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.