Tag Archives: hugh bonneville

“If we are kind and polite, the world will be right.” Paddington 2

24 January 2018

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Paddington 2 rather famously this week became the best reviewed film of all time (at least according to film analysis aggregator Rotten Tomatoes). Let that sink in for a minute.

Paddington 2 is the BEST. REVIEWED. FILM. OF. ALL. TIME.

And it deserves it.

Not because it is revelatory or experimentally artistic or makes a bold statement about the human condition … no, Paddington 2 deserves all the accolades it can get because it is finely crafted, beautifully acted, utterly charming, zippily entertaining with an emotional center so firmly grounded in acceptance and kindness, wit and love that for one brief moment the moviegoer forgets the combative, mean-spirited, divisive state of the world today. Roll your eyes if you want, but that little CGI bear with the quizzical expression, worried eyes, playful demeanor, earnest ineptitude, and soft-spoken ways (Ben Whishaw’s voiceover work deserves an Oscar) offers the audience hope.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Paddington repeats a mantra taught to him by his beloved Aunt Lucy in times of both great duress and great joy: “If we are kind and polite, the world will be right.” Amen. The wee ursine is nothing but good humor and bonhomie in a duffle coat and cloche hat.

The film is about as political as an episode of Mr. Rogers. Although, in this day and age, the hypocritically devout have somehow turned the words “love thy neighbor” into a declaration of war. No, the most subversive concepts in the film are that difference brings strength, hard work will always be rewarded, and everyone deserves a chance to love and be loved in return. Yet, in 2018, that philosophy almost sounds revolutionary.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The central cast returns for this second outing, directed with storybook charm by series helmer Paul King. Luminous, crackerjack Sally Hawkins is the perfect Mrs. Brown, her steely fragility and nervous authority a perfect foil for a little bear who doles out hugs and marmalade sandwiches in equal measure. Hugh Bonneville offers a loving and postmodern portrait of the exasperated sitcom dad in Mr. Brown. Julie Walters is an irascible, mischievous delight as Mrs. Bird, the Browns’ housekeeper and Mrs. Brown’s mother.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Newcomers include Brendan Gleeson as Knuckles McGinty, a cuddly felon whose bark far exceeds his bite and Hugh Grant as Phoenix Buchanan, a charming narcissist whose failed acting career and total lack of a moral compass lead him to a life of crime (at Paddington’s expense).

I have to say that I love Grant’s second life as a wackadoodle character actor. It suits him far better than his floppy-haired wannabe heartthrob days ever did.

The episodic plot is part caper, part allegory as Paddington – in hopes of acquiring the perfect birthday present to send back home to Aunt Lucy in deepest, darkest Peru – sets off to earn money through a series of odd jobs, poorly but comically executed. In the process, he finds himself at cross-purposes with Grant’s Phoenix who sets Paddington up as a “fall bear” for the lapsed thespian’s life of larceny. The Browns do everything they can to free Paddington from the pokey; Paddington ends up teaching his fellow inmates the joys of baking and gardening and fine linens; and, after a hair-raising chase aboard two trains racing down parallel tracks, Phoenix gets his comeuppance and all is right (for the moment) in Paddington’s picaresque/picturesque world.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Trust me, it’s not the plot that sells this picture. Rather, the character details and the environments – which are so beautifully drawn, so detailed, and so vivid – offer a spot-on cinematic realization of author Michael Bond’s original book series. Every shot is carefully, thoughtfully composed to evoke the whimsy of pen-and-ink illustration. In one transfixing sequence Paddington, in fact, does traverse through London as depicted in the water color pages of an antique pop-up book.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

(I do wonder that, if we all read the same books as children, how some of us ended up so callous and cruel, indifferent to the needs and challenges of others. I’ll never understand that. Not ever.)

There are very few films that are an honest-to-goodness love letter to childhood and to childlike innocence. Paddington 2 is one of them. Don’t miss it. We all need a bit more joy in our lives these days.

Please look after this bear, indeed … or maybe it is he who is looking after us.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

MLK holiday movie marathon (VIDEO): Paddington, Foxcatcher, Selma, American Sniper

21 January 2015

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Enjoy this quick video synopsis of movies we saw over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend – Paddington, Foxcatcher, Selma, American Sniper. (You can read the full reviews of all four below this entry).

 

And thanks to The Columbia City Post & Mail for this additional shout-out for the release of Reel Roy Reviews, Vol. 2: Keep ‘Em Coming!

Post and Mail RRR2 Redux

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Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital)

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

PLEASE look after this bear: Paddington (2014)

18 January 2015

16 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

While the marketing campaign makes Paddington look like one of those slapstick, stomach flu-inducing, lowest common denominator kiddie movies like Alvin and the Chipmunks or Smurfs, in reality, it shares more of its DNA with classier fare like Babe: Pig in the City
 or The Black Stallion or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, honoring the intelligence of children and their parents and employing its kid-lit source material as sharp-eyed, warmhearted allegory for our present day sensibilities (and follies).

Ben Whishaw (Skyfall) voices the title bear, taking over for the originally cast Colin Firth.  In between the expert CGI animation of this ursine lad from deepest, darkest Peru and the earnestly winsome vocal work of Whishaw, Paddington is a complete charmer.

He is aided and abetted in the charisma department by luminously winning Sally Hawkins (so excellent in Blue Jasmine) and crusty Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) as the matriarch and patriarch (respectively) of the Brown family who discover the little bear as he desperately waits at Paddington train station with nothing but his signature hat, a tag that reads “please look after this bear,” one marmalade sandwich (for emergencies), and his battered suitcase. He hopes that someone … anyone … will take him “home” (though he isn’t quite sure where … or what … that is).

Me as Paddington for Halloween

Me as Paddington for Halloween

Paddington

Paddington and me at Christmas

Based on Michael Bond’s classic book series, the film stays true to the original narrative: a plucky bear is sent from Peru to London after he loses his uncle to an earthquake and after his aunt moves into a “retirement home for bears.” The aunt and uncle had met a world-explorer from England decades prior, and the geographer told them that they would always have a home in London should they so want it.

Paddington’s aunt sends Paddington off on a steamer ship, and eventually he lands in the aforementioned train station (for which he is eventually named). The Browns offer to give Paddington shelter until he can find said explorer, with Mr. Brown reluctantly warming to the little bear’s charms (after Paddington nearly demolishes the Browns’ home trying to understand human domestic customs).

In a deviation from the text, Nicole Kidman (channeling pretty much the same icily harmless villain she portrayed in The Golden Compass) plays a Cruella De Vil-esque taxidermist, anxious to make Paddington part of her collection. The subplot is unnecessary, but ultimately harmless (thank goodness!).

The film’s secret weapon is Hawkins whose genial sweetness toward the lovably inept Paddington had me near tears a half dozen times in the film. Hawkins’ Mrs. Brown is Paddington’s champion (and by extension the champion of anyone who has felt rudderless and sad, well-intentioned but confused at any point in their lives). She gives the film such heart, coupled with a cinematic Paddington whose expressive features convey those of every creature you’ve ever seen forlorn in an animal shelter.

Yes, there is plenty of silliness to keep the youngest audience members enthralled, but blessedly the goofy hijinks are kept to a minimum and always in service to the story, a narrative about making the best family you can with people (human and otherwise) you love and cherish for the spark they bring.

The cast is rounded with a who’s who of classic British talents: Julie Walters as a flinty housekeeper, Jim Broadbent as a twinkly shopkeeper, Peter Capaldi as a nosy neighbor, and Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton as the voices of Paddington’s uncle and aunt.

Director Paul King, not unlike George Miller and his work on the exquisite Babe films, gives us a film that approximates beautifully the feel of reading a children’s picture book. In just the right amount so as not to seem gimmicky, King employs animation and miniatures (see: his very clever use of a dollhouse in the Browns’ attic) to illustrate and heighten the narrative in ingenious and magical ways. Such sure-handed and thoughtful direction is rarely seen in a film of this nature – he is one to watch.

Ignore the tone-deaf commercials and go see Paddington. It is a delight for the mind and the heart.

________________________________

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital)

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“The U.S. Army might not care about art, but they sure as sh*t care about gold!” The Monuments Men

16 February 2014

11 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I am the sort of person that, if I see a forlorn Lego mini-figure abandoned in a snowy mud puddle as I’m leaving the movie theatre, will “rescue” it, put it in my pocket, wash it off when I get home, and set it on a shelf in our over-crowded basement alongside sundry other “misfit toys.”

(Yeah, that happened tonight.)

So, George Clooney’s latest directorial effort The Monuments Men, in which a ragtag team of sentimentally minded art lovers bands together to snatch classic sculptures, paintings, and other works from the fiendish grip of the Nazis in World War II, spoke to this “leave no stuff behind” part of my soul. (I likely need an intervention.)

A less rambunctious hybrid of Raiders of the Lost Art, Inglourious Basterds, National Treasure, and Clooney’s own Ocean’s 11 trilogy, The Monuments Men is b-movie silliness disguised as a “based on true events” prestige picture. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The plot, which is a bit wispy, concerns Clooney’s character convening a number of his aging buddies (museum curators, architects, and scholars who include Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Matt Damon, Hugh Bonneville, Jean Dujardin, and John Goodman) for one last great adventure, taking on Nazi forces in the latter days of the war and returning lost works to their original owners (both private collectors and museums).

Y’see, the film posits that Hitler, a failed painter turned insane dictator, is hoarding as much of Europe’s great art as he can get his grubby mitts on, aiming to populate a proposed “Fuhrer Museum” with his haul. I don’t know how accurate that is – it very well may be – but it conveniently offers the film its “stop Darth Vader’s Death Star at all costs” whiz bang roller coaster motivation.

The film does stop periodically in its “gang of great joes making the world safe for democracy/creativity” whimsy to ground us in the stark realities of the era (albeit rather superficially). A few characters do not emerge unscathed; we see varied references to the darkest atrocities of the Nazi regime; and Clooney, at the film’s conclusion, has a marvelous speech delivered to a captured SS officer sharply illustrating both the broad scope and ugly futility of Hitler’s hate-filled tyranny.

Largely, however, the film is a frolic and a throwback to a simpler cinematic era. In fact, some of the movie’s most salient observations emerge from comic throwaway lines. At one point, when “The Monuments Men” (they actually were called that) unearth a ton of gold bricks (the entire Nazi treasury) alongside some stolen art, the joint chiefs swoop in and take credit for the find. Goodman intones, “The U.S. Army might not care about art, but they sure as sh*t care about gold.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have to say that I adore latter-day Bill Murray (I wasn’t as much a fan of his younger days, post-Saturday Night Live.) He has transitioned from shaggy, petulant misanthrope to a warm, world-weary presence. Maybe I am just as exhausted by this planet now as he has always been, but I find his gentle emotional dyspepsia completely identifiable. He even accomplished the impossible for me and made his film sidekick Bob Balaban tolerable … and even kinda cute.

Cate Blanchett, so good in the recent Blue Jasmine, has another great, if more understated turn here, as a frustrated art curator who may or may not be a Nazi sympathizer. She has to pull off a tricky part that is one part 40s spitfire moll, one part “Marian the Librarian,” and two parts tortured aesthete. She does a fine job, quietly grating and heartbreaking at the same time.

Continuing my track record of crying at the darndest movies, I found myself weepy (and snotty) a couple of times. (I won’t tell you where, though one may involve Jean Dujardin and a horse and one may include Clooney’s aforementioned speech.) Yup, add The Monuments Men alongside Star Trek Into Darkness, Captain Phillips, and even The Lego Movie as films that made me (and likely no other humans on the planet) cry.