To be an artist, or not to be? That is the question of “Grand Theft Hamlet,” a guns-blazingly funny documentary about two out-of-work British actors who spent a chunk of their COVID-19 lockdown staging Shakespeare’s masterpiece on the mean streets of “Grand Theft Auto V.” That version of the car-jacking video game is set in fictional Los Santos, an L.A. analogue where even the good guys have weapons and a nihilistic streak — the vengeful Prince of Denmark fits right in. Yet when Sam Crane, a.k.a. @Hamlet_thedane, launches into one of the Bard’s monologues, he’s often murdered by a fellow player within minutes. Everyone’s a critic.

Crane co-directed the movie with his wife, Pinny Grylls, a first-time gamer who functions as the film’s camera of sorts. What her character sees, where she chooses to stand and look, makes up much of the film, although the editing team does phenomenal work splicing in other characters’ points of view. (We’re never outside of the game until the last 30 seconds; only then do we see anyone’s real face.) This isn’t the first time “Hamlet” been repurposed as machinima — as in machine-cinema, or machine-animation, depending on whom you’re asking — a genre in which filmmakers hijack role-playing games to act out a different plot. (You’ll find a 2014 version made inside “Guild Wars 2” on YouTube.) This is, however, the first attempt I’m aware of that attempts to do the whole thing live in one go, no matter if one of the virtual actors falls to their doom from a blimp. As Grylls says, “You can’t stop production just because somebody dies.”

If you don’t know the tragedy going into the film, you won’t be able to piece it together from what’s onscreen. Ophelia barely registers; Gertrude gets less than two lines. The Bard’s story is only half the point. Really, this is a classic let’s-put-on-a-pixilated-show tale about the need to create beauty in the world — even this violent world — especially when stage productions in England have shuttered, forcing Crane, a husband and father, and Mark Oosterveen, single and lonely, to kill time speeding around the digital desert. “Wheeee,” one sighs, as their four-wheeler jounces over a curb. No judgment: During quarantine, I once put on an 8-bit bass fishing game just to listen to the water.

One day, their adventures take them to Los Santos’ Hollywood Bowl (ahem, Vinewood Bowl), and the sight of the empty amphitheater hits them as thunderously as the monolith gobsmacked the chimpanzees in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” They’ve embraced an existence of sloth and violence. Now, it’s time to evolve. “Anything that takes away from what I could cheerfully call the crushing inevitability of your pointless life,” Oosterveen says, chipperly.

The choice to do “Hamlet” in particular feels like settling on the first idea that comes to mind. It’s so obvious, it’s practically unconscious — like being told to crayon a great painting and selecting the “Mona Lisa.” To our surprise (and theirs), the play’s tussles with depression and anguish and inertia become increasingly resonant as the production and the pandemic limps toward their conclusions. When Crane and Oosterveen’s “Grand Theft Auto” avatars hop into a van with an anonymous gamer and ask this online stranger for his thoughts on Hamlet’s suicidal soliloquy, the man, a real-life delivery driver stuck at home with a broken leg, admits, “I don’t think I’m in the right place to be replying to this right now.” Paired alongside Shakespeare’s lines about grunting and sweating under a weary life, even the non-playable background extras seem imbued with a soul.

The piano score can hit the sentimentality too hard. Similarly, chunks of the framework narrative seem to have fallen out of the film. Crane frets over whether anyone from the National Theatre will watch the show. What is he hoping for? Did they actually come?

Meanwhile, within the game, a day lasts 48 minutes; a conversation might start in the sunshine and end at dusk. We’ve barely adjusted to that when the film itself starts screwing with our sense of time. It starts at a clip in January of 2020, and at one point reveals that the troupe has only four weeks to pull things together. OK, sure, but I did a double take after learning that the final production took place in July 2021. What’s the rush? Who is insisting?

I’ll call the film a documentary out of generosity. In truth, it feels closer to stage-managed reality TV. The big moments feel prompted, like when Crane and Grylls argue about his fixation on the game online.

“What about the kids? What about me?” she says, huffing away in her avatar’s spandex skeleton costume.

Thankfully, the story arc is designed so that chaos keeps barging in, most delightfully in the form of a scene stealer named ParTeb, a goofball from Tunisia who presents as a saucy green alien. Urged to audition for the show, ParTeb does a moving reading of the Quran. Then he decides he’d rather shoot people from an airplane.

Fair enough. In Los Santos, it’s more acceptable to wave a gun than recite verse. In the real L.A., that’s reversed, but it’s still hard to survive as an artist. Most of the creative people I’ve met in this town are hardscrabble hopefuls, so it’s irritating when an Irish player snidely dismisses Los Angeles as “ultra, ultra capitalist.”

I’d argue that both Los Angeles and Los Santos are places people go to so they can express who they really are — or pretend to be someone they’re not. They welcome freedom and adventure, whether from a newly out trans woman who seems more at ease wearing high heels in Los Santos than she does around her family, or a middle-aged female literary agent who auditions wearing her nephew’s bro-y avatar, a shirtless DJ.

The film’s most disorienting and wondrous realization, however, is that Shakespearean acting can exist even within “Grand Theft Auto’s” limits. The characters’ inexpressive faces are closer to Noh theater than to the Globe. But when the show’s first Hamlet, ambulated by an Oxford-trained actor named Dipo Ola, performs a few lines, he’s instantly more compelling than the sight of ParTeb shaking his rump. What a pity that Ola gets a real job and is forced to quit the play. And what a hoot that as Ola zooms away, he pops a cap in Oosterveen as a gesture of goodbye.

In the many beautifully observed working-class dramedies he’s made over the past five decades, the British writer and director Mike Leigh has returned again and again to one simple yet endlessly resonant question: Why are some people happy, while others are not? Why does Nicola, the sullen 20-something in Leigh’s 1990 film, Life Is Sweet, seem incapable of even a moment’s peace or pleasure? By contrast, how does Poppy, the upbeat heroine of Leigh’s 2008 comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky, manage to greet every misfortune with a smile?

Leigh’s new movie, Hard Truths, could have been titled Unhappy-Go-Lucky. It follows a middle-aged North London misanthrope named Pansy, who’s played, in the single greatest performance I saw in 2024, by Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

You might know Jean-Baptiste from Leigh’s wonderful 1996 film, Secrets & Lies, in which she played a shy, unassuming London optometrist seeking out her birth mother. But there’s nothing unassuming about Pansy, who leads a life of seething, unrelenting misery. She spends most of her time indoors, barking orders and insults at her solemn husband, Curtley, and their 22-year-old son, Moses.

Pansy keeps a spotless home, but the blank walls and sparse furnishings are noticeably devoid of warmth, cheer or personality. When she isn’t cleaning, she’s trying to catch up on sleep, complaining about aches, pains and exhaustion. Sometimes she goes out to shop or run errands, only to wind up picking fights with the people she meets: a dentist, a salesperson, a stranger in a parking lot.

Back at home, she unloads on Curtley and Moses about all the indignities she’s been subjected to and the general idiocy of the world around her. Pansy has an insult comedian’s ferocious wit and killer timing. While you wouldn’t necessarily want to bump into her on the street, she makes for mesmerizing, even captivating on-screen company.

Leigh is often described as a Dickensian filmmaker, and for good reason; he’s a committed realist with a gift for comic exaggeration. Like nearly all Leigh’s films, Hard Truths emerged from a rigorous months-long workshop process, in which the director worked closely with his actors to create their characters from scratch. As a result, Jean-Baptiste’s performance, electrifying as it is, is also steeped in emotional complexity; the more time we spend with Pansy, the more we see that her rage against the world arises from deep loneliness and pain.

Leigh has little use for plot; he builds his stories from the details and detritus of everyday life, drifting from one character to the next. Tuwaine Barrett is quietly heartbreaking as Pansy’s son, Moses, who isolates himself and spends his time either playing video games or going on long neighborhood walks. Pansy’s husband, Curtley, is harder to parse; he’s played by the terrific David Webber, with a passivity that’s both sympathetic and infuriating.

The most significant supporting character is Pansy’s younger sister, Chantelle, played by the luminous Michele Austin, another Secrets & Lies alumn. Chantelle could scarcely be more different from her sister: She’s a joyous, contented woman with two adult daughters of her own, and she does everything she can to break through to Pansy. In the movie’s most affecting scene, Chantelle drags her sister to a cemetery to pay their respects to their mother, whose sudden death five years ago, we sense, is at the core of Pansy’s unhappiness.

At the same time, Leigh doesn’t fill in every blank; he’s too honest a filmmaker to offer up easy explanations for why people feel the way they feel. His attitude toward Pansy — and toward all the prickly, outspoken, altogether marvelous characters he’s given us — is best expressed in that graveside scene, when Chantelle wraps her sister in a tight hug and tells her, with equal parts exasperation and affection: “I don’t understand you, but I love you.”

Matthew Muller, the notorious kidnapper whose most infamous crime was detailed in the Netflix documentary “American Nightmare,” appeared Friday in court and pleaded guilty to two additional crimes.

Wearing a brown Santa Clara County jail uniform, Muller, 47, replied with a taciturn series of “yes” answers as Superior Court Judge Cynthia A. Sevely confirmed he was admitting guilt in two home invasions in 2009. In both cases, Muller broke into homes in the early hours, bound his female victims and attempted to drug and sexually assault them.

In total, Muller is now suspected or convicted in at least six violent crimes, beginning when he was 16.

“This extremely dangerous person left a trail of traumatized and terrified victims,” Dist. Atty. Jeff Rosen said. “It took the collective courage of his victims and determined law enforcement officers to stop him. This nightmare is over.”

The Santa Clara charges against Muller came about as a result of the work of an unlikely team of law enforcement officers and the two victims in the Vallejo case, Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn. Over the last 10 months, the pair said, they obtained clues about the crimes — and even confessions — from Muller before approaching local authorities with jurisdiction in the incidents.

“We knew there was more to this from the beginning, and clearly how things were handled from the beginning led to a lot of errors,” Huskins said in an interview last week. “We didn’t really have anyone in law enforcement that we trusted and we felt were doing this case justice.”

The first Santa Clara County incident took place on Sept. 29, 2009, when a Mountain View woman in her 30s told police she awoke to find a man on top of her. According to a description of the case from the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, Muller demanded she drink a medicated beverage, then tied her up and said he was going to rape her.

The woman was able to persuade him to stop his assault, according to the district attorney’s office. Before leaving, Muller allegedly told her that she should get a dog for protection.

About three weeks later, on Oct. 18, 2009, a woman in nearby Palo Alto awoke to find Muller on top of her, according to the district attorney’s office. He tied the woman up and forced her to drink Nyquil.

Again, the woman was able to persuade him to stop, according to prosecutors. And again, before leaving, he gave the woman “crime prevention advice,” according to the district attorney’s office.

Last week, Muller was also charged in another new case, in the Contra Costa town of San Ramon, after authorities examined evidence brought to light through Huskins’ and Quinn’s investigative efforts.

After “American Nightmare” came out, Huskins and Quinn were contacted by an unlikely ally: the police chief in the Monterey Bay town of Seaside, Nick Borges. He had seen the documentary and wanted to help.

That Borges had nothing to do with the case didn’t stop him from becoming involved. He invited Huskins and Quinn to speak to law enforcement in Seaside to share their belief that police interrogation methods that focused on Quinn’s guilt had sent the investigation down the wrong road.

Borges also persuaded the detective ultimately responsible for Muller’s arrest, Misty Carausu, to come.

The four met with El Dorado County Dist. Atty. Vern Pierson, who has jurisdiction in the county where Huskins was held captive — and the seeds of a new investigation were planted.

At lunch after the law enforcement conference, Huskins and Quinn told Borges about their frustrations, and a desire to reach out to Muller personally to seek answers. But the couple feared that could present risks. Borges offered to write Muller on their behalf.

Muller wrote back, giving details of other crimes and even legal declarations with confessions.

Armed with the new information, Pierson, who had been working with the FBI and other agencies, in November traveled to Tucson to interview Muller in person. Over two days, according to Pierson, Muller shared more details, including information on a Northern California attack he claimed to have committed when he was 16. That case is still under investigation, Pierson said.

In Huskins’ case, which the Netflix documentary is based on, Muller broke into her Vallejo home in March 2015 and drugged and bound her and her then-boyfriend, Aaron Quinn. Muller blindfolded them with swim goggles and gave them medicine to make them sleepy. He put headphones on Quinn and played recordings designed to make Quinn think he was dealing with more than one kidnapper.

Muller then put Huskins into Quinn’s car and drove off with her, eventually taking her to his family’s cabin in South Lake Tahoe. He held her there for two days and sexually assaulted her, before driving her across California and releasing her in Huntington Beach.

Initially, Vallejo police dismissed Quinn’s account of his girlfriend being spirited away by a kidnapper — or kidnappers — who put headphones on him and made him drink a substance that made him sleepy. Officers interrogated Quinn for hours, brushing aside his story and theorizing he was behind her disappearance.

When Huskins turned up, police grew more suspicious, questioning how a kidnapping victim could reappear hundreds of miles away wearing sunglasses and carrying an overnight bag.

Huskins “did not act like a kidnapping victim,” retired Vallejo Police Capt. James O’Connell later said in a sworn statement.

Police tried to get Huskins and Quinn to turn on each other and admit there had been no crime, offering immunity to whoever flipped first, according to statements from their family members.

Then, police went public with that sentiment. “There is no evidence to support the claims that this was a stranger abduction or an abduction at all,” Police Lt. Kenny Park said in a statement at the time. “Given the facts that have been presented thus far, this event appears to be an orchestrated event and not a crime.”

However, less than three months later, evidence gathered from a June 5, 2015, home invasion robbery in the Bay Area community of Dublin helped authorities link Muller to the kidnapping. That case led authorities and Carausu, the detective, to the Muller family’s South Lake Tahoe cabin, where they found, among other things, Quinn’s computer, goggles and tape with a strand of long blond hair.

Huskins and Quinn, who later married, sued the Vallejo Police Department for defamation and reached a $2.5-million settlement in 2018.

Muller, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Marine, pleaded guilty in 2016 to kidnapping Huskins. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to additional charges of sexually assaulting her. Until he was transported to Santa Clara County to face the new charges, he was serving his 40-year sentence at a federal prison in Tucson.

Muller is expected to return to Santa Clara County Superior Court on Feb. 21 for sentencing.