Jojo Rabbit (12A)

Oscar season invariably brings out the meaningful and the worthy as the world's weightier subjects are slung at the big screen. 

Or, adaptations of the classics are foisted on a new audience with the aim of spreading the word and gathering a few gongs.

Or there's Jojo Rabbit.

Giving a weighty subject (Nazis) a lighter touch, writer/director Taika Waititi has adapted Christine Leunens's book Caging Skies into one of the most joyful, touching, heart warming, tense, horrific films you're ever likely to see.

Set in Germany at the tail-end of the war, good little Nazi boy Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is forced to question all he knows to be true when he discovers his mother has been hiding a Jewish girl in the house.

Coming at a time when hatred and division are riding roughshod across the land, Rabbit takes us by the hand and shows us a better way.

With lush, warm tones washing over us, Waititi treads his fine line perfectly — capturing the horror of war and the Nazi movement while also getting is to laugh at the absurdity of extremist dogma.

Which, admittedly, does sound a bit heavy.

But thanks to some genius casting and Waititi's deft touch, what you have is a film that will have you laughing out loud seconds after you've been sitting upright holding your breath.

Central to the magic is young Roman.

Putting an entire film on such young shoulders is a brave move, but he owns this film from the off and holds his own alongside Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Waititi himself.

Matching him step for goose step is the amazing Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa, the girl hidden upstairs who turns Jojo's world view upside down.

The two young stars you give us characters we love and care about from the opening scenes, adding immense emotional depth to the seemingly frivolous story telling.

Johansson and Rockwell are also on form, delivering vastly different performances (Jojo's mother and an oddball army captain) with a subtlety and grace that allows the two young stars to shine.

Of course, you can't talk about the film without mentioning Adolf (as he's credited on IMDB), Jojo's imaginary friend and leader of Nazi Germany.

Played by Waititi himself, he's given enough comic touches to help you laugh at him while also giving space for the hatred and madness to surface.

As well as making us laugh out loud at times, this also allows us to frame Jojo's world view and see that while his views are abhorrent it's the lies he's been fed that have shaped them.

This is further emphasised when Stephen Merchant and his team of Gestapo officers turn up, further blending drama and comedy so seamlessly that if Waititi was to do a remake of ’Allo ’Allo we'd probably organise a street party in celebration.

There are moments within this film where you are holding your breath, there's one moment that will have you in tears, but there are so many others that will make you smile and laugh you can't help but fall in love with this film.

A water-tight script and a cast on top of their game (only Rebel Wilson falls short) and a vibe reminiscent of The Grand Budapest Hotel, this is a film that is essential viewing.

A member of The Church Of Wittertainment write in to the show and drew comparisons with the classic children's novel The Machine Gunners — and having now seen the film, we have to agree.

In both we see hatred and racism through a child's eyes, and see such views challenged by actual interaction with “the enemy”.

And in both cases we get to laugh and learn a lot while also feeling the impact such views have on the world.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (12A)

And so, here we are — for the third time in our life The Saga has come to an end. 

Until next time, obviously. And let's not rule that out. But already we digress....

It's almost as if we're trying to find reasons not to actually write this review...

Our LobbyCast companions have already voiced their thoughts on the matter, and we get that this is a big moment for fans everywhere.

Or should be.

And yet...

You see, Jedi was far from the greatest film ever made — but within the context of the trilogy it made sense, felt right, and had added euphoria that younger us remembers fondly. Even now.

And sure, Revenge Of The Sith wasn't amazing, but it was the best of those three (OK, low bar...) and had the added nostalgic impact of finally giving is the back story we'd always craved.

Badly acted and with terrible dialogue, but THAT BIT happened so all was forgiven.

Then, because Disney loves a cash cow, we seemingly needed to know what happened next.

I mean, we know what happened next — the Empire was defeated and everyone lived happily ever after. But apparently that wasn't enough.

And so we get a whole new trilogy to have fun with, and to be fair The Force Awakens ticked all the right boxes and hit the right buttons.

By basically being Star Wars again, sure, but it felt right. It felt like the wait was worth it.

And then, of course, we had offshoots we didn't know we needed as a universe we were happy with got expanded beyond all reasonable measure.

Rogue One and Solo weren't awful, but also weren't great — and in the case of Rogue, just re-shot key scenes from Empire.

In between these of course, we got The Last Jedi.

Or got got by The Last Jedi, depending on your viewpoint. Too long, too confusing, too dull and baffling given how good a writer/director Rian Johnson actually is.

All of which brings us to where we are now. Still wondering why we put ourselves through it. Why we allow ourselves to have our nostalgia and emotions toyed with once again.

If we ever find the answer to that, we'll get back to you.

In the meantime, as the world dashed to the opening weekend, we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

We knew what was coming, we knew what would happen, but like those end of year accounts we were in no rush to face the inevitable.

And then, finally, we trudged to the big screen, sat well away from everyone, and waited...

And the first thing we realised was that no matter how many times we see them, no matter how many parodies exist, those words scrolling up the screen telling us the story so far in excitable, juvenile, over-written English still give us that same tingle.

It would be the last one for a while.

From here on in, it's a long, slow descent into apathy with a few audible 'oh ffs' being muttered along the way.

We're not going to go details of the plot (really, what's the point?), suffice to say Good is fighting back against Bad and there's conflict and angst.

Good angst, too, at times.

But...

And there are few too many buts flying around here...

But....

It just feels wrong.

Old characters return, new ones are clearly there to sell merchandise (a totally unwelcome callback to The Phantom Menace) and action scenes are here ready for the inevitable game that will be launched when the BluRay arrives.

And the dialogue is clunky as all hell.

No, it was never brilliant, but it was better than this.

We very nearly screamed 'WE KNOW YOU'RE THE SPY, YOU DIDN'T NEED TO TELL US', but that would have broken the Code Of Conduct.

And that, ultimately, is the problem here.

Sure, OK, ignore the last film completely, but if you're going to do that then know how you're going o plug the gaps.

And yes, it looks amazing, and is wonderfully dark in places (it is, essentially, Empire and Jedi shoved into a blender), but as we've come to expect Skywalker is entirely style over substance.

Which, granted, is ever as it was, but back then you were given characters to love, you cared what happened, you were given a story to get stuck into (no matter how hack Jedi might look now, we loved it then).

But when you spend most of the film picking large holes (His name wasn't mentioned for three films, so how come it's suddenly all over the place, eh? Oh, and where the hell did he suddenly come from?)* you know something is wrong.

And it's not the lack of plot or terrible lines, or even that they were riding sodding horses in space, it's the fact the emotion has gone.

No one seems to have cared about this film.

Yes, OK, we're world weary, cynical, mildly depressed and watching the world burn — but that was almost the same set of circumstances surrounding Awakens and we loved that.

No, sadly, in attempting to bring loose ends together that didn't need it, to create events we know could not have happened, to produce something that is essentially soulless is just wrong.

For the film to only come alive during the final scenes was even worse.

The Gentlemen (18)

Remember when Guy Ritchie made good films? I mean yeah, sure, Lock Stock was a while back. And so was Snatch. And those Sherlock films. But they were good.

Or at least alright in the case of the second Sherlock one.

But he had his style, he had his cinematic tropes, and on their day they worked.

Sadly, this wasn't his day.

But it's not for lack of trying.

It's clear he remembers what those tricks and flicks were, he's just decided to try different ones.

Plus, he's tried once again to overthink things. And that never ends well.

For those of you who haven't seen the frankly brilliant, fast-paced, action-packed, gag-ridden trailer, The Gentlemen is essentially about film making.

Yeah, the trailer doesn't give that away either...

Hugh Grant plays a private investigator who is trying to blackmail a dope baron because he believes he's uncovered all the secrets.

His method of blackmail is detail the film he has written about what he thinks he knows — and this is how the film unfolds.

Taking the role of narrator, Grant's ludicrously over-blown camp Fletcher explains his plot to Charlie Hunman's increasingly bored Raymond.

And it doesn't take long for the audience to be as bored as Raymond.

Cutting between the 'action' and the conversation should at the very least give you a change of pace, but if anything the result slows down both.

Part of the problem is Ritchie is trying to be too clever. He's trying to make the film he's also telling you about and in the process he loses focus and we lose interest.

Further problems lie in the characters and direction the actors haven't been given.

No one here has any depth or substance, and so it's up to the stars to give themselves something to work with.

Grant is clearly having fun doing a caricature of a crooked, sleazy, gay guy — but he dances a fine line between enjoyably overblown and annoying.

Matthew McConaughey, meanwhile, was also given nothing to work with and so can't be arsed — lazing his way through everything with the offcuts from True Detective.

Hunman is caught between sinister and cool and so fails at both, while the usually brilliant Jeremy Strong is clearly delivering lines he doesn't actually believe in.

The only two coming out of this film with any conviction are Colin Farrell (bolshy, slightly comic Irishman) and Michelle Dockery (channelling every female EastEnders villain ever).

Honestly, without those two this thing would have been a lot worse.

The action itself was fine, but lacking pace and (ironically) punch, while the dialogue aimed for updated Lock Stock but fell woefully short.

(The scene where a white man explains to a black guy why being called a 'black [expletive]' isn't racist is a cringefest rather then the sharp edge Ritchie was clearly after)

Including the offices of the actual production company and posters of Ritchie's previous work just put a tin lid on the whole thing.

Somewhere in here is a cracking, less offensive, sharp, sassy shoot-em-up about posh gangsters.

Instead Ritchie decides to go all 'meta', inserts needless film references in a bid to prove he knows what he's doing, and we all sit there bored waiting for the other two Farrell funny bits.

Oh, and there's a slight plot lift from BBC crime drama Shetland in the mix too. Which was nice.

Still, that Lock Stock eh? That was good...