At The Movies: Joyful threequel Paddington In Peru, Covid-19 horror story in An Unfinished Film

Paddington In Peru (PG)

106 minutes, opens on Jan 16
★★★★☆

The story: Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) has a shiny new British passport – just in time too. His beloved Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) goes missing in the wilds of Peru, and he must travel to his birth country to search for her with his Brown foster family and doughty housekeeper, Mrs Bird (Julie Walters) in tow.

The British live-action comedies Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017) written-directed by Paul King are the two most perfect children’s pictures ever.

Paddington In Peru is a franchise threequel by feature film newcomer Dougal Wilson that takes the bear far from the English idiosyncrasies of 1950s London for an exotic jungle treasure hunt.

It is a different beast, but British author Michael Bond’s furry creation is still an adorable one full of heart and up to great fun.

The Reverend Mother at Aunt Lucy’s nursing home is a singing nun played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman.

Spanish star Antonio Banderas rolls in as a swarthy riverboat captain who is haunted by the ghosts of his gold-crazy ancestors, all of them Banderas in cameos and all the more hilarious for being an homage to German cineaste Werner Herzog’s 1982 classic adventure Fitzcarraldo.

The Browns – stuffy Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville), kindly Mrs Brown (Emily Mortimer) and their two now-teenaged children (Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin) – charter his schooner and head deep into the Amazon rainforest and then up the Andes.

There are knockabout perils with Paddington going full Indiana Jones in a boulder chase, as his quest leads him to his origin in mythical El Dorado.

The trilogy is his immigrant journey. In a lovely coda, he returns home and discovers the true family with whom he belongs.

Hot take: The ursine hero continues to spread joy and marmalade wherever he goes.

An Unfinished Film (M18)

106 minutes, opens on Jan 16 exclusively at The Projector
★★★★☆

The story: In January 2020 China, a film crew reunites outside Wuhan to complete a decade-old production when word of an illness starts to circulate.

An Unfinished Film by Chinese cinema maverick Lou Ye is a transfixing docu-fiction, winner of the 2024 Golden Horse Awards’ Best Narrative Feature and Best Director plus the Audience Award at the 2024 Singapore International Film Festival.

It begins as a fictional movie about the making of a movie from out-takes of the director’s Spring Fever (2009), Mystery (2012) and The Shadow Play (2018).

Chinese actor Qin Hao, the star of all three, is again the lead in what would shortly become a true horror. He does not know it yet, but he is entering the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Within hours, the city is locked down. In tense footage, the crew members play and film themselves trying to shove their way out of the hotel during the initial chaos, confusion and panic, which cede to the monotony and anxiety of interminable quarantine in their isolated rooms.

Human contact is reduced to video calls, and harrowing news of the outside world, including those of families forcibly separated, filtered through online.

The digital images accumulate on-screen into a densely textured tableau of a nation’s trauma under the controversial containment measures.

Lou has been banned and censored over much of his 20-year career, most infamously for setting his 2006 romance, Summer Palace, against the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The pandemic is another sensitive issue in China. Do not expect a domestic release for this raw archive, which pays moving tribute to life-affirming community, healthcare workers and countless loved ones lost.

Hot take: Masks strongly advised. The Covid-19 experience of a surreal lifetime ago is re-lived with skin-prickling immediacy.