Last week, regular readers – and presumably the Pentagon – will be aware, I went on at some length about the irritation I was being forced to endure by a cash dispenser which only gave me a split second to grab my receipt before retracting it into the bowls of the machine in a bid to avoid littering.

The first thing to get sorted about Brad Pitt’s new summer blockbuster is whether you’ll be able to order tickets through that infuriating automated service so many multiplexes mistakenly swear by.

What if a film dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended?

HITCHCOCK (12: 20th Century Fox), a fact-based account of the making of the famous film director’s Psycho, is a disappointingly inconsequential affair.

“Fear is not real. It is a product of thoughts you create. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice.”

It’s the little things that can be relied on to reach out, grab hold of the sensitive parts of my individual goat and squeeze hard, I always find.

Playing like The West Wing in stove-pipe hats, Steven Spielberg’s biopic LINCOLN (12: Twentieth Century Fox) may be a little stolid for some.

Let’s be honest, when the version of Superman which most of us have hot-wired into our cinematic memory banks first hit the screen, we didn’t believe a man could fly despite what the tagline claimed.

So, here’s the proof, if any were needed: mobile phones are making us dimmer by the day, and it won’t be long before they take over the world.

“Things like this don’t happen in neighbourhoods like ours…”

Smith & Son is the story we’re being sold for this week’s big new release – glossy special effects thriller After Earth features both Will and his boy Jaden, both of whom are perfectly bankable names bearing in minds their past successes.

A typical vanity-free turn by Denzel Washington elevates FLIGHT (15: Paramount) from predictable melodrama to something a bit classier.

“Ride or die, remember?”

Once upon a time the name Robert de Niro above the title meant one thing – passionate, powerhouse performances rooted in blue-collar sensibilities, muscular masterpieces of method acting.

Something’s not right, and it’s up to us all to put our heads together to sort it out and come up with something better. Ready for a bit of a brainstorm?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this debriefing session of the GB Eurovision task force 2013.

It’s not uncommon for those who have supped not wisely but too well to wake up the morning after and make heartfelt vows about their future behaviour.