It’s another long holiday weekend in South Africa, although it isn’t quite the tsunami of new cinema options as last week. That said, you still have three feature releases to choose from, alongside the speciality offerings of Ster Kinekor Throwback rereleases Jumani (yes, the Robin Williams original!) and, at Rosebank Nouveau only, WWII-set POW classic The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.
Less a straight-up retelling of the PlayStation and Supermassive Games choice-driven survival horror game, the new Until Dawn movie leverages the game’s survival choices as it plays tribute to the horror genre as a whole. The story is new too. In the search for her missing sister, Clover (Ella Rubin) and her friends find themselves trapped in a remote, abandoned visitor centre, stuck in a time loop as they face a different nightmarish killer every day. The only way to break the cycle is survive until dawn. Peter Stormare revisits his role from the game, while Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation’s David F. Sandberg directs.
On the “sequels you probably didn’t expect” front, Ben Affleck returns, after a nine-year-break, to the role of autistic accountant Christian Wolff in action thriller The Accountant 2. Key cast members and the director of the original film are back too. Called on by Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) for help after a mutual acquaintance is murdered, Wolff must use his brilliant mind, less-than-legal methods, and complicated relationship with brother Brax (Jon Bernthal) to solve the case, and survive the network of killers who don’t want their secrets uncovered.
In need for some heartwarming comedy drama? Your best bet this week is The Penguin Lessons, starring Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce. Based on the real-life memoirs of British school teacher Tom Michell, The Penguin Lessons explores how a disillusioned educator arrives at a boarding school in politically tumultuous 1970s Argentina, only to experience personal and political change when he casually rescues a penguin from an oil-slicked beach, and it befriends him… whether he wants it or not. From the director of The Full Monty.