A Tribute to Presley Chweneyagae — Showmax
It’s infuriating that Tsotsi, the 2005 SA Oscar-winning film that made Presley Chweneyagae’s name, isn’t available on streaming services in SA, but after his tragic passing at the age of 40 this week Showmax has gathered a few selections of the actor’s post-Tsotsi work together in celebration of his talents. These include the many episodes of telenovela The River, in which Chweneyagae played the hugely popular hustler Cobra “Cobrizi” and both the feature film and series adaptation of the cops and gangsters’ drama iNumber Number.
Hotel Terminus — YouTube
French documentarian Marcel Ophuls, who died last week at the age of 97, was acclaimed for his in-depth explorations of the evils of World War 2 and its aftermath and was working on a mammoth project, Unpleasant Truths, about the Israel-Palestine conflict, at the time of his death. He was best known for his epic 1967 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, which offered a hard, unpleasant and patient dissection of France under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime, and proved too much for its French television commissioners to air. Ophuls won an Oscar for this equally extensive and unflinching look at the notorious “Butcher of Lyon” Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie, who was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, escaped to South America after the end of the war and was finally captured and brought to trial in 1987.
Black Bag — Buy from Apple TV+
Steven Soderbergh’s unflashy, spy thriller stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as married British intelligence agents, who, after suspicion falls on one of them as a double agent, engage in a twisty game of cat and mouse to find out the truth and save their complicated marriage. It is tightly written by David Koepp, darkly shot by Soderbergh himself and featuring solid performances from its two leads and a supporting cast that includes Pierce Brosnan, Regé-Jean Page, Naomie Harris, Marisa Abela and Tom Burke. The smart, briskly executed espionage meets marital drama requires full attention to unravel the puzzle.
Dept. Q — Netflix
The Queen’s Gambit director Scott Frank leads this handsome adaptation of the Scandi-noir novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen, which transposes the setting of the books from Denmark to Edinburgh and stars Matthew Goode as a beleaguered, PTSD-suffering detective whose already difficult life is made seemingly impossible when he’s appointed to head a team investigating a cold case.
Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery — Showmax
There was much hype surrounding Cullen Hoback’s documentary when it was released towards the end of last year, but whether the film succeeds in solving the greatest mystery of the electronic currency’s history — the identity of mythical bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto — is unclear. The film’s attempt to offer the final word on all things bitcoin is slightly undone by its determination to solve a mystery that remains elusive. As an introduction for the perplexed and uninitiated, however, it still has some solid guidance to offer.
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