You'll have noticed, I'm sure, that after my brief comments on the three Star Wars prequels late last year, I didn't come back and say what I thought of the sequel. Which was, after all, the main reason I watched the prequels in the first place.

That was lax of me, but in honour of the DVD of The Force Awakens having arrived, here we go now. I won’t go into much detail, though: many pixels, and hours of podcasts, have been generated discussing this movie, and the internet doesn’t need mine at this late stage. But I’ll just quote what I wrote privately after seeing it the first time:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens: I loved every moment, every frame from the scroll onwards. No, before that: from the logo appearing on screen.

Hell, I think “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” comes first.

Anyway, this is a flawless movie. OK, exaggeration: but it is a wonderful, masterful piece of work.

The other thing I thought was, “Move over Empire: there’s a new best Star Wars film."