The mid-year blockbuster season is starting to gain momentum. For the next two to three months, movie fans can look forward to something big or notable every single week. As of tomorrow, South African film fans have three new big screen releases lined up.
The biggie of the week is Rob (Chicago, Mary Poppins Returns) Marshall’s live-action remake of Disney’s animated classic The Little Mermaid. If you somehow don’t know the story, title character Ariel (Halle Bailey) is the youngest daughter of ocean ruler King Triton (Javier Bardem), and is fascinated by the forbidden surface world. When she rescues human Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) from a shipwreck, she resolves to meet him on land, which requires a dangerous bargain with scheming sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy).
Gerard Butler has cornered the market in a certain kind of action thriller, and Kandahar is his latest movie of this type. The film reunites the actor with his Greenland and Angel Has Fallen director Ric Roman Waugh, for a tale of an undercover CIA operative who is stuck deep in hostile territory in Afghanistan after a whistleblower reveals his role in destroying a nuclear facility. Complicating matters is that he has his Afghan translator (Navid Negahban) in tow as they try to evade the elite forces tasked with hunting them down. Also with Vikings’ Travis Fimmel.
Popular stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco writes and stars in comedy About My Father, where a man brings his traditional Italian immigrant father (Robert De Niro) to a Fourth of July weekend get-together hosted by the ultra-rich, eccentric family of his fiance (Leslie Bibb). Cultures clash, but the various misadventures and misunderstandings teach father and son about the true value of family. Also with Kim Cattrall and David Rasche.