Top Gun [Blu-Ray]

"I love you, Maverick." "I love… beach volleyball." Top Gun, eh? At one point, if you wanted to hold what you felt was an interesting opinion about 1986's highest grossing movie, you were most likely cribbing from Quentin Tarantino's jarringly, um, Tarantino-esque appearance in so-'90s drama Sleep with Me, where he artlessly argues the film is about Maverick's (Tom Cruise) struggle between hetero- and homosexuality, but now you can get away with just describing the beach volleyball scene as parodied, quite fantastically, by cartoonist Kate Beaton. To be honest, Top Gun isn't actually that interesting outside of joke-y pop culture commentary 25 years later, unless you particularly want to be reminded that Tom Cruise didn't do quite as good a job as he does now plucking his monobrow or that at one point female leads could be completely average looking (or at least, whoever did Kelly McGillis's hair and make-up didn't like her). The film is a loose collection of shots of jets flying around very fast glued together with barely-there scenes of the characters spouting exposition at each other. It feels like it's hinting at what cinema would become – Michael Bay gleefully touching himself in the trouser area as he stitches together a random selection of images of explosions, ladies' bottoms and spinning helicopter blades – but it certainly isn't a watershed effort. Of course, such analysis isn't especially warranted if you're a big enough fan to want this Blu-Ray edition (including a digital copy of the film), which does do a good job of offering a selection of extras for the hardcore, from a full commentary, several making-of documentaries, storyboards and (yes) music videos. You'd be hard-pressed, actually, to imagine what else they could include, outside of cramming a bomber jacket and pair of Ray-Bans into the box.