This weekend's Big Screen openings

Shepherds and Butchers

Shepherds and Butchers is the true account of the legal process of capital punishment, and the inhumane treatment of prisoners on death row, which took place during the apartheid era in South Africa. When Leon, a white 19-year-old prison guard (Garion Dowds) commits an inexplicable act of violence, killing seven black men in a hail of bullets, the outcome of the trial – and the court’s sentence – seems a foregone conclusion.

Hotshot lawyer John Weber (Steve Coogan) reluctantly takes on the seemingly unwinnable case. A passionate opponent of the death penalty, John discovers that young Leon worked on death row in the nation’s most notorious prison, under traumatic conditions: befriending the inmates over the years while having to assist their eventual execution. As the court hearings progress, the case offers John the opportunity to put the entire system of legally sanctioned murder on trial. How can one man take such a dual role of friend and executioner, becoming both shepherd and butcher? Based on Chris Marnewick’s award-winning novel, it is directed by Oliver Schmitz (Life Above All) from a screenplay by Brian Cox.

Indignation

Based on Philip Roth’s late novel, Indignation takes place in 1951, as Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), a brilliant working-class Jewish boy from Newark, New Jersey, travels on scholarship to a small, conservative college in Ohio, thus exempting him from being drafted into the Korean War. But once there, Marcus’s growing infatuation with his beautiful classmate Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), and his clashes with the college’s imposing Dean, Hawes Caudwell (Tracy Letts), put his and his family’s best-laid plans to the ultimate test. It is written and directed by James Schamus.

The Accountant

In The Accountant, Ben Affleck plays a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world’s most dangerous criminal organisations. With the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King (J.K. Simmons), starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk (Anna Kendrick) has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise. It is directed by Gavin O’Connor (Warrior) from a screenplay by Bill Dubuque (The Judge).

Ouija: Origin of Evil

Inviting audiences again into the lore of the spirit board, Ouija: Origin of Evil tells a terrifying new tale as the follow-up to 2014’s sleeper hit that opened at number one. In 1967 Los Angeles, widowed mother Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser of the Twilight franchise) adds a new stunt to bolster her séance scam business and unwittingly invites authentic evil into her home. When the merciless spirit overtakes her youngest daughter Doris (Lulu Wilson of Deliver Us from Evil), this small family confronts unthinkable fears to save her and send her possessor back to the other side. Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Hush) directs from a screenplay he wrote with his Oculus and Before I Wake collaborator, Jeff Howard.

The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, in a new adaptation for the National Theatre by Simon Stephens, directed by Rufus Norris and filmed live at the National’s Olivier Theatre, will have four screenings at Cinema Nouveau theatres: on 29 October, 2 and 3 November at 7.30pm, and on Sunday, 30 October at 2.30pm.

A darkly comic new take on Brecht and Weill’s raucous musical, The Threepenny Opera stars Olivier Award-winner Rory Kinnear (Hamlet, Othello, Spectre) as Macheath, alongside Rosalie Craig (As You Like It, My Family and other Animals) as Polly Peachum and Haydn Gwynne (The Windsors, Drop the Dead Donkey) as Mrs Peachum. It’s brought to you by a creative powerhouse – adapted by Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and directed by Rufus Norris, director of the National Theatre.

In the musical, London scrubs up for the coronation. The thieves are on the make, the whores on the pull, the police cutting deals to keep it all out of sight. Mr and Mrs Peachum are looking forward to a bumper day in the beggary business, but their daughter didn’t come home last night and it’s all about to kick off… Mack the Knife is back in town.

For more information on the latest film releases, visit The writing Studio