Casablanca posterI think the high­light of the Wel­ling­tonista cinema-going week is likely to be a toss-up between the won­der­ful Van­guard ret­ro­spect­ive at the Film Archive or the restored print of Cas­ab­lanca. The Para­mount has been bring­ing back the ven­er­able old favour­ite reg­u­larly for the last 20 years (always with new­er prints it should be said) and it’s still a big draw. Do you need to know the plot? Read Tom G’s sum­mary here at Ornery World. Two shows a day until Sunday.

Fresh­er fare is on offer else­where but noth­ing is likely to be as sat­is­fy­ing. Atone­ment dir­ect­or Joe Wright returns to the screen with a mod­ern day drama (and more Oscar-bait), The Soloist. Jam­ie Foxx plays a gif­ted cel­list, blighted with men­tal ill­ness and Robert Downey Jr is the hack who befriends him. Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house.

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

In even wider release is The Young Vic­tor­ia, a pre­quel (of sorts) to the Mrs. Brown film about Queen Vic­tor­ia a few years ago. Emily Blunt finally gets the lead­ing role she deserves after second-banana roles in films like The Dev­il Wears Pra­da, Charlie Wilson’s War and Sun­shine Clean­ing. Mean­while, the man­age­ment at the Embassy quietly spews that they have to drop Dis­trict 9 ses­sions to play it. Also at Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house and Light­house.

Par­is 36 is a glossy, back­stage melo­drama set in the glam­or­ous world of Par­is music hall between the wars. Ebert describes it as “creaky” but “pleas­ant and amus­ing”. Pent­house (of course) and Light­house.

Sunday also sees a few sneak pre­views of Disney/Pixar’s Up (in 3D and 2D). Not to be con­fused with the Russ Mey­er boobiefest (Up!), this one is writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Pete Docter who made my per­son­al favour­ite Pix­ar film, Mon­sters Inc.

The phrase “nation­al treas­ure” gets chucked around a lot these days but nev­er has it been more appro­pri­ate than when talk­ing about Van­guard Films, a doc­u­ment­ary film pro­duc­tion com­pany with indom­it­able inde­pend­ent spir­it. This year they cel­eb­rate their 30th anniversary and the Film Archive is help­ing them blow out the candles with a two week ret­ro­spect­ive of their work. I’ve been to two nights so far and the por­trait of New Zea­l­and in the Mul­doon era is ter­ri­fy­ing. Only Mul­doon could have come to power by threat­en­ing people with “dan­cing cos­sacks” and then con­trol wages and prices for every­one just a few years later.

For stu­dents of Wel­ling­ton his­tory, The Hatred Cam­paign from 1985 was remark­ably instruct­ive. When a mys­ter­i­ous bomber murdered Trades Hall care­taker Ernie Abbott on Vivi­an Street in 1984 it was the cul­min­a­tion of a cam­paign of vit­ri­ol and hatred against the Trade Uni­on move­ment and the left gen­er­ally. The response was pas­sion­ate and mov­ing and the film shows the eulo­gies at a packed Town Hall and then a thou­sand people march­ing behind Ernie’s coffin along Cuba Street (past the cur­rent site of the Archive) to the site of the atro­city.

The Van­guard ret­ro­spect­ive con­tin­ues through next week and I urge you to try and get to at least one of these films and then ask your­self, what happened to pro­gress­ive polit­ics in New Zea­l­and?

All the new releases will be reviewed in next week’s Cap­it­al Times and even­tu­ally online at Funer­als & Snakes. Feel free to weigh in here in the com­ments about your movie watch­ing this week­end.