Watchmen posterI expect there’ll be an awful lot of dis­ap­point­ed 15 year olds when they dis­cov­er that long-await­ed graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tion Watch­men has been rat­ed R16 despite being trail­ered in front of every big movie since The Dark Knight. Evi­dent­ly, it earns the rat­ing being every bit as bloody as the book (not to men­tion fea­tur­ing 50 foot high blue penis­es). Direc­tor Zack Sny­der looks to have used plen­ty of actu­al frames of Moore & Gib­bons work as inspi­ra­tion (much as he did with 300 in 2006) but it remains to be seen if he can suc­cess­ful­ly film the “unfilmable” book: Read­ings, Empire, Embassy, Sky City Queens­gate.

The Para­mount pro­vides plen­ty of bal­ance as usu­al, open­ing two Amer­i­can doc­u­men­taries this week. Gonzo: The Life & Work of Hunter S. Thomp­son (which sort of speaks for itself) and Crazy Love (of which I said in my Fes­ti­val pre­view last year: “… it helps to not know too much detail going in, as the reveals are deli­cious­ly han­dled. Suf­fice to say that love is blind, in more ways than one.”

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

Back in the com­mer­cial cin­e­ma we see The Boy in the Striped Pyja­mas, adapt­ed from the acclaimed young-adult nov­el by John Boyne. Eight-year-old Bruno moves to a new town when his sol­dier father gets a new post­ing. His dad runs a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp and young Bruno makes friends through the wire with one of the chil­dren inside: Read­ings, Pent­house and Light­house Petone.

Chirpy lit­tle Dako­ta Fan­ning won this year’s NAACP Image Award for Best Actress for The Secret Life of Bees despite being, how do I put this, white. She plays a 14-year-old girl in 1964 South Car­oli­na, escap­ing from an abu­sive fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tion with her black nan­ny (Dream­girls ’ Jen­nifer Hud­son). Based on anoth­er beloved nov­el, you can find it at Read­ings, Pent­house, Light­house Petone, Sky City Queens­gate.

The Film Soci­ety got under way gen­tly on Mon­day with a secial pre­view of Crazy Love. The first film fired in anger is next Mon­day: Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights fea­tur­ing a Q&A with the direc­tor, Lech Majew­s­ki. I pre­viewed the Film Soci­ety pro­gramme at Funer­als & Snakes yes­ter­day.

The Film Archive seems to define eclec­ti­cism with their pro­gram­ming — next Wednes­day the 6.00pm ses­sion is a series of short dance films (Dance, dance, dance ) select­ed by Rebec­ca Gal­loway from the New Zealand School of Dance short­ly fol­lowed by Tibet — Mur­der in the Snow, a doc­u­men­tary about an event­ful trip in the Himalayas.

All the com­mer­cial releas­es will be reviewed in the Cap­i­tal Times next week, cross-post­ed with hyper-links to Funer­als & Snakes.