Bear necessity

It sounds like a potential quiz question for years to come: what is the best reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes? Few, I suspect, would guess at Paddington 2, were it not for the slew of articles like this one announcing the fact.

I'm not ashamed to say I saw the movie twice in December - most unusual, for someone who barely goes to the cinema more than three times a year - and the high praise doesn't surprise me. While it's set in a quaintly sanitised version of London apparently designed by the people behind John Lewis' Christmas adverts, it's a warm-hearted, often laugh-out-loud, occasionally touching film that appealed almost as much to me as to Stanley. Brendan Gleeson is terrific in the role of prison chef Knuckles McGinty, but the real star of the show is Hugh Grant, given free licence to ham it up as the comic villain of the piece, Phoenix Buchanan.