I definitely remember there being plenty of reviews going “Guys, don’t worry, it’s not The Phantom Menace!” and giving it an extra star just for that. AICN was going crazy for it and Empire ran a (now infamous - and not archived on their site) 5 star review.

Yeah, I didn’t necessarily agree (I thought it was fine for what it was and I still have some affection for the bits that work) but TPM was seen as a massive disappointment when it was released, hence all of the angry “George Lucas raped my childhood” nerd reactions online. The Phantom Menace became synonymous with…

I caught Ratatouille back on the big screen a couple of years ago and it was so good that it nearly knocked WALL-E off the top spot for me. As it is, it's a very close second with The Incredibles in third. 

Yup, even in Begins his conversations are limited to small sentences (”Now there are two”, “I’ll look into it”). In The Dark Knight he has to have bigger, sometimes emotional conversations using it. There's an argument that he should snap out of the voice in those moments but I don't buy that - actors stay using their…

I’m right there with you.

The Oscar nomination extension doesn’t give credit to WALL-E - a film which was the centre of just as many articles about its snub (maybe not on message boards) as The Dark Knight and was cited alongside it as one of the reasons for the extension (which was followed by Best Picture nominations for Up and Toy Story 3).

This seems as good a place to mention how damn good Gary Oldman is in The Dark Knight. Every part of his Gordon - his confidence, his professionalism, his frustration, his desperation his anger - all feel real. If put his work here above his Oscar-winning/nominated work in Darkest Hour and Mank. 

He was doing the voice in Batman Begins - plenty of people were making fun of it in 2005 ("SWEAR TO MEEEE!"). 

The truck flip is incredible but the shot after that is Batman driving the Batpod up a wall, rotating it and landing and that's just cool. 

The phrase “Nuke the fridge” as a new "Jump the shark" was being made a thing on places like the AICN boards as soon as the film opened. 

He was asked about it a month or two ago (after the fact they weren't mentioned in the recent bout of Disney announcements) and confirmed he's still set to do them but there's no timeline or rush. 

I’m assuming the $450m includes production costs (and possibly even marketing costs - though Netflix don’t do huge campaigns). $225m would make sense in terms of covering potential profit participation costs for cast as well - no doubt Craig and others got a nice chunk off the box office for the original and he and…

Netflix cinema releases are so tiny (their window between cinema and streaming is about two weeks so most cinemas tell them to fuck off - not that Netflix mind, the cinema release is just a token release for awards eligibility) that losing these sequels to streaming is a huge shame for me. It was great to experience…

There was some of that and a lot of "Poor victim Britney - she doesn't even know how much of a victim she is!". That's not to diminish the obvious issues - that paparazzi interviewee is fucking scum, pure and simple - but a lot of the final third especially was "won't someone think of poor, helpless Britney?" -…

“There’s no word as of yet as to why Crudup won’t be part of Muschietti’s new movie” is code for “I couldn’t be bothered to Google or even read the Variety article I linked to past the headline” (his reason for leaving is the second sentence in that article).

Having watched many, many Brosnan films, I can vouch for the fact he’ll attempt any accent the script calls for, whether he can do it or not. To the point where even his Irish accent now seems mangled.

On the other hand, knowing the sort of responses he’d get from those people - who would feel as though they were defending him, despite this being his choice - it's a good a way of heading them off at the pass as anything. 

With Soul I saw it - with its Christmas release - as a special occasion, a big promotional festive treat. But now that its happened to two new (and original) Pixars in a row it is indeed sad to see them being seemingly dumped onto the service as mere content.

I'm pretty disappointed that it's the second Pixar film not to get a cinema release. The animation is always beautiful and I miss seeing it on the big screen.