Julie & Julia posterIt’s Labour Week­end and, as such, you can pretty much guar­an­tee that the weath­er will be filthy and the movies will be the place to be. So, what is there to choose from?

Nora Eph­ron made Sleep­less in Seattle back in the day (and wrote When Harry Met Sally) and now she has cun­ningly merged two best-selling books into one film – Julie & Julia. On one hand Julie Pow­ell (Amy Adams) attempts to cook every recipe in Julia Childs’ fam­ous cook­book for a blog pro­ject and on the oth­er hand Meryl Streep por­trays the real Julia Childs and her trans­form­a­tion from Amer­ic­an intel­li­gence agent to one of the great cooks of Europe. Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Embassy (shar­ing with the Itali­an Film Fest­iv­al), Light­house, Sky City Queens­gate.

If that isn’t enough food for you there’s the doc­u­ment­ary Food, Inc. which is about our indus­tri­al­ised, cor­por­at­ised, food pro­duc­tion and the dam­age it is doing to us and the plan­et. Read­ings, Para­mount, Light­house.

Read­ings is pur­su­ing the art­house mar­ket (using the oth­er­wise invis­ible Angelika brand) and is screen­ing James Toback­’s fas­cin­at­ing doc­u­ment­ary about Mike Tyson, back from the Fest­iv­al. Their art­house cre­den­tials are brought into ques­tion some­what by the prox­im­ity of Saw VI, the latest in the sad­ist­ic, tor­ture-porn fran­chise and the big dumb sci-fi thrill­er Sur­rog­ates star­ring Bruce Wil­lis. Both can also be found at Sky City Queens­gate, which also has an exclus­ive arrange­ment to screen the oth­er­wise straight-to-video Tinker­bell and the Lost Treas­ure for all those kids who are back at school.

All these films will be reviewed in the Cap­it­al Times next week (and online at the new-look Funer­als & Snakes). Have your say in the com­ments.