Somehow I had got to the age of [large redacted number] without ever having seen Top Gun. It's not like I didn't enjoy it but wow it is soooo earnest. I found the whole thing absolutely hilarious.

No-one in the history of cinema has screamed like Daniel Stern with a tarantula on his face.

Andrew Lincoln is a weird stalker and doesn't kill any zombies at all.

I know some of it has not aged well, I know some storylines are definitely better than others, but I can't help but really like the good stuff.

It's a bit slight, it's quite silly, the class of kids range wildly in age and Mr Maddens should not be a teacher (and frankly should probably be in jail on several child endangerment charges) but Nativity! is a whole lot of fun.

There's a fair number of reviews on here, I assume from Americans, complaining that there are no Scottish accents but instead lots of "British" accents.

I will say but two things on this:

1) there are in fact a few Scottish actors, and accents, amongst the predominantly English cast

2) Apparently Americans have absolutely no idea what the word "British" means.

As for the film itself? Oh it's absolutely terrible. A sub-Hallmark travesty. A Christmas abomination.

Whether intentional or not, to me Battle Royale is a pitch-black comedy. It's so hilariously melodramatic and gleefully violent I can't help but chuckle every time I watch it.

If I have one minor complaint it's that it's sometimes a bit hard to remember who is who among the fairly large supporting cast. On the other hand, someone lobs a severed head with a grenade in its mouth through a window at one point so I can pretty much forgive anything else.

Well it's better than the original holiday special.

There's so much that's wrong with this film - simplistic plotting, woefully underdeveloped characters, a stolen children plot straight out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - but all that said, the first half at least is a joy and laugh out loud funny. Unfortunately it degenerates into yet another generic superhero slugfest by the climax and I'm not convinced it actually makes sense but the utter stupidity of some of the rest of the film goes some way to making up for it.