SHORTCUTS

NEW RELEASES

Mr Holmes: The year is 1947, and the 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) has long been retired. In the world of the movie, which is based on Mitch Cullin’s 2005 book A Slight Trick of the Mind, Holmes is famous only because Dr Watson turned all of their cases into popular books. Holmes is trying to remember the case that ended his career, and like any good Sherlockian tale, the stories interweave into a satisfying conclusion. ★★★★ Everything Will Be Fine: James Franco plays a novelist haunted by a fatal car accident in Wim Wenders’ brooding, emotional drama, which at least has sincerity going for it. This intimate drama uses 3D for spatial and emotional disorientation. ★★★ Schuks! Pay Back the Money! Leon Schuster satirises everything from transformation in rugby to the antics of government ministers in his new movie. In Pay Back The Money! Schuks drunkenly makes off with the Currie Cup trophy after a rugby function, and the trophy is subsequently stolen from his house by Bossie (Ivan D Lucas) and Savage (Gerrit Schoonhoven). Schuks is fined R1 million but strikes a deal with the sports minister who commissions him to make a documentary showing South Africa in “a positive light”: cue candid camera-style gags. ★★ A Second Chance: This crude and clumsy melodrama stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones) as Andreas, a detective and family man whose seemingly comfortable bourgeois life begins to collapse around him. His world is contrasted with that of drug dealer Tristan and Sanne, the girlfriend he abuses, who live in a squalid apartment with their baby, which they neglect shamefully. ★★ Jenny’s Wedding: Jenny (Katherine Heigl) has led an openly gay life – except with her family. When she finally decides to start a family and marry the woman her family thought was just her room-mate, her family’s world changes forever. While the cast teases out glimmers of nuance, the film plays like a series of hand-holding growth exercises for closed-minded conservatives. ★

ON CIRCUIT Paper Towns: A low-key vibe is both the greatest strength and weakness of Jake Schreier’s self-consciously modest adaptation of John Green’s 2008 novel. Although the low-stakes mystery that propels Paper Towns has little of The Fault in Our Stars’s emotional pull, this gentle coming-ofage story has its winning qualities. If it’s a bit dull, and too dependent on a what-I-learnt voice-over to make its points, it can still be applauded for resisting the temptation to over-reach. ★★★ The Man from U.N.C.L.E: Guy Ritchie updates the 1960s spy TV series, itself inspired by the James Bond movies of the era. The film stands by itself and shouldn’t confuse newer viewers who have never heard of Robert Vaughn or David McCallum, who starred in the original series. Ritchie isn’t so much adapting the TV series as using it as a starting point for his own voyage round early 1960s cinema and culture. ★★★ Boychoir: Dustin Hoffman coaches a group of angel-voiced young men in this feel-good, yet far-from-saccharine family drama. A welcome return to feature film-making by The Red Violin director Francois Girard, this relatively by-the-numbers boarding-school drama distinguishes itself through song, thanks to the exceptional musical talents of the American Boychoir School, preteen sopranos whose otherworldly talent lasts for only a few years at most. ★★★ Where Hope Grows: This Christianthemed film wears its heart on its sleeve, hawking its message of salvation through faith to anyone in the market for cheesy uplift and saccharine sentiment. ★★ Joost: Glory Game: Documentary about the life of former Bok captain Joost van der Westhuizen, a modernday warrior forced to face his own frailty. Beyond ambition, success and fame lies the wealth of family and friends, and within a ravaged body can surge the spirit of a survivor. (Not reviewed.)