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.