Into The Wild posterFirst up, I think my nor­mal­ly metic­u­lous research went astray last time and I missed that Shane Mead­ows’ new film This is Eng­land was open­ing at the Rial­to. So, not only did I fail to men­tion it in this space last week but it did­n’t get a review at Funer­als & Snakes or the Cap­i­tal Times and it was such a slow week too… This is Eng­land has instant appeal to me as it’s about my manor and my gen­er­a­tion: Thatcher’s pro­to-fas­cist Eng­land and the dis­af­fect­ed, aim­less youth run­ning wild on the ground. Mead­ows is one of the UK’s finest young film­mak­ing tal­ents (Twen­ty­Four­Se­v­en and A Room for Romeo Brass are the best) but he lost his way for a while. Rial­to exclu­sive.

Sky City Cin­e­mas real­ly don’t know how to pro­gramme the Embassy: block­buster then art-house then bol­ly­wood, etc. Now they’re try­ing a bit of both with ultra-vio­lent video-game adap­ta­tion Hit­man and nature doc­u­men­tary The White Plan­et. What a dou­ble-fea­ture that will be. Hit­man is also play­ing at Read­ings and Regent-on-Man­ners. The White Plan­et is in the same mode as the huge hit March of the Pen­guins: this time the focus is on polar bears and the nar­ra­tor is Queen Lat­i­fah (sor­ry, wrong Arc­tic movie). Also screen­ing at the Para­mount and the Pent­house.

UPDATE: Sky City don’t even know how to pro­mote their Embassy ses­sions either! Miss­ing from their cor­po­rate web site on Wednes­day was any men­tion of the dai­ly screen­ings of This Is New Zealand, the sen­sa­tion­al wide-screen epic that show­cased New Zealand to the world at the Osa­ka Expo in Japan in 1970. Not to be missed. Ses­sion times can be found at the old Deluxe site which I thought had died.

The rest of this week’s new releas­es after the jump…

Jer­ry Sein­feld has spent the last five years of his life (and a great deal of his pro­fes­sion­al cap­i­tal) pro­duc­ing the ani­mat­ed com­e­dy Bee Movie which is on at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Sky City Queens­gate and Empire. Sein­feld wrote the sto­ry, about a young bee named Bar­ry B. Ben­son who escapes the hive and dis­cov­ers that humans eat hon­ey. Celebri­ty voic­es include Ray Liot­ta, Sting and Chris Rock.

Sean Penn’s new film as direc­tor is Into The Wild, based on the true sto­ry of a young man who, instead of going to col­lege, gives away his sav­ings and heads north in order to explore the Amer­i­can wilder­ness. Rel­a­tive new­com­er Emile Hirsch plays the lead and heavy-hit­ters William Hurt, Mar­cia Gay Hard­en, Cather­ine Keen­er and the won­der­ful Hal Hol­brook are among the char­ac­ters he meets on his jour­ney.

Final­ly, Once was one of the most pop­u­lar films in this year’s Fes­ti­val: an Irish musi­cal romance that cap­tured hearts every­where it played. You can find it at the Para­mount and the Pent­house.

All these films will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes next Wednes­day and (space-per­mit­ting) in the Cap­i­tal Times on the same day.