Lars and the Real Girl posterFirst up, Lars and the Real Girl is delight­ful­ly odd indie star­ring Ryan Gosling as a lone­ly and dam­aged young man who finds love on the Inter­net. With a doll named Bian­ca. Para­mount, Pent­house.

Also at the Para­mount, just for Wahine Week is a doc­u­men­tary about the dis­as­ter called The Wahine Dis­as­ter. Anoth­er doc­u­men­tary, that I missed in my sweep last week, is John Pil­ger’s The War on Democ­ra­cy which is now play­ing at the Light­house Petone only. It was orig­i­nal­ly going to play at the Para­mount as well but was cut by the own­ers for being ‘too left wing’. Some Para­mount cus­tomers have already begun a boy­cott protest­ing this sim­ple-mind­ed attack on free speech (not to men­tion an attack on the Para­mount itself and it’s grand his­to­ry of show­ing films with a human­i­tar­i­an and anti-estab­lish­ment posi­tion). Feel free to voice your dis­plea­sure to the man­age­ment.

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

If that isn’t enough doc­u­men­tary for you, Helen Smyth’s excel­lent inves­ti­ga­tion of an elder­ly Cuban dou­ble-agent ¿La Ver­dad? (The Truth?) is play­ing exclu­sive­ly at the Empire in Island Bay.

Back in the land of block­busters, Will Fer­rell offers up anoth­er sports movie (bas­ket­ball this time): Semi-Pro. Read­ings only. Fam­i­ly-friend­ly fan­ta­sy The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles can be found at Read­ings, Empire and Embassy. Final­ly, How She Move is anoth­er urban dance com­pe­ti­tion movie: Read­ings and Regent.

Lars and the Real Girl and ¿La Ver­dad? (The Truth?) are reviewed this week at Funer­als & Snakes while the oth­ers will get their spot in the lime­light next week.