1917

It is 1917 in the British trenches and the German army appear to be in withdrawal but aerial reconnaissance has revealed that they are in fact lying in wait for a British attack. Two British soldiers, Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and William Schofield (George MacKay) are called upon by General Erinmore (Colin Firth) to carry a message by hand, because field telephone lines have been cut, to Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) of the Devonshire Regiment. The message will instruct Mackenzie to call off the scheduled attack because it would jeopardise the lives of 1,600 men. Blake has been chosen because his brother Joseph (Richard Madden) is one of these men.

With time short, the men leave the trenches and cross No Man’s Land which is a sea of bodies, dismembered limbs and dead horses until they reach the abandoned German trenches, which they find are booby-trapped. A tripwire is triggered by a rat and the explosion nearly kills Schofield but Blake rescues him.

They then reach at an abandoned farmhouse from where they witness a German plane being shot down. They drag the injured pilot from the plane before it explores but the ungrateful pilot stabs Blake. Schofield shoots the pilot but can't save Blake and has to carry on alone.

After hitching a lift with another British convoy, Schofield then has to cross a bombed out canal bridge into the ruins of Écoust-Saint-Mein where he comes under fire from a German sniper. In the ensuing fight the sniper is killed and Schofield is knocked out cold. When he regains consciousness he heads off through the bombed-out French town under heavy fire.

It is rather unbelievable that he manages to dodge so many bullets before stumbling into a basement where he has time for a social call with a French woman (Claire Duburcq) and her child while I am literally screaming at him that he has a battalion to save.

Eventually continuing on, Schofield is again repeatedly shot out before escaping by jumping into a river where he amazingly avoids drowning despite being swept over a waterfall. Suddenly it's all gone a bit Indiana Jones.

The river spit him out on to a riverbank which by some amazing coincidence is where the Devonshire Regiment are having a singalong before heading to battle. Schofield manages to creep up on the Regiment without anyone noticing as they seem to have neglected to post any guards.

In one sense director Sam Mendes has made an epic film that looks great, is really dramatic and that puts the audience right in the middle of the action. It would also have been nail-biting stuff if you didn’t know for sure that Schofield would make it to Blake’s brother once Blake himself had met a grisly end. The only other problem really is that I just don't buy the plot at any price.

Jojo Rabbit

Jojo Rabbit is a comedy, yes a comedy, about a 10-year-old boy and his imaginary friend called Adolf Hitler... Not going to work is it? Well, maybe.

Firstly it’s a bit of a shock that this storyline even made it on to the big screen what with people’s sensitivities these days even though making fun of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler is nothing new. Hello Mel Brooks. That was back in the 60's when World War II was a lot fresher in the mind but the world was lot less snowflake then.

Taika Waititi wrote the film, financed it, directed it and plays Hitler himself. I hope he lands some sort of award at the Oscars. I mean what more does a guy have to do.

The film is set in the dying days of the Second World War and follows Johannes 'Jojo' Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) who in his youthful naivety, and because he’s a big fan of swastikas, signs up for the Hitler Youth. His local camp is run by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), a one-eyed drunk who is clearly miffed at no longer being allowed out on the battlefield.

While Jojo clearly dreams of becoming a war hero it's not really in his makeup and he gains the nicknamed 'Jojo Rabbit' when he fails to prove himself by killing a rabbit in one of the films least endearing scenes. He then blows himself up with a hand grenade, at which point he is assigned the more sedate task of handing out leaflets.

All the time he is ‘advised’ by his imaginary friend, a rather camp caricature of Hitler, while his father is MIA on the Italian Front and his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) is busy working for the resistance.

It turns out his mother is also hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), in the attic. She is a former classmate of Jojo's sister Inge who has died of flu. Jojo is horrified when he discovers her and threatens to hand her in to the Gestapo until she points out that his mother would be executed for hiding her. Instead the pair start to get on which infuriates Imaginary Adolf as Elsa gradually picks away at the years of brainwashing that Jojo has received.

When Jojo writes a propaganda book on the Jews for Klenzendorf she feeds him crazy stories about the Jews having special powers. Meanwhile Jojo forges letters to her from her fiancé Nathan, telling her that Nathan wants to break up with her.

When the Gestapo discover her she pretends to be Inge and gets away with help, surprisingly, from Klenzendorf. Jojo is relieved but then later that day, finds his mother has been hanged in the street in a remarkably understated scene. Then as news breaks that the Allies are closing in, Jojo sees his school friends in the Hitler Youth being hurled into battle as a final desperate last act.

It’s certainly a different approach to Hilter and the war. Waititi’s film seems to deliberately sidestep addressing the evils that he shows you and instead lets it wash over you. Yet he still makes a point, I think, about how easily such evil thoughts and ideals can breed in a nation. Which is a very relevant point today with nationalism reappearing around the globe. Whether it’s the right approach, I’m not sure.

Last Christmas

Of course Christmas (if it is still Christmas) wouldn’t be Christmas without a dodgy film. I’m talking about ‘Last Christmas’ but it is true that there might be even dodgier possibilities. Broadway is closed today, so we are at our local Showcase instead.

We are introduced to Kate (Emilia Clarke), or Katarina to give her the name she dare not speak, who came to UK with her family as refugees from the former Yugoslavia when she was child. Her day job is as an elf in a Christmas store working for a woman called Santa (Michelle Yeoh). That’s not her real name... although Kate seems to think it is.

Kate is also an aspiring singer and a George Michael fan who is perennially homeless after falling out with almost everyone she shares accommodation with by either breaking all their possessions or killing their pets. Instead she becomes adept at sofa surfing which isn’t terribly compatible with her liking of one-night stands.

She could of course go home to her family but she finds them overbearing, particularly her mother Petra (Emma Thompson), even though they all rallied around her when she was very ill the year before. Thompson also co-wrote the script but isn’t terribly good at an East European accent.

Things start looking up for Kate when she meets Tom (Henry Golding) a man who is always looking up at the beauty of the world, even if he won’t let her surf on his sofa let alone share his bed. Tom works as bike courier and volunteers at a homeless shelter where the other volunteers have never met him. To Kate’s dismay Tom proves maddeningly elusive and even keeps his phone at home in a cupboard but inspires her to sort out her life and be new nice to people even after inadvertently outing her sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) as a lesbian to her own family.

The film is inspired, as the title suggests, by a certain song penned by George Michael and also features many other songs by him. The entire premise lies behind interpreting the lyrics ‘Last Christmas I gave you my heart’ literally and it is how quickly you latch on to this which enables you to work out who Kate’s new friend actually is. Some may say that the film does this 'classic' track a disservice but I'd say it gets exactly what it deserves.

As I was expecting a straightforward RomCom-By-Numbers I was rather pleasantly surprised by the film. It is neither particularly romantic nor much of a comedy although it does have a few moments that make you smile. Mostly its humour tries to be politically correct but somehow ends up being completely the opposite.

It isn't even all that Christmassy, save for a festive Covent Garden setting, and it is perhaps for all these reasons (and Clarke’s amazing eyebrows) that I rather liked it. Yes it’s sooo trashy but then Christmas itself is inherently trashy and false. Clarke herself is brilliant and will no doubt use this film as a steppingstone to bigger and better things.

There is a rather unnecessary subplot about post-Brexit xenophobia but it never really goes anywhere as if a lot of the scenes to do with that ended up on the cutting room floor. While its pro-immigration message is somewhat undermined by using two Londoners in Clarke and Thompson to play immigrants. Yet it is good to see an attempt to depict migrant families in a mainstream film.