In the past year:

-Jane Got a Gun and Regression, both August hopefuls, finally earned releases back-to-back in late January to early February 2016. Regression being a greater critical bomb than Jane, it still managed to stick with its international releases, making the US the third last country to see it in cinemas.

-Underdogs, retitled from Foosball to hopefully increase profits amongst a domestic audience, found its fate on Netflix after ridiculously subsequent delays from August 2014 to 2015, found a home on Netflix after three years, morphing from a South American breakthrough to this generation's Theodore Rex. Previous mangles to family films by the Weinsteins included adding extra dialogue to an already-watered-down cut of The Thief and the Cobbler and giving it fate as the free gift in a cereal box, Americanising and Shrek-ifying the Magic Roundabout reboot they chose to call Doogal, and in hopes of more money adding a Gwen Stefani/Pharrell Williams collaboration to the soundtrack of the otherwise-British Paddington.

-The Founder, a TV-quality biopic clearly not directed with Academy Awards in mind, was delayed to a limited December release in competition with the wide releases of La La Land and Fences shortly before its initial August 5th release followed by a wide Inaguration Day release a month later just to qualify for the season thanks to Harvey's craving for Oscar power, none of which worked save for three Annual Movies for Grownups Awards nominations. The same strategy was attempted by equally delay-crazy Warner Bros. with In the Heart of the Sea, which worked out poor enough; The Founder scored much better reviews but its awards reputation was even colder.

-Justin Chadwick's Tulip Fever was delayed at the last week from July 2016 to Febuary 2017 in order to give the film more time to get completed. This happened again when the film couldn't find so much as a Berlinale premiere and the film is currently seeking a more awards-friendly date, therefore making the same mistake as The Founder but potentially worse.

-Controversial transgender drama About Ray has been re-edited, rescored and reverted back to its working title Three Generations, set for May 19th after being held in limbo since the week before the Weinsteins would release it, which is also the week it premiered at TIFF in 2015 to a lukewarm critical response.

-French/Canadian family toon Ballerina was renamed the apparently more marketable Leap!, but the Weinsteins knew so little of how to publicise it beyond a trailer that they delayed it from March 3rd to April 21st. Like Underdogs, titled The Unbeatables in the UK, this had been released in other English-speaking territories the year before with no delays necessary.

-A subsidiary of FilmNation, the international sales financiers of The Founder and Gold, sued the Weinsteins with a $15,000,000 fine for delaying their films to a competitive wide release against their wishes, two consecutive January weekends in which they both flopped while the latter scored much worse reception than the former. These two being similar stories, the releases being so close to each other sounded like a matter of public choice.

And that is why you should never make a deal with The Weinstein Company. You've got a lame movie? They're bound to submit insult to injury.

You know animation's in a dire state when Hollywood's only CG film this year to boast more visual creativity and intelligent scripting than any CG film else in a seamless comedic balance and with heartfelt and character-based depth to spare while acting both so fanboyish that it fills the screen with more flair than your mother can handle and juvenile only in a sense that it captures the excitement of a child's hyperactive playtime...

...is their first.

Brought this back after a rather bogus removal due to it not being an actual film or whatever.

Just because a 9-minute theme park attraction isn't a fully-fledged, widely-released movie, doesn't mean what is projected shouldn't qualify as a film. It has just about as much right to be discussed and credited as a film as it does on the IMDb. Besides, Letterboxd has already kept several miniseries in their database including those special story arcs of Adventure Time, so why can't we just have some fun?

You know a beef I have with Illumination that most others put behind its communist-border marketing plans? The way they animate their films. As destructive as the CG comedy is to animation's reputation and comedy itself, animation quality is something Illumination Mac Guff lacks. Rather than staying true to their influences in a technically impressive way they instead opt for a kind of drabness to their CG, pushing motion blurs and quasi-realistic movement and detail even further than Pixar themselves. Cartoonish energy without hyperreal details is something they pretty much nailed in Despicable Me 1, when computer animation still couldn't get as detailed as it is now, but for their future features they appear to have lost much of the spirit and see it mattering less than merchandise potential. Cartooning has been done correctly in CG under lots and lots of hard work; Illumination want to get their toons out as quick as possible, and the result ends up just bland no matter how hard they try.

It's hard to look at a film by IMG and find a facial expression or piece of acting that exemplifies and adds to the visual humour, and leaves a positive impression in any kind of way, something that could inspire someone in the audience to start animating. Their films can have more redeeming value as scripts than several films by their rivals but the problem is that - it's just the scripts. With Warner's underrated Storks, Imageworks contrasted realistic environments with cartoony, whimsical character animation and designs, blurred but still retaining a spark of artificial life. Sure, the unstable, handheld camera motion spoiled most of the pose-to-pose animation but the whimsy as well as the squashes, stretches and smears were still there. Junior bumping into glass multiple times would be a nothing more than kid-friendly slapstick had the result not been outsourced to artists with such passion.

Disney, whether you're beefed by their most recent strategy or not, are soft on the blurs, giving just about enough detail and fluidity to see through a frame skip. Pixar characters have been brimming with life every step of the way, and Inside Out was their cartoon pinnacle. Even the humans had about as much spunk as the characters inside their heads. They know how animation should feel and how it should act, no matter what the medium. Studios like Imageworks, DreamWorks, Animal Logic, Blue Sky, Disney and even Reel FX to an extent are keen on experimenting on a marriage of modern CG with a traditional or stylistic aesthetic no matter what dumb, safe, inoffensive ideas are pitched to them. Illumination wants to be a juvenile Pixar by means of recognition. That's it.

No matter how bad a CG comedy is written, Blue Sky and Sony Pictures Animation being key examples, the animation can still be funnier than what is being spoken. Blue Sky have hardly been top-notch storytellers but their visuals have been bursting with life since Meledandri left and with Scrat they embrace this talent of theirs to their fullest. Scrat is the ray of sunshine in the Ice Age franchise's verbal blandness because his misendeavours are so fluidly animated with Clampett-level energy that I cannot help but enjoy what I'm watching, disregarding what else I'm subjected to.

With Imageworks' Sony-funded films it's absolute style over substance and yet pre-Emoji films have offered something special for animation hardcores to enjoy immensely amidst the lazy writing (not counting the live-action hybrids). With the aforementioned Storks it's both. With even Sausage Party, a film that cost $20m to make under Walt-Disney-esque treatment, it's both. With The Secret Life of Pets it's a whole Tori Kelly elephant of substance and a Seth MacFarlane mouse of style, complete with a personality swap. No squashes or stretches, few zany expressions, no subtle, hand-drawn motion details, it just feels too REAL and soulless. There have been more visually unique things accomplished for less or just a tad more than the average Illumination budget; not even Balthazar Bratt's animation holds up too well the second time watching the DM3 trailer. You have all the money in the world to make something lively, so put more effort into your cartooning, Illumination.

Even though I cringed less at Sing than I did watching Trolls (aside from their equally vapid song covers and fart jokes), as one was written and directed by Garth Jennings, the latter showed more genuine respect for animation as means of storytelling and surrealism. The character animation felt different to DreamWorks' other projects, more exuberant and subversive than, say, Home. This is the kind of thing Illumination have yet to take note of; as of now they are the epitome of product, taking ideas that have been done before and making a big deal out of them everywhere you go. Visuals don't make a movie unless they share the value of what's going on in the story. Products aren't movies unless there's a semblance of artistic merit hidden within. If Chris Meledandri wants a cartoon, he'd have to take a page from DreamWorks under his new domination as well as his competitors in keeping script and visuals at least close to half-and-half. Be your own thing, Illumination, but also be like WAG, Disney and Pixar and make sure your animation is more than just a cash cow.

Watered down.

*rimshot*

5 out of 10 for being right on Jamie's promise - it looks good. Especially Mike Smith's 100% hand-drawn sequences, gawd damn. However, if Dredd can be fixed, then so can Tank Girl. Just bring in Robert Valley and/or Pete Candeland, animate it like Gorillaz, keep the British subtext and hopefully Becky can get what she deserves with the right screenplay.

Not that that's likely to happen. :(

Sensory overload, and that's nothing I say too often about an animated film no matter what the demographic. Adult animated films need to stop trying so hard to live up to the experience the producers had working with Adult Swim.

Don't get your hopes up.

Films that have won more Oscars than Carol:
-Harry and the Hendersons
-Jerry Maguire
-How the Grinch Stole Christmas
-Pearl Harbor
-Crash
-The Golden Compass
-The Blind Side
-Avatar
-Alice in Wonderland
-The Wolfman
-The King's Speech
-The Iron Lady
-The Big Short
-Spotlight
-Son of Saul
-The Danish Girl

So clearly Carol wasn't eligible.
It was just too good.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION
NOW YOU'RE LOOKIN' AT THE STAR ATTRACTION
YEAH, I'M HISTORY IN THE MAKIN'
AND ALL YOURS FOR THE TAKIN'
I'M THE TALK OF THE TOWN
THE COLD SIDE OF COOL
I'M A LEGEND IN A LUNCHTIME
I'M A ONCER IN A LIFETIME
GOT AN 'A' IN ATTITUDE
AND LOTS OF RAT-TITUDE
I'M A RAT-TAT-TAT RA-RA-RA-RAP RAT

Wait for it... Wait for it... Vader's back!
*applause*

Wait for it... Wait for it... The AT-AT Walkers are back!
*applause*

Wait for it... Wait f-
MAX: EVERYONE'S BACK. OKAY. STOP CONCEALING THEIR FACES FOR 30 SECONDS AS IF IT'S THE KEY TO SURPRISE.

It collapses midway and takes around 25 minutes to piece itself back together, it has a few groan-worthy "wink-wink" jokes about the Obamas' future and by casting Parker Sawyers as America's last president the ears joke has wasted potential.

But heck, I simply cannot dislike this bearing in mind that there won't be a film like it for any other political figure in the next four years. Right now, it explores the background of a nation-changing romance and teaches it with marginally more ingenuity than just acting it out event by event, and with more genuine chemistry than a certain other biopic about a black leader whose romance redefined a "united" country.

Because, well, the closest we could get to a biopic of this caliber of sincerity on Donald Trump would be anything but cute. In fact, it would be America's Downfall. God forbid we get a biopic trying to find any kind of humanity in his family life, or it literally would be America's downfall.