I Care A Lot
Out: 19 Feb, Netflix
Stars: Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Dianne Wiest
Marla Grayson (Pike) makes a living by being appointed legal guardian for the elderly. In fact, she makes a very good living and her methods, while effective, are not exactly legal. When she meets her latest in a series of wards, the kindly Ms Peterson (Wiest), she thinks that her new swindle is going just as she planned. Marla proceeds to take the old lady for all that she’s got, before realising that her “victim” has links with a vicious gangster (Dinklage).
Rosamund Pike: Did You Know?
She has a reputation for being a rather striking and icy English beauty.
Perhaps it’s the fact that Rosamund Pike once played a character named Miranda Frost, opposite Pierce Brosnan in the 2002 James Bond thriller Die Another Day. She landed the role fresh from graduating at Oxford.
Or it’s her elegant visage and cool demeanour, which have been on display prominently in films such as Pride and Prejudice, Fracture, Made in Dagenham and Johnny English Reborn.
Today, she is best known for her sterling work as the missing wife, and an unreliable narrator, in David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014), for which she was nominated for numerous awards, including the Best Actress Oscar.
In recent years, she has taken on a string of characters based on real life, including the wife of Botswana’s first president (in the film A United Kingdom), the wife of a Nazi official (The Man with the Iron Heart), a terrorist (Entebbe), a war reporter (A Private War) and the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie (Radioactive).
Pike can next be seen in the Netflix film, I Care a Lot, where she plays a scheming con artist intent on bilking a senior citizen of all her valuables.
Crazy About Her
Out: 26 Feb, Netflix
Stars: Alvaro Cervantes, Luis Zahera, Susana Abaitua
Adri (Cervantes) and Carla (Abaitua) meet, fall for each other and spend a magical night together. In order to see his lady love again, Adri realises he has to do something unusual: he has to break into the mental institution where she lives. He attempts this task, in the name of romance, and lo and behold, he succeeds. But before the couple can have a shot at Happily Ever After, he realises that checking himself out of the place is not as easy as he thought.
Malcolm & Marie
Out: 5 Feb, Netflix
Stars: Zendaya, John David Washington
Dubbed as more a “story of love” rather than a “love story”, this drama-romance centres on a couple who have returned home from a film premiere. As the evening unfolds, the man (Washington), a filmmaker hoping for positive reviews for his film, and his girlfriend (Zendaya) start to have a frank conversation, sparked by a mistake he had made earlier that night. As they discover revelations about each other, their relationship is pushed to a breaking point.
Saint Frances
Out now, The Projector Plus
Stars: Kelly O’Sullivan, Charin Alvarez, Ramona Edith Williams
A single woman approaching a crossroads in her life finds that fate has conspired to place her in an awkward position. In her mid-thirties, Bridget (O’Sullivan) is stuck in a dead-end waitressing job when, in spite of her lack of affinity for kids or any relevant qualifications, she gets offered employment as a nanny. As she struggles to make a connection with six-year-old Frances (Williams), Bridget grapples with the fallout of a recent one-night stand.
Locked Down
Out now, HBO Go
Stars: Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Stephen Merchant
An unhappily married couple about to call it quits are forced to stay together, literally, in the midst of a lockdown of London during the Covid-19 pandemic. Their vastly different careers – she (Hathaway) is a high-powered executive at a fashion firm, he (Ejiofor) is a delivery man – then suddenly dovetail into a trip to the high-end Harrods department store. There, their romance is rekindled by an improbable caper to steal a diamond worth millions.
An American Pickle
Out now, HBO Go
Stars: Seth Rogen, Sarah Snook
A Jewish immigrant named Herschel (Rogen) wakes up in modern-day America after having been preserved somehow by the brining liquid at a pickle factory. In the 100 years since his accidental fall and presumed demise, all the friends and family he held dear have passed on. Herschel discovers that his only living relative is his great grandson Ben (also Rogen). They end up clashing over their differences, before realising how much family really means to each other.
Which new flicks have you been enjoying so far in 2021? Share them with us at magnsman@sph.com.sg!
