The Strength of Water posterI have to keep this brief as time is short. There are anoth­er six films open­ing at Welling­ton cin­e­mas this week, three return­ing from the Film Fes­ti­val and three more. First up Ang Lee’s return to Eng­lish-lan­guage film­mak­ing (after the atmos­pher­ic Chi­nese thriller Lust, Cau­tion in 2007) Tak­ing Wood­stock. Released world­wide to coin­cide with the 40th anniver­sary of the Wood­stock Music and Arts Fes­ti­val, the leg­endary three day mud and music event, the film tells the behind-the-scenes sto­ry of how it all hap­pened. Read­ings, Empire and Pent­house.

Mul­ti­plex-only releas­es this week are anoth­er demon-child hor­ror, Orphan, and anoth­er Kather­ine Hei­gl rom-com, The Ugly Truth. I saw both this evening and can only say that new lows have been struck for both gen­res. Read­ings and Sky City Cin­e­mas.

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

Fes­ti­val hit Séraphine returns to the Pent­house and Light­house. Win­ner of France’s Best Film Award last year, it is the pow­er­ful sto­ry of ‘naïve’ artist Séraphine de Sen­lis whose paint­ings are now con­sid­ered mas­ter­pieces around the world but who at the time believed she was chan­nel­ing God.

The Para­mount picks up the film that prob­a­bly got the most cov­er­age of the Fes­ti­val (if not the great­est audi­ences). The Cove is a pow­er­ful and mov­ing doc­u­men­tary about how marine park dol­phins are cap­tured for our amuse­ment. For­mer Hol­ly­wood train­er (“Flip­per”) turned dol­phin defend­er Ric O’Bar­ry fea­tures strong­ly.

Final­ly, my pick of the bunch (although to be fair I haven’t yet seen Séraphine or The Cove) is The Strength of Water, direct­ed by Arma­gan Bal­lan­tyne and writ­ten by Bri­ar Grace-Smith. A con­stant­ly sur­pris­ing, dark and earthy tale of alien­ation, loss and recov­ery set in a small Hokian­ga vil­lage, the act­ing is first-rate from a cast of most­ly non-pro­fes­sion­als and the sto­ry is total­ly involv­ing. Pent­house and Light­house.

All these films will be reviewed in next week’s Cap­i­tal Times (and feel free by the way to vote for the film cov­er­age in the annu­al read­ers’ sur­vey of in this week’s issue) and online at Funer­als & Snakes some time in 2010 at this rate. I’ve been feel­ing a lit­tle behind recent­ly, as the say­ing goes.