The Dead Girl posterA whole day late, sorry. Curse this day job.

Dir­ect­or Kar­en Mon­crieff assembled a superb cast for The Dead Girl, a film about the impact of a murder on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent and unre­lated groups of char­ac­ters; told in five chapters. Fea­tur­ing highly applauded per­form­ances from Toni Col­lette, Mar­cia Gay Harden, Mary Beth Hurt and tem­por­ary Wel­ling­to­ni­an Gio­vanni Ribisi, plus James Franco and Mary Steen­bur­gen. The Dead Girl is play­ing now at The Empire in Island Bay and Rialto.

I don’t think I’m giv­ing too much away if I reveal that The Heart­break Kid is only the third film I have failed to com­plete since I star­ted review­ing for the Cap Times back in Septem­ber last year. Ben Stil­ler reunites with the Far­relly Broth­ers for the first time since There’s Some­thing About Mary in 1998 in a romantic com­edy that is neither. Play­ing at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners and Sky City Queens­gate.

Nin­a’s Jour­ney is a Holo­caust drama from Sweden fea­tur­ing present day remin­is­cences from the real Nina: Vari­ety called it “low-key but power­ful”. It screens at the Para­mount, exclus­ively. The Pent­house gets two exclus­ives this week. Firstly, art-house drama Bella has been praised by Chris­ti­an media for what they call a “pro-life” stance; Roger Ebert said, “It’s about lov­able people hav­ing import­ant con­ver­sa­tions and is not pro-choice or pro-life but simply in favor of his feel­ings – and hers, if she felt free to feel them.”

Finally, also at the Pent­house and dir­ect from the Fest­iv­al, is The Secret Life of Words: a fol­low-up to Isa­bel Coixet’s lovely and sad film My Life Without Me from 2003. Words also stars Sarah Pol­ley and fea­tures Tim Rob­bins who won’t look quite as tall as usu­al as he’s play­ing an oil rig work­er being nursed by Pol­ley after an acci­dent.

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