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.