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As hacky is it is to start a review comparing a new movie to food, the charm of this one pretty much begs for it. Thus if all family-oriented adventure films are to be compared to some form of cheese, Paddington 2 is like an artisanal muenster in that it is immediately engaging, rich with flavor and has a potential for gooeyness but never goes overboard. Also, orange rinds have something to do with it.

This film starts with the well-meaning Peruvian bear happily acclimated and settled with the Brown family in their posh and homey London neighborhood. As a bastion of courteousness, Paddington (Whishaw) still sends letters regularly to his dear aunt Lucy (Staunton) who will be turning 100 in the next few weeks. As a result, Paddington pursuits a rare pop-up book he'd like to send as a gift. Unbeknownst to him, the book holds the key to a hidden treasure which has been hunted for ages by the nefarious Phoenix Buchanan (Grant), former star of the stage and screen.

Those who delighted in the warmth and wit of the original Paddington will find just as much to enjoy in this playful continuation. Paddington 2 takes full advantage as a sequel by immediately feeling more lived-in and comforting to those in the know, while still remaining as welcoming as ever to outsiders who are just now hopping on the bear's bandwagon. More impressively, it also retains the same emotional intelligence, thematic clarity and childlike wonder in such a way that it feels almost dirty to call something like this a "sequel" to a "franchise".

It'd be more appropriate to simply say that Paddington 2 is a joy to watch, with the only obvious negative being that it remains unassuming and modest when it should be shouting its ability to engage from the rooftops. There is an able effort to shake the material from humility in the form of Hugh Grant who positively oozes charisma and is a gas to see chewing the scenery. The film lightly lampoon's Grant's off-screen persona by having the villain vamp against mannequins, sporting costumes of roles long past. It's a fun role but the ensemble isn't as all in as he is. This is not to say Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Jim Broadbent and Brendan Gleeson aren't good, they're just left in the dust a lot of the time. There's also a few deus ex machina moments that lit up my pessimistic adult brain, but in a movie that has a full on jailhouse musical number, I'm willing to forgive the wayward assumption that good things can actually happen to good people (and bears). All in all, Paddington 2 is a charming affair - one which takes the daintily assembled world of the first and builds on it with heedless aplomb. In many ways it's a comfort for these increasingly cynical times. It serves as stark reminder that while adversity always abounds, a little bit of gumption and politeness can make this world just that much more pleasant.

In the realm of bruising, brawling, nay unstoppable a**-kickers, no rise is as unexpected and as unprecedented as that of Liam Neeson's. The man is 65-years-old and has worked on an incredible diversity of films, from gritty historical epics to talkie Woody Allen romantic dramas. But with 2008's Taken, Neeson took a hard dive into action and the world hasn't looked back since.

Ten years after that franchise has remorsefully petered out, Neeson still turns in the goods every once in a while, with middle of the road action movies, middle of the road budgets and middle of the road returns. It's a living - I certainly don't fault the man who is pretty much getting paid to stay in shape. Plus every once in awhile, a middle of the road action movie is really all you need to stave off all the badness in this world.

The Commuter is one such film. It's modest in its presentation and definitely falls to pieces under scrutiny but it nevertheless works because it knows what it is. It's the story of a seemingly ordinary New Yorker who ensnares himself in a criminal conspiracy on his way home from work. Luckily this man, one Michael MacCauley (Neeson), has a "certain set of skills" that will ultimately determine whether he lives or dies by the time the train reaches its final destination.

The film was directed by frequent Neeson collaborator Jaume Collet-Serra who over the last decade has been a part of the best of Neeson's late-career work. With Neeson and Collet-Serra jointly you can expect a quick pace even tone, a good setup and a couple of action sequences that elevate the film above the field of a Van Damme knockoffs. You can also expect diminishing returns but more on that later.

Part of The Commuter's nut-and-bolts appeal is it's sparse to a fault. We're put into our protagonist's headspace nearly the entire time, leaving only for a brief insert here and there. Michael is in search of a passenger on the train and needs to discover their whereabouts quietly. When who, what, where and why, in short, the details, remain scant keeping the audience transfixed on what is occurring. It's mystery box filmmaking at its finest.

Of course after you've meticulously setup your premise and created the max level of tension, then you have to...you know answer the who, what, when and why. To that end The Commuter derails with the force of a backyard axe kick with villains who neither need to be this flamboyant nor this dramatic. For me, my suspension of disbelief snapped back the moment we get a cutaway of two FBI agents puttering around the last stop. But if you're the type of person who'd willingly set your house on fire to kill a spider then you're probably willing to forgive most of this film's baked in nuttiness.

The movie is also hacked to s**t with editing choices that completely eschew any hope of any B-story. That normally wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't immediately clear all that stuff was supposed to be there to begin with. For example, minor characters are enshrined in the last act with a working-class dignity reminiscent of the rebel slaves of Spartacus (1960), but absolutely nothing comes before it to ground us in whom they are. It's the equivalent of starting a children's storybook with the message on the last page being read first. Also, not for nothing but if you're going to directly reference an objectively great movie; please make sure your movie reaches at least a level of competence that you can find in a Harold Becker movie - just saying.

I have said in the past that 2017 wasn't exactly a stellar year for movies. I still stand by that, though I acknowledge that perhaps events outside of the movie theater have colored my perspective in the negative. 2017 was the year of the women's march and the travel ban, the year of Black Lives Matter and #metoo, the year of Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, of the anthem protests, of Russian election tampering, of DACA and of Charlottesville. So much has happened over the course of one year, I'm surprised more people haven't built bomb shelters in their backyards.

So much has happened over the course of one year yet Hollywood is as slow as always to react. It's not their fault; it's the nature of filmmaking - years of pre-production, finding the funds, scheduling shoots etc. all but guarantees that once that first film that's purposely chasing the zeitgeist, actually appears at a cinema near you, the moment has already passed. And if you need evidence of this: watch/re-watch War Machine (2017) on Netflix.

So it is with The Post, a movie that was rushed through production for the sole purpose of chasing a contemporarily vital spirit. The film stars Meryl Streep as Kay Graham the proprietor of the privately owned Washington Post newspaper circa 1971. She along with her hard-nosed Editor in Chief Ben Bradlee (Hanks) are taken for a ride when the infamous Pentagon Papers are published by the New York Times and The Post is given an opportunity to follow suit.

Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, John Williams, Janusz Kaminski, Michael Kahn - if these names don't immediately pop out the page for you then you have no business watching this movie, let alone reading this review. On paper, this movie has enough talent in the margins to easily surpass Spotlight (2015) as the prestige newspaper film of a generation. Given the talent, The Post should be an over-the-moon achievement loudly knocking on the doors of Xanadu!

Alas much like the Washington Post being billed as second banana to the New York Time's Supreme Court battle, The Post often feels like a missed opportunity. Not a missed opportunity to convey an overt political message mind you, the meta-text speaks so loudly it might as well be shouting "Love Trumps Hate" from the rooftops. I'm speaking of a missed opportunity to tell a human story that sticks.

Much of the events in the film, as recorded by history are retold with a measured, inelegant dryness. Not much outside of the Editor's office hints that there's anything all that tangible at stake and any restatement of said stakes is undermined by (among other things) Bob Odenkirk sharing the frame with Mr. Show (1995-98) counterpart David Cross. Meanwhile moments of character are handled almost entirely by Meryl Streep who somehow takes a bland "greatness-thrust-upon" character arc and turns it into yet another Oscar worthy performance. Literally in anyone else's hands, Kay would have felt bland; who she was and what she's going through episodic - but with Streep it's gold. Sadly the equally versatile Hanks is left in the stables, ambling around offices and home parlors, exuding prestige and little else. I don't get it, he's uniquely capable of taking the film's blunted messaging and turning it into something sharper but instead he's relegated to doing his best Jason Robards impression.

This is turning into a much more negative review than it needed to be. Know that despite everyone in the film, both in front of and behind the camera are working at 75%, it's still a very good movie. One whose message, best summed up by Kay who says, "News is the first draft of history," needs repeating. Yet I can't help but compare The Post unfavorably to something like Get Out (2017) or Wonder Woman (2017). While the later films latched onto a zeitgeist of the time without even trying, The Post is straight up tries too hard. If this were a freshman feature, I'd say "good job" and move on, but this is the Hollywood A-Team who by all accounts should have turned this concept into gold. Come Oscar night, they'll be lucky to win silver.