It’s safe to say as of this Friday, the mid-year blockbuster season is in full swing, with two huge audience-pleasers arriving on the same day. Apart from that, you’ll find only a local drama brave enough to release against them, while the week’s specialist offerings includes the contemporary-ballet-meets-musical-theatre production The Royal Ballet – Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works (a stage recording), Bollywood historical epic Kesari Veer, and this week’s Throwback rerelease, feminist classic Thelma and Louise, starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon.
It’s all been building to this. Following on directly from 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (previously titled Dead Reckoning Part Two) is intended to cap off nearly 30 years of Mission: Impossible movies. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his rogue IMF (Impossible Mission Force) team race against time to find the Entity, a rogue artificial intelligence that can destroy mankind. The all-star cast includes new and returning faces like Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, Hannah Waddingham and more.
Here’s our The Final Reckoning review.
After the underwhelming response to its very expensive Snow White, Disney has reportedly put the brakes on its live-action adaptations. But Lilo & Stitch, which relooks the beloved 2002 cartoon film, may just jump-start the process again, or at least define a new approach. If you need a plot reminder, fugitive alien Stitch, an illegal biological weapon, finds himself stranded on a Hawaiian island, and hides out – and finds family – with lonely orphan Lilo (Maia Kealoha).
Look out for our Lilo and Stitch review tomorrow.
Screening in Afrikaans, with English subtitles, is drama Die Dekonstruksie Van Retta Blom. Following an apparently inconsequential action by her husband, perfectionist Lauretta Blom (Antoinette Louw) looks closer at her blissful suburban life and sees cracks for the first time. With doubt seeping in, she starts investigating, leading to unexpected discoveries about herself and her marriage of twenty-six years. Also with Francois Coertze and Danica Davis.