Top 5 movies

According to Ceefax (I am a news snippet junkie) the top 5 UK movies of this year were
1. Pirates of the Caribbean 2
2. Casino Royale
3. Da Vinci Code
4. Ice Age 2
5. Borat.

1 is much deserved, fantastic movie, and a feature length meditation on the words of Jesus 'what does it profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul?' The whole plot is driven by what Capt Jack is prepared to do to save his soul from a fate of slavery to the foul Davy Jones, and Sparrow finally redeems himself through self-sacrifice rather than self-preservation.
2 - posted my own 'review' here a couple of weeks ago,
3 - about Jesus (sort of: it's only because it's about Jesus that people bought the book/watched the film.), but a huge pile of nonsense, and the presentation of the catholic church is simply laughable.
4 - not seen it, but if it's anything like the 1st one theres lots of snow, a wooly mammoth, a sabre toothed tiger, a sloth and an ancient relative of the squirrel which drowned in the gene pool.
5 - thought about seeing it, but decided I'd probably find it too difficult to watch, despite some bits being either v funny or v perceptive. It seems to be an uncomfortable mirror to US identity & prejudice in parts, combined with a large dose of crude humour.

So plenty of starters for 10 on spiritual issues at the office party, whether you want to start from whether we have a soul and what's it worth, what does the ideal man look like (Bond vs Jesus), Jesus and what we know about him, national identity and prejudice, or with Ice Age talk about evolution and global warming. By now you're thinking I must be the least fun person to go to the movies with, as I spend more time analysing them than enjoying them...

In our youth group in Darlington a couple of years ago, we planned over 2 evenings to watch a DVD (night 1) then talk about it (night 2). I had Bruce Almighty up my sleeve, but everyone in the group wanted to watch Pirates of the Carribbean 1 (on telly this Christmas). I groaned inwardly, but we actually spent 2 hours debating the spiritual and moral questions raised by the movie. I kid you not. e.g. the need for the spilling of blood to break the curse (hmm, where have I come across that before?); whether moral codes are rules or just guidelines; the vivid description of a living hell given by Capt Barbarossa ('we drank but never quenched our thirst, we ate the best food but it tasted like dust in our mouths') etc. We loved the sword fights too.