Paddington 2

In Paul King’s film the comic weight sits in the prison rather than the chase. Once Paddington is blamed for stealing the book and locked up, a long central stretch plays inside Portobello Prison, where the inmates are reorganised into something close to a family comedy troupe. Those scenes used Shepton Mallet, a jail established in 1625 and Britain’s oldest operating prison when it shut in 2013. The pop-up book tour of London is entirely computer generated, yet it was reverse engineered to behave like paper: the production had page engineer David Hawcock build physical mock-ups of the spreads so that scale and folding came from real card. Framestore says its team hand crafted over 500 shots here, rebuilt the bear’s fur from the first picture, and kept the performance small enough to live in eyebrow movements. Hugh Grant’s Phoenix Buchanan rests on a backstory the actor invented and the film never states. Michael Bond died on the last day of shooting and the film is dedicated to him. At the 71st BAFTAs it took three nominations and won none: British Film, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay. A good fit if you want the villain staged as a performance rather than a threat, with the jeopardy deliberately kept low. Not for anyone who will find the sweetened prison stretch false.