Paddington 2

This is a sneaky good franchise. The first Paddington was an utter delight filled with great visual pinache reminscenct of Wes Anderson, a sense of madcap fun reminsicent of silent era stars, and, best of all, a large dose of heart. The casting was great and Paddington himself is an eminently winning creation, brought to life beautifully with crack VFX work.

The sequel matches the first in almost all categories -- it equals the impressively designed doll house introduction to the Brown family with the magical use of a pop-up book to highlight the attactions of London, while surpassing it in others (Nicole Kidman was fun in the first, but didn't have as much to play with as Hugh Grant does here).

Writer/director Paul King is doing something really great with this franchise. The Bafta's showed this movie some love last year, but there was no Oscar nominations, despite worthy work on set design, score, VFX and costuming. No matter. It's one of the best films of 2018.