Adoration posterIt’s a busy week at the Para­mount: exclus­ive sea­sons of Atom (The Sweet Here­after) Egoy­an’s new drama Ador­a­tion and the doc­u­ment­ary The Spir­it of the Mara­thon star­ted today along with a shared sea­son of Al Pacino Shakespearean vehicle The Mer­chant of Venice. Pacino plays Shylock, and fans of his Richard III doco Look­ing for Richard will already know Pacino’s facil­ity and enthu­si­asm for Shakespeare’s greatest char­ac­ters. Mer­chant is also play­ing at the Light­house in Petone.

Tony Gil­roy’s debut fea­ture Michael Clayton was a stand-out last year and he’s con­struc­ted a new (although light­er) cor­por­ate thrill­er in Dupli­city. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts star as spies team­ing up to sting two rival com­pan­ies. I enjoyed it a lot but remem­ber almost noth­ing. Regent-on-Man­ners, Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate.

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

Last of the com­mer­cial releases, Notori­ous is the story of famed rap­per Big­gie Smalls. Fans will be pleased to see all of the sub­si­di­ary char­ac­ters in Smalls’ lar­ger-than-life all-too-brief career rep­res­en­ted includ­ing Sean “Puffy ” Combs, Lil Kim, Tupac Shak­ur. Embassy and Sky City Queens­gate.

There’s a mini-Japan­ese film fest­iv­al on at the Archive – we’ve already missed Umizaru 2: Test of Trust and Lupin the ? the Castle of Cagliostro but tonight’s screen­ing of thrill­er Death Note should be worth a look. Also at the Film Archive, on Sat­urday a screen­ing of rare foot­age of WWI intro­duced by war his­tor­i­an Chris Pugs­ley, with live piano accom­pani­ment. It’s called Secrets from the War.

And the annu­al Doc­u­ment­ary Film Fest­iv­al con­tin­ues at the Regent.

Monday’s Film Soci­ety screen­ing is anoth­er in the fas­cin­at­ing Lech Majew­ski series: Angelus, win­ner of the Golden Grapes Award at the 2002 Lagow Film Fest­iv­al. (I’m sorry, that soun­ded snide and I don’t mean to be, but I am really tickled by that prize). Update: Even bet­ter, it won the Sil­ver Frog at the 2001 Camer­im­age Film Fest­iv­al. Bill Gos­den and the Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al are really miss­ing out on some fun by not giv­ing out prizes.

Notori­ous is reviewed in this week’s Cap­it­al Times (online at Funer­als & Snakes on Sat­urday) and reviews of the oth­ers will appear in print next Wed­nes­day.