When their plush Minions teddies have been put away for the evening, and their Minions t-shirts have been exchanged for Minions pyjamas, and their cup of bedtime milk has been sipped from their Minions mug, and they’ve kicked off their Minions slippers, and settled in beneath Minions duvets, their heads resting contentedly on Minions pillows, what do children want to talk about? Minions. They will talk of Minions until they fall asleep, and then dream of Minions until they wake…

Something I’ve learned writing about the cinema professionally for a number of years is that there are bad movies and bad times at the movies, and the latter are considerably worse. Bad movies can be laugh riots, howlers, like shoddy horror pictures or inane science-fiction, to be indulged in or cackled through or suffered with glee. Bad movies are often likeable, or somehow charming, or else might endear themselves to you with personality or ambition, like, say, Southland Tales or…

My attention was seized, watching La La Land a second time — no longer in thrall to a flamboyance one can hardly help but find seductive — by a rather trifling detail. There’s a moment, easy to overlook amid the whirlwind of whip-pans, showtunes, and dance numbers, in which the anonymous patron of a Hollywood studio-lot coffee shop, technically uncredited but specified on IMDB as “Coffee Shop Customer #2”, approaches Mia (Emma Stone), the barista, and demands to know whether…