The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian posterWhen times are quiet in the cinema business (as they have been all year) owners respond by opening more and more films and hoping something will stick. This week sees the Penthouse open yet another contemporary British comedy-drama, funded by the UK Film Council using National Lottery funds (much like Happy-Go-Lucky and Brick Lane which are still screening), Grow Your Own. Featuring the rapidly-becoming-ubiquitous Eddie Marsan (Vera Drake, Pierrepoint), Grow Your Own is about the inhabitants of a London allotment (where the poor grow their vegetables and/or get away from the Missus) forced to deal with the arrival of a family of refugees. Penthouse and Lighthouse Petone. [Check out the rest of this week’s new releases after the jump] A pleasant-enough excursion through an outsider’s India is available at the Paramount with Outsourced: an American call-centre manager is forced to train his replacement and finds himself falling in love. The Paramount is also opening an acclaimed Australian thriller called The Jammed about people smuggling and the sex trade in Melbourne. Sneak previewing this weekend only is the Sidney Lumet thriller Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead starring Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman and non-Academy Award winner Ethan Hawke. This is one I have been looking forward to all year: check out the trailer and see if you don’t agree. Readings, Lighthouse. But the juggernaut rolling over everything in it’s path this week is the new Narnia movie, Prince Caspian. Not as much a New Zealand film as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and (I understand) a lot darker in tone, you’ll find it just about everywhere: Embassy, Readings, Penthouse, Empire, Lighthouse. Outsourced has already been reviewed at Funerals & Snakes (and Capital Times) and I’ll get around to the others in the fullness of time.