Making art in the middle of the apocalypse is the literal and figurative ethos of “Grand Theft Hamlet,” one of the cleverest “What can we do during lockdown?” pandemic picture projects.

A couple of British actors — Sam Crane and Mark Ooosterveen –– stared into the same gutting void of everybody who was unable to work during the pandemic lockdowns. As they killed some time meeting in the online gamescape of “Grand Theft Auto,” they stumbled into the Vinewood (Hollywood) Bowl setting of that Greater L.A. killing zone. And like actors since the beginning of time, thought they’d put on a play.

As they wander and ponder this brilliant conceit, they wrestle with whether to attempt casting, setting and directing this play amidst a sea of first-person shooters/stabbers/run-you-over-with-their car. They face fascinating theatrical problem solving. How DO you make art and recruit an online in-the-game audience for Shakespeare in a world of self-absorbed, bloody-minded avatars, some of whom stumble upon their efforts and ignore their “Please don’t shoot me” pleas?

Crane and Oosterveen, both white 40somethings Brits, grapple with “what people are like in here,” as in “people are violent in the game.” VERY violent. But “people are violent in Shakespeare.” Pretty much “everybody dies in ‘Hamlet,’” after all.

Putting on a play in the middle of a real apocalypse set in a CGI generated apocalypse is “a terrible idea,” Oosterveen confesses (in avatar form). “But I definitely want to try to do it.”

Crane, struggling with the same mental health issues tens of millions faced during lockdown, enlists his documentary filmmaker wife Pinny Grylls to enter the game and film all this.

And as their endeavors progress, through trial and many many deaths (“WASTED,” the game’s graphics remind you), everybody interested in their idea trots out favorite couplets from Shakespeare as “auditions.” They round up “actors” from all over (mostly Brits, though), they remind us of the power of Shakespeare’s words.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep…”

Dodging would-be gamer/killers and recruiting others, they will see how a marriage can be strained by work or video game addiction and fret over the futility of it all.

The film, co-scripted and directed by Crane and Grylls, with Crane playing Hamlet, and narrated and somewhat driven by Oosterveen, who portrays Polonius, is a mad idea but a great gimmick, one that occasionally transcends that gimmick.

We’re reminded of the visual sophistication of CGI landscapes — they try out a lot of settings, and use more than one, a scene staged on top of a blimp, seaside for a soliloquy. The limitations of jerky-movement video game characters, lips-moving but not syncing up to dialogue, are just as obvious.

And if all the gamescape’s “a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” some folks — MANY folks — need to buy better headset microphones. The distorted audio and staticky dynamic range of such gear spoils a lot of the dialogue.

In a production where the words matter as much as this, as “acting” in avatar form is a catalog of limitless limitations, one becomes ever more grateful that the film is a documentary of the “making” of a “Grand Theft Auto” “Hamlet,” and not merely the play. Because inventive settings and occasional murderous “distractions” aside, that leaves a lot to be desired.

Rating: R, video game violence, profanity

Cast: The voices/avatars of Sam Crane,
Mark Oosterveen, Pinny Grylls, Jen Cohn, Tilly Steele, Lizzie Wofford, Dilo Opa, Sam Forster, Jeremiah O’Connor and Gareth Turkington

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, based on “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. A Mubi release.

Running time: 1:29

This isn’t the easiest moment in history to be launching a film exploring its author’s Jewish heritage, thanks to the violent repercussions of events in the Middle East, but the historical baggage that comes with that heritage is all part of Eisenberg’s theme. Set to an eloquent and frequently melancholy soundtrack of Chopin’s piano music, A Real Pain is a bittersweet story about two Jewish cousins, Benji and David Kaplan (Kieran Culkin and Eisenberg), who take a trip to Poland in memory of their beloved grandmother, a recently-deceased Holocaust survivor. Beneath the wisecracks and one-liners there’s a subtle and penetrating analysis of family bonds and the burden of shared history.

The film’s gentle ripple of underlying sadness stems from the fact that the cousins were previously very close, but have drifted apart. They’re about as dissimilar as it’s possible to be, but glimpses of their odd-couple bond gradually resurface as the narrative develops. Eisenberg’s David is quiet and introverted, but is successful as both family man and in his Manhattan-based career in computing. On the other hand, we gradually learn that Benji is drifting rootlessly through his life out in the suburbs. He’s searching desperately for something meaningful, and is struggling to keep himself on the rails. He has been hit hard by his grandmother’s death, confessing that “she was just my favourite person in the world.”

In any event, the role gives Culkin carte blanche to charge recklessly through the gears, in a bravura performance which gives the film its centrifugal force. Some of the time he’s a babbling extrovert who effortlessly dominates any social gathering, for instance persuading everybody in their touring party to pose for selfies on a statue commemorating the Warsaw Uprising, but the flipside is that he can’t tell where the boundaries are (and has little interest in finding them). David is aghast when they’re heading for the boarding gate for their flight to Poland, and Benji cheerfully announces that he’s carrying a stash of dope (“I got some good shit for when we land”.)

One moment everybody loves Benji, then suddenly he becomes an insufferable asshole. He’s prone to wildly inappropriate outbursts, like the moment when the tour party are travelling in a first class railway carriage and Benji goes into an emotionally incontinent display of guilt about the contrast with his Jewish antecedents being transported to death camps in cattle trucks.

Fortunately their travelling companions (who include Dirty Dancing veteran Jennifer Grey, pictured top, and Kurt Egyiawan as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide) show superhuman patience, not least their English tour guide James (Will Sharpe), who graciously accepts Benji’s tactless critique of his guiding technique (Sharpe and Eisenberg pictured above). The fact that James is a scholar of East European Studies from Oxford University, not Jewish himself but “fascinated by the Jewish experience”, is a crafty little comic narrative all of its own.

It’s a difficult film to categorise, being part comedy, part road movie, part psychotherapy session and part personal memoir. Perhaps Woody Allen might have called it a “situation tragedy”. It’s a clever, complex piece, but Eisenberg has made it look breezily simple.

On the index of possible spoil alert sins one could make about the erotic thriller Babygirl, perhaps the least objectionable is that which most people already know: The film belongs to the very rare species of film literally ending with the big “O.” Nicole Kidman’s final orgasmic aria of ecstasy caps off a film which dares to tell a morally slippery tale. But for all the high points and gray zones of writer-director Halina Reijn’s intriguing film, the least ambiguous moment arrives at its climax. So to speak.

The central premise is a maze-like anatomy of an affair, between Kidman’s Romy Mathis, a fierce but also mid-life conflicted 50-year-old CEO of a robotics company, and a sly, handsome twenty-something intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson, who will appear at the Virtuosos Tribute at this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival). Sparks fly, and mutually pursued seduction ensues behind closed doors and away from the prying eyes of her family (and husband, played by Antonio Banderas).

From the outset, though, it’s apparent that nefarious sexual exploits, though those do liberally spice up the film’s real estate, are not the primary subject. It’s more a film steeped with power-play gamesmanship, emotional extortion, and assorted manipulations of class and hierarchical structures. Samuel teases a thinly veiled challenge to her early on, “I think you like to be told what to do.” She feigns shock, but soon acquiesces, and what transpires on their trail of deceptions and shifting romantic-sexual relationship includes a twist in which he demands her submission in exchange for him not sabotaging her career trajectory.

Kidman, who gives another powerful performance in Babygirl, is no stranger to roles involving frank sexuality and complications thereof. She has excelled in such fragile and vulnerable situations, especially boldly in Gus Van Sant’s brilliant To Die For (also a May/October brand dalliance story), and Stanley Kubrick’s carnally acknowledged Eyes Wide Shut. Ironically or not, she finds herself in the most tensely abusive sex play as the wife of Alexander Skarsgård in TVs Big Little Lies.

Compared to those examples, Babygirl works a disarmingly easygoing line. For all of his presumed sadistic power playing, Dickinson — who turns in a nuanced performance in an inherently complex role — is often confused and sometimes be mused in the course of his actions or schemes. In an early tryst encounter, his domination play seems improvised and peppered with self-effacing giggles, while in a later, potentially creepier hotel scene, his will to wield power morphs into his state of vulnerable, almost child-like reliance on her good graces. The oscillating power play dynamics get further complicated.

Complications and genre schematics also play into the film’s very identity, in fresh ways. Dutch director (and actress) Reijn has dealt with erotically edgy material in the past, especially with her 2019 film Instinct. But, despite its echoes and shades of Fifty Shades of Gray and 9½ Weeks, Babygirl cleverly tweaks the standard “erotic thriller” format — with its dangerous passions and calculated upward arc of body heating — into unexpected places. At times, the thriller form itself softens around the edges, and we become more aware of the gender/workplace power structures at the heart of the film’s message.

But, message-wise, Reijn is not ham-fisted or didactic in her treatment of the subject. There is always room for caressing and redirecting the impulse, in the bedroom, boardroom, and cinematic storyboarding.

See trailer here.