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.