“There are no accidents.”

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, 2011

With a set piece that obliterates the point of all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies and one that justifies using capture 3D, it all comes down to thrilling filmmaking. 

Those instances in a film where things just click, little moments of frisson, happen all over the place. 

I remember seeing the first Pirates film and watching the heroine thwack a bad guy with a bed warmer - both struggle, and, once they land in a dead lock with the warmer lifted high above, teeth gritted, the battle apparently deadlocked, she releases the hinge on the bed warmer and coal flies in his face.

That kind of surprise, the perfection of that moment, is what makes Tintin work - it’s filled with these moments, which just zing by.

A magnifying glass found by a dog, lifted up to its owner; the click of shoes on pavement and the tug of gloves meeting an elastic band; a word-puzzle clue turned into immediate-danger; an outrageous concert performance that culminates with not a cymbal clash/assassination like in Hitchcock but in something more surprising; a delightful cameo; a simultaneous disaster and chase sequence — all these sudden triggers that come from a place of feeling, rooted in character. Notice how each set-piece is a result of the moral/human shortcomings of each of the three major characters: the naive/brave soul, the afraid-of-failure drunken failure, the scheming vendettist.

And as someone on twitter has said, it’s the best story about alcoholism ever made. Well, not best (In a Lonely Place …) but certainly great.