Die Hard 4.0 posterOnce described by Terry Gil­li­am as “a monu­ment to cra­ni­al archi­tec­ture”, Bruce Wil­lis’ shiny bonce is on full dis­play in Die Hard 4.0 (known in US-cent­ric ter­rit­or­ies as Live Free or Die Hard), play­ing at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Empire, Sky City Queens­gate and the Embassy where it looked kind of murky this even­ing.

Adam Sand­ler does his bit to fill the gap left by Ing­mar Berg­man with I Now Pro­nounce You Chuck & Larry: he and the guy from “The King of Queens” play two fire­fight­ers who pre­tend to be gay to get the mar­riage bene­fits (any rela­tion­ship to the limp Aus­trali­an com­edy Strange Bed­fel­lows star­ring Paul Hogan is entirely coin­cid­ent­al): Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate. Aside: I saw a film in one of the two Gold Lounges at Queens­gate on Tues­day night and an ush­er stopped by my seat to ask me if I wanted pop­corn or a soft drink which was nice except THE FEATURE HAD JUST STARTED! And for health and safety reas­ons they don’t dim the lights fully so it was an exper­i­ence I can’t recom­mend. The film was good though (more on that in anoth­er post).

The rest of the new releases after the jump, includ­ing Black Snake Moan and Ten Canoes.

Alert read­ers will already be aware of the SiCKO pre­view across town this week­end: Read­ings, Rialto, Pent­house (Fri, Sat and Sun only). The Para­mount week star­ted early – Black Snake Moan (Samuel L. Jack­son, Christina Ricci and Justin Tim­ber­lake) returned from the Show­case on Monday along with a doc­u­ment­ary about Bish­op Tamaki and his flock, Des­tiny In Motion.

Hot from the Fest­iv­al is Daniel Auteuil in French com­edy-of-man­ners My Best Friend at the Pent­house and the art­house high­light of the week is Ten Canoes play­ing exclus­ively at the Light­house in Petone for a lim­ited engage­ment. Ten Canoes is the first film to be made with the sup­port and full engage­ment of an Aus­trali­an abori­gin­al people – a lively and sur­pris­ing story told by the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in the North­ern Ter­rit­ory, dir­ec­ted by Rolf de Heer (Bad Boy Bubby and The Track­er) and Peter Dji­girr. I’ve been wait­ing for this one for over a year.

All these films will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes next Wed­nes­day and, in old-fash­ioned dead-tree format, in the Cap­it­al Times on the same day.