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.