Diminishing Returns

We're coming up to the 90th Academy Awards, so here's the 91st episode of Diminishing Returns, covering all of this year's Best Picture nominees (Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Ladybird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) as well as some other bits and pieces including a retrospective look at a few of last year's award winners.

First, we covered Calvin's favourite film with an episode on Psycho. Now, we're bringing you part 2 of The Diminishing Returns Favourite Films Trilogy (tm) with Sol's favourite: A Clockwork Orange.

Maybe we'll bring you a third episode on Allen's favourite film one day, if he's ever able to stop hating everything long enough to decide on a favourite.

Black Panther is out this week so we're taking a look back at his debut in Captain America: Civil War. Of course, before we get there, we discuss The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier, too. It's a veritable smörgåsbord of Marvel Cinematic Universe delights!

Our Fifty Shades of Grey episode went down so well that we figured we kind of had to cover the next one, what with Fifty Shades Freed coming out.

Consider this the second in part of a new Valentine's Day tradition where the Diminishing Returns gags sit down and give away far, far too much personal information.

In one of the strangest choices of films to cover on the show yet, this week's episode takes a look at Danny Boyle's 2007 sci-fi effort Sunshine. They blinded me with science.

If there's one thing Diminishing Returns is good at, it's appealing to the youth... the cool kids. This episode is just for the young adults of the world; those youths that read young-adult fiction like The Maze Runner and then go to watch the young-adult movies based on the books like The Maze Runner. If it reads like this was written by someone too old to appreciate stuff for the kids, then that's probably because you're too old to get where the kids are even coming from... granddad. Go and listen to a show for old people, instead, like the episode of Diminishing Returns we did on The Godfather or something instead.

Also, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.

The long-awaited listener vote episode is finally here! Listen as we explore 1985 followed by 1955 followed by 1985, 2015, alternate 1985, 1955, 1885, then 1985 again (in that order) with this episode covering Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III. As always, we pitch our own ideas for sequels to the trilogy and there's a Christopher Lloyd audio quiz, too. Great jigawatts[sic]!

Our previous outtakes episode went down pretty well, so here's another one. Don't worry; we're all fine. We just wanted to burn this episode off before it got even more outdated than it already is - plus it meant that we could chill out after not taking a week off the show over Christmas.

This episode contains previously unheard outtakes from:

- "Oscars 2017"

- "Live-Action Disney Remakes"

- "Guardians of the Galaxy"

- "Suicide Squad"

- "Review of the Year 2017: Part 1"

and

- "Thunderball"

We follow up our first Review of the Year 2017 episode with a look back at the last six months of film releases.

This episode contains reviews of:

- The Mummy (2017)

- Transformers: The Last Knight

- Despicable Me 3

- War for the Planet of the Apes

- Death Note (2017)

- It (2017)

- The LEGO Ninjago Movie

- Kingsman: The Golden Circle

- Blade Runner 2049

- Cult of Chucky

- Jigsaw

- Thor: Ragnarok

- Justice League

- The Disaster Artist

- Star Wars: The Last Jedi

and

- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Allen also put a quiz together for this episode with questions focusing on each film, which is probably why this has ended up being our longest episode to date. Sorry about that or you're welcome depending on your views on long episodes. We didn't want to cut our Last Jedi argument too short, after all.

Here's an early Christmas gift: a Diminishing Returns holiday episode. Yes, we're doing Love Actually instead of Die Hard (you'll hear why in the episode, itself). There's also a Christmas movie music quiz in there which is jolly good fun.