Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Our annual opportunity to worship at the feet of Pixar arrives this week in the shape of Ratatouille (I’m a fan, can you tell?). Written and directed by Brad Bird, who made The Incredibles and Iron Giant, Ratatouille is about a rat named Remy with a talent for fine cuisine but who, obviously, isn’t welcome in the kitchen. Voices include Peter O’Toole, Ian Holm and the lovely Janeane Garofalo. Readings, Empire, Regent-on-Manners, Lighthouse Petone, Sky City Queensgate.

Writer and director of Waitress (Empire, Lighthouse Petone, Penthouse), Adrienne Shelly (alumni of the once-great Hal Hartley), was sadly murdered soon after finishing the film – as pointless and random an act as you can imagine. There aren’t enough women film directors in the world as it is without losing them like that.

[The rest of this week’s new releases after the jump.]

Meanwhile, back at the multiplex, two films are being snuck out after poor reviews Stateside. The Invasion is a version of the classic sci-fi chiller Invasion of the Body Snatchers, made first in 1956 by Don Siegel and then again in 1978 by Philip Kaufman: both are classics. Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are the stars of the latest version (Readings & Sky City Queensgate). Nicolas Cage plays a man who can see two minutes in to the future in Next, directed by Tawa’s finest cross-dressing Bond-film director Lee Tamahori (Readings, Regent-on-Manners, Sky City Queensgate).

A Penthouse exclusive returning from the Festival is Australian drama Romulus, My Father starring Eric Bana and featuring Marton Csokas and Franka Potente (Run, Lola, Run). Based on a memoir by philosophy professor and author Raimond Gaita, Romulus is “a story of impossible love that ultimately celebrates the unbreakable bond between father and son”, a sentence that appears no less than three times at the official site.

Waitress is reviewed at Funerals & Snakes; the others will be online next Tuesday night and, for those that prefer to read these reviews in the bath, the Capital Times version will appear next Wednesday.