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.