The Visitor posterIf you are con­sid­er­ing going to the cinema this week­end, and you’ve already seen Bond and the oth­er 21 films cur­rently play­ing in Wel­ling­ton, here’s a quick guide to the new releases.

Cinema own­ers all over the city are breath­ing a little easi­er now that two of the biggest box office releases from the States have opened at the same time. High School Music­al 3: Seni­or Year is the third in the tri­logy and the first to get a full cinema release: Read­ings, Empire, Sky City Queens­gate. I saw it tonight at the Empire and my eyes and ears are still hurt­ing.

Knock­ing Bond off his perch last week­end in the US was the Christ­mas rom-com Four Hol­i­days star­ring  Vince Vaughan and Reese With­er­spoon. I believe I am out of step with most crit­ics but I actu­ally quite enjoyed it – and so did US$31m worth of oth­er people. Read­ings, Empire, Sky City Queens­gate.

Quar­ant­ine is a very quick-out-of-the-blocks Hol­ly­wood remake of the Span­ish hor­ror film [REC] that Ant Timpson was pro­mot­ing earli­er this year. It’s a Read­ings exclus­ive. Might be worth a look if, like me, you found it hard to read the sub­titles in the ori­gin­al with your hands over your eyes.

The Vis­it­or is going to be pop­u­lar, mark my words. From Thomas McCarthy, writer-dir­ect­or of The Sta­tion Agent (which did more busi­ness per cap­ita here than any­where else in the world), this one is about a depressed middle-aged eco­nom­ics pro­fess­or who redis­cov­ers life when he meets an illeg­al immig­rant couple in New York City. Oh man, it is so much bet­ter than I just made it sound. Pent­house, Para­mount, Light­house Petone.

The acclaimed doc­u­ment­ary The Sur­viv­ors (about the final year of the Holo­caust) gets two screen­ings at the Film Archive on Fri­day and Sat­urday respect­ively as part of their Human Rights series and finally, a Pent­house exclus­ive: Sud­denly, a Swedish drama about a man and his son recov­er­ing from the death of the moth­er and broth­er. “A quiet and beau­ti­ful film,” says IMDb.

The Vis­it­or has already been reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes, with the oth­ers fol­low­ing next week (and in the Cap­it­al Times next Wed­nes­day).

UPDATE: My inter­view with The Vis­it­or star Richard Jen­kins is up at F&S