Nativity 3:

Dude Where's My Donkey?! (U, 110 mins)

Director: Debbie Isitt

1 star

Did you know that Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger made over £9m at the UK box office when it was released in the run-up to Christmas 2012?

That's more than, for example, the year's best picture Oscar winner Argo made, which isn't bad for something that barely qualified as a film.

Astonishingly, this third trip to the singing and dancing primary school is even worse, in fact many times worse.

And yet, 'tis the season when many unsuspecting families with a need to keep youngsters occupied for a couple of hours will be separated from their cash.

Having yet to address the question of why dangerously incompetent classroom assistant Mr Poppy (Marc Wootton) isn't in jail, this kicks off with new addition Martin Clunes being brought in to help the school clean up their act because an inspector is on his way.

He has a young daughter in the class and is engaged to Catherine Tate, a situation complicated by Tate once being engaged to a famous flashmobber(!)

For some reason there's a donkey roaming the school too, which actually becomes a major plot point when it kicks Clunes in the head and he winds up with amnesia, with no idea who he or his daughter or Tate are.

As all sense of respect for the audience gets thrown out the window, the children then enter a flashmob competition with a prize of a trip to New York for the winners.

Cue much singing and dancing, including an extended London sequence that may well have been constructed from clips plucked randomly from YouTube.

At least in the previous films most of the singing was confined to talent shows, but now songs are thrown in willy-nilly, and sometimes the camera operators are able to capture it clearly, sometimes they're not.

And just when you think the bottom of the barrel already must have a hole in it, they manage to make a song out of Dude Where's My Donkey?

It might not be so unendurable if these performances were at least up to scratch, but the singers and dancers are deeply unimpressive, as though no -one was put through even the most half-hearted rehearsals before a camera was pointed at them.

If the second film can be viewed as a cautionary tale about the perils of thinking you're going to win The X Factor, this third entry now IS the deluded contestant who thinks they're going to win The X Factor.

This is a film so jaw-droppingly awful that it actually comes full circle and becomes funny again, to the extent that it's hard to believe you're actually witnessing it. Be warned, it may lead you to question the very nature of the universe and your place in it.

It barely functions on the most basic filmmaking levels, and is more aimed at a very young audience than ever, told with a lack of care and attention to storytelling that makes the Pudsey movie look like The Godfather Part II.

Astonishingly, it trundles on for close to two hours, all the better to fit in extra farts and piles of donkey poo.

If it was half an hour shorter, it might almost be worth sitting through as some sort of social experiment, or so, in years to come, you can say you were there when Nativity 3 hit a stunned nation.

Perhaps it's churlish to denigrate something that clearly belongs on CBeebies. But though it's all well and good to make a film aimed at toddlers, there's no excuse for a film that looks as though it was made by toddlers.

All facetiousness aside, this is an insult to cinema and immediately one of the worst films ever made, and its makers shouldn't be encouraged to assault us with another one by you giving them your money to see this one.

See it if you liked: Nativity, Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger, The Pudsey Movie

The Imitation Game (12A, 114 mins)

Director: Morten Tyldum

4 stars

The so-called father of modern computing, Alan Turing, is the compelling character at the centre of this historical drama that overcomes its Sunday night TV drama feel to emerge as really quite stirring.

As Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his team of mathematicians and logicians (Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode among them) assemble at Bletchley Park during the darkest days of World War II, the entire outcome of the war may depend on their ability to crack the German Enigma code.

With many billions of combinations and a key that changes every day and basically forces them to start from scratch each time, this ticks along very nicely as a thriller, with the race against time scenario proving gripping even though we know the code was cracked in the end.

Turing butting heads with his superior (Charles Dance) also makes for a good watch, and the excellent performances of Cumberbatch and Knightley ensure engagement with their situation.

And for a movie dealing with cold calculations, there's a surprising and welcome degree of emotional heft.

Less successful is a bookend structure that deals with Turing in the 1950s, when he's been arrested for being homosexual - it's a vital part of his life story, but the way it's framed makes it seem as though we're in for some kind of Usual Suspects style revelation.

That's a small part of the film though and a minor flaw, because in most regards this is classy, award-worthy stuff.

See it if you liked: Enigma, A Beautiful Mind, The King's Speech

The Drop (15, 106 mins)

Director: Michaël R. Roskam

3 stars

Though this may well be the least successful movie yet from the pen of Dennis Lehane, and that's not a major criticism, since everything else he's written (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island) has been close to masterful.

The relative weakness of The Drop is possibly explained by it being adapted from one of his short stories rather than a novel, and therefore exposing the screenplay's lack of depth.

The short was named Animal Rescue, which refers to the injured dog that Bob (Tom Hardy) finds abandoned in the bin of a neighbour (Noomi Rapace, playing pretty much the same character she did in Dead Man Down).

Bob works at a Brooklyn bar owned by James Gandolfini, where mob money is laundered until the joint is robbed and the gangsters want their money back.

There's something of a Rocky vibe to both Bob and the film, with its neighbourhood feel trumping what we saw in the recent and similar God's Pocket.

Bob is a soft-spoken, unassuming type - "I just tend bar" is his mantra - who also recalls the Stallone role in Cop Land, that of the good-hearted schlub who is eventually forced into action.

That feeling of familiarity is the main thing letting down The Drop, because there's a lot that's decent going on here otherwise.

It doesn't always move with much purpose, but good actors elevate it, with Hardy especially showing his range, and Gandolfini's final performance is typically strong.

See it if you liked: Dead Man Down, The Town, God's Pocket

French Film Festival

Now in its 22nd year, the French Film Festival runs until December 7th at the Glasgow Film Theatre and venues around the country.

Belle and Sebastian

4 stars

GFT, Saturday 15th, 14.00

A young boy befriends a feral dog in the picturesque French Alps in this charming family adventure based on the TV series from which the Scottish band took their name.

Their relationship is given an extra edge by the wartime setting, with German soldiers swarming the village and resistance fighters smuggling Jews into Switzerland making for exciting escapades.

Though suitable for children, it's not sanitised in any way, the dog and kid are adorable and the scenery is breathtaking.

Diplomacy

4 stars

GFT, Sunday 16th, 19.45

Another side of WWII is shown in this brisk adaptation of a stage play that takes it inspiration from real events.

With Paris about to be liberated by the Allies, orders come from Hitler to blow up the entire city, which is under the control of General Choltitz (Niels Arestrup).

Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling (André Dussollier) must try to convince him of the madness of his potential actions, with their conversation taking place almost entirely in the general's office but rarely feeling theatrical, while Arestrup is tremendous as a man wrestling with the morality of his no-win situation.

Full details are available at www.frenchfilmfestival.org.uk