The International posterClive Owen has his second big film of the year in cinemas now, fol­low­ing the romantic-thrill­er Dupli­city in March. The Inter­na­tion­al is a full-time thrill­er about an inter­na­tion­al bank­ing con­spir­acy and it’s dir­ec­ted by Run Lola Run’s Tom Tyk­wer. Naomi Watts plays second-fiddle. What happened to her career? Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate and the Empire, Island Bay.

All the oth­er releases this week go straight to the art-house: 2008 Cannes-win­ner The Class gets a sea­son imme­di­ately after head­lining the World Cinema Show­case (Para­mount), as does The Gro­cer­’s Son, about a young French waiter forced by his father­’s ill­ness to return to rur­al Provence and run the mobile gro­cery van – a situ­ation about which he is not happy. Pent­house and Light­house Petone.

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

Wilby Won­der­ful hails from Canada and has taken a good five years to make it to Wel­ling­ton. Not­able mainly for an early per­form­ance from Juno ‘s Ellen Page, this film is about a group of idio­syn­crat­ic loc­als (and guests) liv­ing on a small small island named Wilby. Para­mount exclus­ive.

The Aus­trali­an film industry is in dis­ar­ray at the moment – their entire non-Aus­tralia slate from 2008 made less money at the domest­ic box office than Second-Hand Wed­ding made here. They’re not mak­ing bad films neces­sar­ily but the super-indies that are get­ting made are not find­ing an audi­ence. Thanks to Kate at the Para­mount a few of them are mak­ing it across the ditch (The Jammed was a good example from last year) and this week they open Men’s Group. Described as “rev­el­at­ory and uplift­ing” by IndieFilm Magazine in Aus­tralia, the film has picked up a few awards includ­ing Best Digit­al Fea­ture (SPAARTA). Any good? I’ll be review­ing all of the above in the Cap­it­al Times next Wed­nes­day (and online at Funer­al & Snakes soon after).

If you’ve seen any of these feel free to share your thoughts in the com­ments.