#OnTheBigScreen: New local romance, muppets for adults, and a psychosexual French thriller

Looking For Love

Temperatures are rising, birds are singing, and love is in the air in  the raunchy new comedy-romance film by Nigerian-born filmmaker Adze Ugah. What better way to celebrate the arrival of spring than watching a movie that looks at the perils of dating in the merciless concrete jungle of Jozi?

In the lead is Celeste Ntuli, one of South Africa’s favourite actors and comedians. She takes on the role of ‘38 and single’ Buyi Dube, an often inappropriate, unaccomplished workaholic who is under pressure to find love. Also featuring in the star-studded cast are Trevor Gumbi, Lillian Dube, and Phindile Gwala. Looking for Love is a hilarious look at the pitfalls and complexities of the local dating scene for women who are almost 40.

The film is a fictionalised retelling of Buyi’s rise to fame as a popular comedian. It follows her on a series of disastrous dates – including questionable concoctions, a quirky magician with a cat obsession, and a sex addict who can’t get enough of her big butt. Buyi is left disheartened and without hope of ever finding her match.

This entertaining, heart-warming story of acceptance and hope follows one woman on her journey to learning that the path to finding Mr Right begins with finding herself first.

First Purge 

The First Purge is a response to audiences asking how all this madness began, as well as a chance to understand what an overly oppressive government could do to its people.

It’s been five years since the world first experienced the provocative concept of The Purge, when, for one night during the year, all crime - including murder - became legal. Now, welcome to the movement that began as a simple experiment: The First Purge.

Coming off the most successful film in the series, creator James DeMonaco pens the screenplay for The First Purge, which is directed by Gerard Mcmurray.

The Happy Time Murders

This outrageous comedy is many things: a murder mystery, a crime drama, a buddy cop story, a tale of diversity and inclusion, and a fallen hero’s redemption. What it isn’t is safe for children in any sense. This is the most outrageously NSFK (not safe for kids), an R-rated comedy of the summer, showing how puppets behave behind closed doors without kids around. Featuring the comedic geniuses of Melissa Mccarthy, Maya Rudolph, Joel Mchale, and Elizabeth Banks, along with the Miskreant puppets from Henson Alternative, it’s a hilarious whodunit that is decidedly No Sesame, All Street.

LAPD Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) is an aggressive and argumentative senior member of the force. It focuses on a pair of estranged police detectives who must set aside their mutual animosity toward each other and work together again to solve a series of puppet murders in Los Angeles.

Eva

Nothing had prepared promising young writer Bertrand (Gaspard Ulliel) for his meeting with mysterious, enticing Eva (Isabelle Huppert). Their encounter soon leads to a life-changing obsession, in this intriguing and sensual thriller adapted from the eponymous British novel by James Hadley Chase, directed by Benoît Jacquot from a screenplay by Jacquot and Gilles Taurand.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation

Join the monster family as they embark on a vacation on a luxury monster cruise ship so Drac can take a summer vacation from providing everyone else’s vacation at the hotel. It’s smooth sailing for Drac’s pack as the monsters indulge in all of the shipboard fun the cruise has to offer, from monster volleyball to exotic excursions, and catching up on their moon tans. But the dream vacation turns into a nightmare when Mavis realises Drac has fallen for the mysterious captain of the ship, Ericka, who hides a dangerous secret that could destroy all of monsterkind.

Read more about the latest film releases: www.writingstudio.co.za.