Jeffrey and I received several email responses to our review last weekend of “This Christmas.” First of all, I would like to say thank you everyone for watching the show, and thank you for feeling passionate enough to write in with your comments, which are always appreciated.

One viewer wrote that she thought we shouldn’t review films with concepts we can’t fully understand. What concepts is she talking about -- a family uniting for the holidays? I think we all have a pretty good handle on that subject.

If ‘concepts we can’t understand’ should be avoided then who would review “Schindler’s List?” Surely the Holocaust is impossible to understand? I can hardly comprehend what it would be like to rule England in the 16th century, yet we reviewed “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” I know no colonies of bees, yet felt comfortable reviewing “Bee Movie.” And this week, we’re reviewing “Hitman.” I’ve never hung out with assassins nor do I have a conduit into the mind of a killer -- but I think I am able to critique a film about such a subject.

Movie critics can only bring their own experiences and opinions into the screening room. I am not black, and never will be, but does that mean I can’t review a film with black actors in it? Being white and British, does that mean I can only review films with white English people in them? I try to watch films and review them with equanimity, without viewing them through a ‘color lens.” To do so, seems to me to be racist.

What it comes down to is whether I find a film engaging, plausible or instructional in some way. “This Christmas” was filled with characters that seemed unoriginal, in situations that were clearly scripted. I did not feel like I was watching a real family, but rather one that had been ‘constructed’ to fit around a ‘feel-good’ story with moral lessons thrown in.

Of course, what it really comes down to is taste. And no two people will ever have exactly the same taste. So I apologize if our review doesn’t match your own feelings about the film. It would be a sad world if we all felt the same wouldn’t it?