This year has been a stinker, but when it comes to the movies, not all hope should be abandoned just yet. Many of the year’s best films were only briefly on big screens in cinemas in South Africa, screened once or twice as part of festival programmes, or went straight to streaming, and many films you’ll see on international publications’ end-of-year lists may never reach these shores. Here, in no particular order, are some of the year’s best films.
If there’s one thing they have in common, it’s that most of them don’t let you laugh away the real world. In the beautiful natural landscape of rural Georgia in the Caucasus, the life of protagonist Nina offers a sharp contrast to the beauty of the world around here. As the dedicated obstetrician-gynaecologist for the region, she faces tough decisions about whether to do what’s best for her female patients or subject them to the oppressive patriarchal laws of a country that seeks to control their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.
As she becomes a vessel for the supposed sins of teen mothers looking for secret abortions and women who are victims of domestic sexual assault, Nina has visions of herself as a lonely monster burdened with the consequences of doing the right thing, despite its emotional cost to her and the danger it poses to her position. Director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s unsparing and difficult film asks big questions about what we should do when faced with brutal oppression that echoes far beyond the confines of its specific, beautifully rendered Georgian setting. This is ostensibly a documentary, but it is really a darkly comic examination of online gaming and its untapped potential and limitations.
Read Full Article on TimesLIVE
[paywall]
Directors Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls’s audacious experiment of a film is set entirely in the world of the smash-hit video gameGrand Theft Auto Online,where criminals roam, police are on their tails and everyone moves and talks with a jerkiness and gait that’s become much-loved fodder for internet mockery. Crane and his gaming mate Mark Oosterveen are out of work actors facing the bleak future of life under lockdown in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. During a moment of desperation, they find themselves in an emptyGrand Theft Autoarena reciting lines fromHamletand sparking the idea to try to stage a production of the Bard’s masterpiece within the world of the game.
What follows is a madcap, often very funny and sometimes touching adventure that ultimately offers a tribute to the powers of necessity as the mother of invention and hope for the digital world as a means of connection and storytelling. Greek master of the modern surreal Yorgos Lanthimos reteamed with stars Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone for a dark and timely conspiracy-fuelled dystopian tale. The film features some of the year’s most striking visuals and stellar performances from its leads, though some of its plotting could have used a polish.
Plemons plays a conspiracy theorist who becomes convinced the CEO of a major pharmaceutical firm (Stone) is an alien bent on global destruction. He and his bumbling sidekick hatch a plan to kidnap her, and the results are expectedly dark, twisted, gruesome and uncomfortable.
[/paywall]
