “What Even Matters Anymore” is, that obviousness is understandable, and justified. Then there is the joy of the sketch’s structure itself breaking down, as the performative mask (minimal as it is to begin with) starts to fade away, with Jessica, Cecily, and Kate all ultimately playing themselves. But Kenan still gets to play Bernard, and thank God for that.

Chris Redd must have been waiting a lifetime to debut his dark Fresh Prince of Bel-Air parody, huh? And well, the (Method Man-featuring) result is thrillingly confident…The scene at the Jalapeños restaurant is full of laughs not just because of the idiocy on display but also because of all the complicated details that force you to engage so many brain cells…15 seasons in, and Kenan Thompson is still giving showcase performances, as he really examines the wonders of mugging on the Justice for Anne movie set.

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This Is a Movie Review: ‘Den of Thieves’ is a Warmed-Over, Mush-Mouthed Michael Mann Impersonation

January 19, 2018

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

CREDIT: STX

This review was originally published on News Cult in January 2018.

Starring: Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Evan Jones, Cooper Andrews, Dawn Olivieri

Director: Christian Gudegast

Running Time: 140 Minutes

Rating: R for Cacophonous Continuous Gunfire, a Strip Club Detour, and Way Too Many F-Bombs

Release Date: January 19, 2018

According to the opening titles of Den of Thieves, Los Angeles is the “bank robbery capital of the world.” I do not know if that title is actually true, partly because this movie does not make me care enough to confirm or debunk the claim. Besides, it is essentially immaterial to the plot. This is not about an epidemic of robberies, but one specific crew, who could be pulling off their big heist anywhere so long as the cash is present and an escape route is available. As for Gerard Butler’s performance as the cop doggedly tracking them, it does not scream “L.A.” so much as “nutso actor sheds any semblance of sanity.”

Den of Thieves is the directorial debut of Christian Gudegast, who previously scripted the likes of London Has Fallen (which I have not seen, but I have heard it is just as dreadful as its predecessor Olympus Has Fallen). Michael Mann’s influence on him is obvious, but not fruitful. Gudegast clearly wants this to be a sprawling crime saga on the same level as Heat or Miami Vice, but that would require characters who deliver personality instead of an endless string of groan-inducing f-bombs.

As Merriman, the leader of the den, Pablo Schreiber mostly relies on bulging out his facial muscles. As his right-hand man, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson basically stands off to the side and looks vaguely threatening. O’Shea Jackson Jr., as the team’s driver and newest recruit, is able to infuse the proceedings with a few amusing moments. (There is a running gag with a couple of randy female customers when he moonlights delivering Chinese food.) Meanwhile, the rest of the guys in the den are either too beefy or too masked to convey any tangible emotion.

But for better and for worse, this is the Gerard Butler show. His “Big Nick” is not so much corrupt or “flying off the handle” so much as he is filled with constant, fidgety, bizarre tics that do not resemble any sort of recognizable human behavior I am familiar with. I cannot say that any of his performance adds up to anything “good,” but I must admit that I could not look away.

Ultimately, the scheme wraps up with a series of twists that mostly serve to frustrate, not because they cheat with any internal logic, but because they require a great deal of patience to sit around before anything meaningful happens. At nearly two and a half hours, there is precious little to make that journey bearable. To be fair, the crowd I saw it was hooting and hollering throughout, so there clearly is an audience for this sort of muscled-up, unsubtle affair. But from my perspective, this is a dithering cacophony that drives me batty.

Den of Thieves is Recommended If You Like: Michael Mann’s crime sagas but without the visual and formal experimentalism, Training Day but with an unfathomable amount of scenery-chewing

Grade: 2 out of 5 Automatic Rounds

 

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Forever My Girl’ Could Be Charming If It Weren’t So Careless with Its Emotional Beats

January 18, 2018

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CREDIT: Jacob Yakob/Roadside Attractions/LD Entertainment

This post was originally published on News Cult in January 2018.

Starring: Alex Roe, Jessica Rothe, John Benjamin Hickey, Abby Ryder Fortson, Tyler Riggs, Peter Cambor, Gillian Vigman

Director: Bethany Ashton Wolf

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: PG for Keeping Deep-Seated Anger and Frustration Mostly Polite

Release Date: January 19, 2018

In gooey romances like Forever My Girl, we always find our way back to the ones who we truly love and who truly love us. But I wonder how someone like country music superstar Liam Page (Alex Roe) ever could have lost himself in the first place. Because when the facts are laid out, he just does not seem like the type of guy who would ever want to leave his lovely fiancée Josie (Jessica Rothe) at the altar. And when I ponder what it means that he in fact does do that, the implications are quite troubling, and I wish writer/director Bethany Ashton Wolf (adapting the book of the same name by Heidi McLaughlin) had shown more care in reckoning with all that.

Eight years have passed since Liam has bailed on marriage, cutting off all contact with Josie, his dad (John Benjamin Hickey), his friends, and everyone else in his hometown of Saint Augustine, Louisiana (referred to as just “Saint” by the locals) in the process. Now he is selling out stadiums, thanks to the success of his banal party-bro country songs with lyrics like “don’t water down my whiskey.” But he has always held on to a sort of talisman from his past life: his old flip phone from high school, as a voicemail saved there contains his last communication from Josie, sent to him just a few days after he jilted her. When he hears that one of his friends has died in an accident, he abandons the last stop of his tour to return home, and I get the sense that he’s been wanting to escape the big time for a while (more on that later).

As these stories tend to go, it turns out that Josie has a 7-year-old daughter, Billy (a poised Abby Ryder Fortson), and of course Liam is the dad, but because of his town-wide ghosting, he never knew about her until now. It wouldn’t be the best idea for Liam to suddenly become a major part of Billy’s life, considering how disruptive that can be for a young child, not to mention Liam is a not-very-independent adult who can barely take care of himself. But of course, you can see where this is going: Liam learns how to be a good dad, he and Billy bond over music, and he and Josie fall back in love, because they never really fell out of love in the first place.

While none of this reinvents the wheel (in fact, it rolls right along with it), it is not necessarily a problem. What is a problem, though, is the mishap that threatens to upend this new stability for such a silly, unnecessary reason. And compounding that are all the emotional beats to get Liam and Josie to their final resolution. Alex Roe and Jessica Rothe are perfectly lovely and winning. We can be happy to see them end up together, but it’s hard not to feel cheated to see some crappy behavior go unrectified.

Ultimately I am left puzzling over why in the first place Liam left the things that seem to make him happiest. His inner conflict is never presented as a fight between the glories of fame versus the comfort and responsibility of family. Nor is it even a matter of professional ambition versus personal happiness. Just about everyone in his life is totally supportive of him. Even his publicity team and handlers are good friends for the most part, advising him to take all the time he needs to mourn, despite being on the hook for lost tour revenue. So why then does he struggle to commit to Josie when it is clear she makes him fulfilled? The best guess I can come up with is that he must be suffering from anxiety, or some pathological fear or distrust of happiness, or some other mental condition. If only the film had realized what a broken soul were at its center, then it could have been genuinely touching.

Forever My Girl is Recommended If You Like: The Nicholas Sparks Brand of Romance, Cloying country music

Grade: 1.5 out of 5 Hasty Reunions

Billboard Hot Rock Songs – Week of January 20, 2018

January 17, 2018

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot Rock Songs, Music , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, and then I rearrange the top 25 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 25, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
2. Portugal. The Man – “Feel It Still”
3. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”
4. Walk the Moon – “One Foot”
5. Breaking Benjamin – “Red Cold River”
6. Imagine Dragons – “Whatever It Takes”
7. Alice Merton – “No Roots”
8. 30 Seconds to Mars – “Walk on Water”
9. Theory of a Deadman – “Rx (Medicate)”
10. Foster the People – “Sit Next to Me”
11. Five Finger Death Punch – “Gone Away”
12. Beck – “Up All Night”
13. Portugal. The Man – “Live in the Moment”
14. Bastille – “World Gone Mad”
15. Imagine Dragons & Khalid – “Thunder”/”Young Dumb & Broke” (Medley)
16. Foo Fighters – “The Sky is a Neighborhood”
17. BØRNS ft. Lana Del Rey – “God Save Our Young Blood”
18. Fall Out Boy – “Hold Me Tight or Don’t”
19. Vance Joy – “Lay It on Me”
20. Lana Del Rey – “Get Free”
21. A Perfect Circle – “Disillusioned”
22. Weezer – “Happy Hour”
23. Royal Blood – “I Only Lie When I Love You”
24. Skillet – “The Resistance”
25. U2 – “You’re the Best Thing About Me”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. No Roots
2. Up All Night
3. Feel It Still
4. The Sky is a Neighborhood
5. Live in the Moment
6. I Only Lie When I Love You
7. Get Free
8. World Gone Mad
9. You’re the Best Thing About Me
10. Happy Hour
11. Lay It on Me

Billboard Hot 20 – Week of January 20, 2018

January 17, 2018

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot 100, Music , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot 100, and then I rearrange the top 20 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 20, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Ed Sheeran – “Perfect”
2. Camila Cabello ft. Young Thug – “Havana”
3. Bruno Mars and Cardi B – “Finesse”
4. Post Malone ft. 21 Savage – “Rockstar”
5. G-Eazy ft. A$AP Rocky and Cardi B – “No Limit”
6. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
7. Halsey – “Bad at Love”
8. Sam Smith – “Too Good at Goodbyes”
9. Justin Timberlake – “Filthy”
10. Migos, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B – “MotorSport”
11. Dua Lipa – “New Rules”
12. Lil Pump – “Gucci Gang”
13. Kendrick Lamar ft. Zacari – “Love.”
14. Cardi B ft. 21 Savage – “Bartier Cardi”
15. NF – “Let You Down”
16. G-Eazy and Halsey – “Him & I”
17. Cardi B – “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)
18. Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line – “Meant to Be”
19. 6ix9ine – “Gummo”
20. Portugal. The Man – “Feel It Still”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. New Rules
2. Filthy
3. Feel It Still
4. Havana
5. Love.

This Is a Movie Review: ’12 Strong’ Declassifies Post-9/11 Afghanistan But Doesn’t Have the Wherewithal to Ask the Tough Questions

January 17, 2018

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CREDIT: David James/HS Film, LLC/Warner Bros.

This post was originally published on News Cult in January 2018.

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Navid Negahban, Michael Peña, Trevante Rhodes, Geoff Stults, William Fichtner, Rob Riggle, Elsa Pataky

Director: Nicolai Fuglsig

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: R for Typical War Violence and Expletives, Though Far From the Genre’s Most Explicit

Release Date: January 19, 2018

12 Strong dramatizes a U.S. military operation immediately following the September 11 attacks, in which Task Force Dagger struck back against the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan. A mission that could have lasted years is instead completed in a matter of weeks. Thus, the film ends on a moment of triumph. But that is a note that rings hollow, as nearly two decades in, the war on terror is still going on, with no clear end in sight.

To be fair, the dispersed, insidious, leaderless nature of terrorism makes it profoundly difficult to stamp out entirely, and it is accordingly just as difficult to convey the entire meaning of this conflict in a single work of art. 12 Strong does not purport to capture that entirety, nor should we fault it for failing to do so. But it does deserve to be taken to task for bringing up some existential conundrums and declining to thoroughly investigate them. An Afghani ally tells the men of Task Force Dagger, “You will be cowards if you leave, and you will be our enemies if you stay.” And that is really the crux of this issue. But instead of grabbling with that dilemma, 12 Strong leaves it hanging.

At its heart, though, 12 Strong just wants to be a celebration of heroism. And on that score, it is more committed, but not especially capable. It was filmed in New Mexico, and you can feel just how much it is not actually on a real Afghani battlefield. A cheap, careless aesthetic is not exactly the best way to honor these guys. I am sure budgetary constraints made things difficult, but that could have been counteracted with the same ingenuity that Task Force Dagger displayed, but alas, the final product is a bunch of grey dullness with occasional flashes of personality (that personality coming from the fact that these soldiers were forced to ride horses, which most of them are not trained to do, thus resulting in a few solid laughs).

12 Strong is Recommended If You Like: Saving Private Ryan but with straight-to-video production values

Grade: 2 out of 5 Horse Soldiers

 

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Final Year’ Looks Back at the Now-Under Threat Dignity and Idealism of the Obama Administration

January 17, 2018

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CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures

This post was originally published on News Cult in January 2018.

Starring: John Kerry, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, Barack Obama

Director: Greg Barker

Running Time: 89 Minutes

Rating: Unrated – Any Objectionable Material is Typical (Pre-2017) Politics

Release Date: January 19, 2017 (Limited)

It is difficult for documentaries about recent political history to make a truly salient argument about what is going on in society, as that requires the wisdom of hindsight. So traditionally the best they can offer is a more intimate look at the inner machinations of government, or peeks into the stories that do not get much traction in the daily news cycle. Greg Barker’s The Final Year successfully meets those criteria. The title refers to the last 12 months of the Barack Obama administration, with a particular focus on the foreign policy team. The main figures are Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes, and Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Obama is a supporting player in this presentation, but he is also the center of orbit. Barker’s approach pulls you into this group’s engagement with the rest of the globe, briskly carrying us along as they strive to make the world a genuinely better place.

Any good character-based film, whether fictional or nonfictional, no matter what its thesis, simply must do an adequate job at explicating its characters, and Barker pulls off this task with quiet aplomb. For Kerry, so much of his decades-long political career has been driven by the fight to set the national foreign policy aright following the lies that he and his fellow Vietnam veterans were sold. Though his outer disposition may appear stolid, his inner fire clearly burns within. Rhodes, the youngest of the group, naturally fills the slot of the one who eagerly jumped in when he sensed that a new politics was finally happening. He is the most prone to gaffes, but he still holds onto his idealism. Power, who emigrated from Ireland at the age of 8, is the strongest listener, naturally drawing in every perspective in the room. With a truly worldly brain, she is a natural ambassador. Like many others, they were eager to work for Obama because of his magnetic personality and hopeful rhetoric. He remains an eternally compelling figure on camera. The film avoids hagiography, but it is clear what side it’s on.

As conflicts around the world – Korea, Iran, Syria, etc. – continue to rise to a boil in 2016, this team grapples with the right way to approach each problem. There are differing levels of tendencies towards pacifism or willingness to use force, but a constant theme is an unerring emphasis on diplomatic engagement. If anything, The Final Year glorifies that ideal much more than it celebrates any one individual. As the final act comes to where the political tide is turning, it necessarily becomes a memorial on what is (at least for now) the old way of doing things. I like to hope the American Democrat/Republican divide is not simply one of harmony versus division. I think there are conservatives out there who value getting along with their countrymen and fellow world citizens, and I hope that they and everyone else can find sentiments worth appreciating in The Final Year.

The Final Year is Recommended If You Like: The War Room, Idealism, A Dignified Politics

Grade: 3.75 out of 5 Inspirational Speeches

 

SNL Review January 13, 2018: Sam Rockwell/Halsey

January 15, 2018

jmunney Saturday Night Live, SNL Weekly Recaps, Television , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Saturday Night Live via YouTube

This review was originally posted on News Cult in January 2018.

NewsCult Entertainment Editor Jeffrey Malone watches every new episode of Saturday Night Live and then organizes the sketches into the following categories: “Love It” (potentially Best of the Season-worthy), “Keep It” (perfectly adequate), or “Leave It” (in need of a rewrite, to say the least). Then he concludes with assessments of the host and musical guest.

Love It

The Science Room – The theme of reckoning with inappropriateness is heavy throughout this episode, even in this seemingly innocuous educational show. But mostly “The Science Room” is about the intellectual lapses borne out by nervousness and the frustration they cause. This is no mold-breaker, but it is so well-timed and the details are bizarrely unique (“The oil is…” “False?”). Also, Sam Rockwell drops an F-bomb … whoops!

The Look represents sensitivity run amok, but in a charmingly confused fashion instead of worrisome backlash…Michael and Colin are at the top of their games, with the hottest of their burning asides and the swerving of expected topics into unexpected directions…Okay, so the “dog person” concept at the Next Gene Labs is obviously very silly, but the commitment is just so delightful. Somehow hearing that this good boy is ready to start wearing shoes is the greatest news ever.

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This Is a Movie Review: The Fundamentally Implausible ‘The Commuter’ Speeds Towards the Upper Tier of Entertainingly Ridiculous Action Thrillers

January 11, 2018

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CREDIT: Jay Maidment/Lionsgate

This post was originally published on News Cult in January 2018.

Starring: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Elizabeth McGovern, Sam Neill, Florence Pugh, Clara Lago, Ella-Rae Smith, Andy Nyman, Rolland Møller, Colin McFarlane, Adam Nagaitis

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for All the Ways That Liam Neeson Can Improvise on a Train to Dispatch His Opponents

Release Date: January 12, 2018

Much of Liam Neeson’s post-Taken filmography has been readily reduced to “Taken on a [blank]” or “Taken, but this time they steal his [blank].” This is especially true in his collaborations with director Jaume Collet-Serra. 2011’s Unknown checked in as “Taken, but this time they steal his identity,” while 2014’s Non-Stop was essentially “Taken on a plane.” Their latest teamup, The Commuter, may at first glance be their “Taken on a train,” but a more accurate pitch would be: “take the government and law enforcement corruption elements of something like Chinatown, compress them into the hijacked train scene of The French Connection, and stretch out to feature length.”

Insurance salesman and former cop Michael McCauley (Neeson) has just been laid off, only a few years before retirement, when a mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga) offers him a proposition during his ride home along the Hudson on the Metro-North train: would he be willing to do one little thing that would affect someone he doesn’t know and receive a significant reward in return? This is presented as a hypothetical, but it soon becomes very real when he discovers a hidden bag filled with tens of thousands of dollars in cash. This is an effectively simple premise insofar as it immediately kicks the narrative into high gear, but it is simultaneously confounding with how many details it leaves under wraps.

Ultimately, that is to the audience’s benefit, as we are strung along with just enough info to want to sniff out what is going on. All Michael has to go on is the stop that this person is getting off and the fact that he or she does not normally ride this train. Collet-Serra specializes in populating his cast with a full crew of conceivably suspicious characters. Could it be that this mystery person is the tattooed girl with a bag full of fake IDs? That certainly raises alarms. But for all we and Michael know, the nurse stuck in an emotional texting session is just as much of a suspect.

The Commuter sort of fits in the vein of the “decent man fights back against a rigged system” genre, but really, that is only the narrative that has been forced upon Michael. Yes, he has been unfairly fired. True, he did lose all his savings thanks to the recent market crash (and he makes sure to flip off the vain Goldman Sachs broker on the train). But the reward dangled in front of him appeals to his selfish motives and does not actually give him an opportunity to stick up for the little guy. Besides, he is driven more by the threats against his wife and son and his own law enforcement instincts for uncovering the truth. It is implied that this criminal enterprise is so insidious and far-reaching that they could set up any patsies they want and frame them for any motivation

As the vast conspiracy begins to be revealed, we are left to confront the question of plausibility. But in a thriller like this, verisimilitude matters less than following the own theoretical rules of this extreme situation. That is to say, The Commuter needs to be at least as relentlessly entertaining as it is ridiculous. And on that score, given the director, star, and location, it is unsurprisingly adroit. The film’s logical internal consistency, though, may be worth investigating a little more deeply, as the passengers at the mercy of Michael’s mission may come to trust him –  a man who has been getting into fights and throwing people out windows – more quickly than is conceivable. A late-stage Spartacus homage is quite amusing, though indicative of that questionable trust. But in a profoundly puzzling situation with life-or-death stakes like this one, it only makes sense to go along for the ride.

The Commuter is Recommended If You Like: Non-Stop, Face/Off, The French Connection

Grade: 4 out of 5 Train Defenestrations

 

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Paddington 2’ Sends Our Very Special Bear to Prison, But Truth, Common Decency, and Marmalade Prevail

January 10, 2018

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

CREDIT: Warner Bros.

This review was originally published on News Cult in January 2018.

Starring: Ben Whishaw, Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville, Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, Peter Capaldi

Director: Paul King

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: PG for Cheeky Humor and Threats of Violence Appeased by Marmalade

Release Date: January 12, 2018

The first Paddington film was a clear refugee allegory, with the titular “very special bear” (voiced then and now by Ben Whishaw) looking for a new home in England after his home in Peru is destroyed. The coded language about what happens to neighborhoods when bears move in was an obvious stand-in for how some actual Londoners (and other native residents around the globe) feel about the arrival of immigrants. Paddington 2 – in which the raincoat-sporting, marmalade-loving bear is imprisoned for grand theft despite his innocence – is not quite so stark in its messaging. It may have something to say about profiling, though Paddington’s wrongful arrest has more to do with misleading circumstantial evidence moreso than ungenerous assumptions about bearfolk. Still, for a family-friendly flick that distinguishes itself with a gentle touch, it is notable how much it does not hold back from some genuinely unsettling moments.

It all starts out pleasantly enough. Paddington, now living with the Brown family in London, wants to get his Aunt Lucy, the bear who raised him, a truly special present for her 100th birthday. He comes across a rare pop-up book in an antique shop, but it is a bit out of his price range, which is to say, he has no money (unless the Browns have been giving him an allowance). So he sets out to join the workforce, which begins with an abortive stint as a barbershop assistant (make sure to keep what appear to be narrative detours in mind, as these adventures are all intricately and carefully plotted) but then ultimately leads to an entrepreneurial effort as a window-washer. This segment is most memorable for Paddington’s improvising by rubbing the soap against the glass with his bum, which explains why this is rated PG and not G.

It gets a little scary from here on out, though. Considering the genre, there’s no need to worry that it will all descend into a bloodbath, but in the course of the narrative playing out, the danger does feel real, and fitfully intense. The main baddie is Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant), a washed-up actor who is now best known for appearing in hacky dog food commercials. He’s the real thief behind the crime Paddington has been charged with, a villain in the Scooby-Doo mold, though a tad more competent: awfully silly but a master of disguise and escape. Grant has a blast with all the dress-up and smoke-and-mirrors.

But the most worrisome threats come during Paddington’s prison stint. He runs afoul of Nuckles (Brendan Gleeson), the inmate assigned to cooking duties, who is legendary for dispensing with those who question his culinary decisions. It really does feel like Paddington is just one false move away from Nuckles beating him to a pulp. This is the neat trick that P2 pulls off. We really do believe that Paddington’s fellow inmates are capable of the crimes they are guilty of (though we would surely never see them happen in a film this), while simultaneously we believe that they would indeed befriend a fundamentally decent, very special bear.

Aesthetically, attention must also be paid to Paddington 2’s artful compositions. Director Paul King was no slouch in the first Paddington, with a whimsical architectural style indebted to Wes Anderson. This time around, he grows even more confident, assembling artfully arranged close-ups: single characters take up the ideal frame space and there is still an impressive amount of background information. London can be harsh, but the care apparent in Paddington 2 makes it much easier to bear.

Paddington 2 is Recommended If You Like: The first Paddington, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Family films that don’t hold back

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Marmalade Sandwiches

 

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