High-style action is your primary choice at South African cinemas this week, with an animated adventure thrown in for good measure. Otherwise, Nu Metro is showing concert recording Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert on two dates from 19 March, Christopher Nolan’s Inception is this week’s R50 Throwback Cinema release, and, if you’re an opera fan in Cape Town, you can check out the Met Opera’s production of Beethoven’s Fidelio at the V&A.
First out the gate this week is British action thriller Cleaner, which sees Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley in Die Hard mode for Casino Royale and GoldenEye’s Martin Campbell. When 300 people are taken hostage at an energy company’s gala event in London, it falls to an ex-soldier turned window cleaner to brave the building’s 90 storeys from the outside, and liberate the captives from the extremist activists threatening murder. Also starring Taz Skylar and Clive Owen.
Action fantasy In the Lost Lands may be based on a short story by George R.R. Martin… but it’s also the latest movie from Resident Evil and Monster Hunter’s Paul W.S. Anderson. In an apocalyptic future, a queen sends the powerful and feared sorceress Gray Alys (Milla Jovovich) to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands in search of a magical power. It’s here that the sorceress and her guide, the drifter Boyce (Dave Bautista), must outwit and outfight both man and demon. Hope the paycheques were good.
Finally, there’s Buffalo Kids, an animated film out of Spain. Irish siblings Mary and Tom find themselves in New York City in 1886, and soon embark on a wild, cross-country journey aboard the transcontinental “Orphan Train.” In their search for a home out West, they make an extraordinary new friend, and meet devious villains along with surprising allies and heroes. This English-dubbed version of the film features the voices of Gemma Arterton, Sean Bean, Stephen Graham and Alisha Weir.