ALSO SHOWING
NATIVITY ROCKS! ★★★★★
(U) FOURTH instalment of writer-director Debbie Issit’s series of improvised comedies which began in 2009 with the rollicking Nativity!, a feel-good treat steeped in festive cheer.
Marc Wootton’s deranged teaching assistant Mr Poppy, who featured in the first three films, has been replaced by musical theatre star Simon Lipkin (pictured), as his long-lost brother Jerry.
Lipkin’s formidable singing talent comes to the fore as the bright-eyed students of St Bernadette’s Primary School in Coventry compete for the fictional honour of Christmas Town Of The Year by auditioning for a rock opera.
The film opens with a Syrian boy called Doru (Brian Bartle) and his father (Ramin Karimloo) arriving on these shores in search of a better life.
Doru is separated from his old man and ends up homeless in Coventry where social worker Miss Shelly (Helen George) places him with a foster mother (Meera Syal) and enrols him at St Bernadette’s under headmistress Mrs Keen (Celia Imrie). Doru arrives as Mr Johnson (Daniel Boys) and his class are warming up for auditions under formidable director Emmanuel Cavendish (Craig Revel Horwood), who is an unwelcome face from the past of teaching assistant Jerry Poppy (Lipkin).
Jerry takes Doru under his wing and encourages a friendship between the refugee and wealthy boy Barnaby (Rupert Turnbull), whose workaholic parents (Anna Chancellor, Hugh Dennis) are too busy to spend the holidays with their lad.
Of course, Christmas is a time for miracles and hyperactive man-child Jerry resolves to remind everyone about the importance of family during the festive season with help from a kind-hearted farmer called Beatie (Ruth Jones).
FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD
★★★★★
(12A) SPELLBINDING sequel. Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) stages a breathless escape from the custody of the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) and sets in motion a convoluted scheme to galvanise an angry uprising against non-magical folk.
His focus is on emotionally disturbed outcast Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), who is a prisoner of Circus Arcanus along with shape-shifting companion Nagini (Claudia Kim).
In London, Torquil Travers (Derek Riddell), Head of Magical Law Enforcement, implores magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, pictured) to join the fight against Grindelwald and serve the Ministry of Magic alongside his older brother, Theseus (Callum Turner).
Instead Newt secretly answers a call from Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) and his covert mission exposes a tangled web, which ensnares MACUSA agent Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), her mind-reading sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) and non-magical beau Jacob (Dan Fogler), as well as Newt’s ex-sweetheart Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz).