A New Year brings with it sev­er­al res­o­lu­tions and one of those is that I will return to reg­u­lar con­tri­bu­tions here at The Welling­ton­ista. So, until I col­lapse under the strain, every Thurs­day I’ll present a quick run­down of what’s open­ing at local cin­e­mas.

Tangled posterThis week Dis­ney offers us an ani­mat­ed 3D “adven­ture”, Tan­gled (pre­vi­ous­ly known as Rapun­zel). Tan­gled for­swears the usu­al big star voic­es in favour of sol­id char­ac­ter actors like Jef­frey Tam­bor and (Jaws from James Bond) Richard Kiel. Rapun­zel is voiced by for­mer teen pop star Mandy Moore. The 3D ver­sion is at the Empire, Light­house Petone, Read­ings, Event Cin­e­mas Queens­gate and a few ses­sions at the Embassy. There’s a 2D ver­sion at some cin­e­mas for those whose kids are too rest­less under the glass­es or if the new tech­nol­o­gy gives you a headache: Empire, Read­ings, Pent­house and Event Cin­e­mas Queens­gate.

The new Cap­tain Kirk (Chris Pine) gets anoth­er star­ring role, this time along­side Den­zel Wash­ing­ton in the run­away train thriller Unstop­pable. An enor­mous freight train full of tox­ic waste is bar­relling across Penn­syl­va­nia with no one at the con­trols. Pine and Wash­ing­ton are in pur­suit in anoth­er loco­mo­tive. It’s one of those race-against-time things and a reunit­ing (reunite-ment? re-uni­tion?) of Den­zel, direc­tor Tony Scott and trans­porta­tion after The Tak­ing of Pel­ham 1 2 3 in 2009. Incei­den­tal­ly, IMDb has a list of 22 dif­fer­ent projects that Tony Scott has in devel­op­ment at the moment. Mad­ness. Unstop­pable is a Read­ings and Event Cin­e­mas Queens­gate only affair.

The only con­ces­sion to the art­house crowd this week (although for some rea­son not show­ing up in the list­ings at Flicks) is French romance Made­moi­selle Cham­bon. The title char­ac­ter is a shy pri­ma­ry school teacher (played by San­drine Kim­ber­laine) who falls for tac­i­turn builder (and par­ent of one of her stu­dents) Vin­cent Lin­don. Lin­don is well-known to local audi­ences for his work in thriller Any­thing for Her and refugee dra­ma Wel­come, both of which got a local release last year. More class-con­scious fare from the French, it’s a Pent­house exclu­sive.

Last­ly, Har­ri­son Ford was once the biggest movie star in the world but his last two films went straight to video here. He is still mak­ing movies (and Indi­ana Jones 5 has been announced) and in Morn­ing Glo­ry he plays a gruff pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist coaxed out of retire­ment to co-host a break­fast tv show — sort of Paul Hen­ry to Diane Keaton’s Pip­pa I’m guess­ing. The film is real­ly about pro­duc­er Rachel McAdams and her attemtps to restore both rat­ings and san­i­ty, Morn­ing Glo­ry is direct­ed by Eng­lish­man Roger Michell who has form in this sort of roman­tic com­e­dy — he made Not­ting Hill. It’s play­ing all over the show (specif­i­cal­ly the Empire, Light­house Petone, Read­ings, Pent­house, Event Cin­e­mas Queens­gate and the Embassy) and it’s the film I’m off to see tonight.

All these films (and the rest of the Sum­mer Hol­i­day pro­gramme) will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes on Tues­day 18 Jan­u­ary and in print in the Cap­i­tal Times the fol­low­ing day. While you are wait­ing you can read my sum­ma­ry of the cin­e­mat­ic 2010, post­ed just the oth­er day. Or you can post your Sum­mer cin­e­ma expe­ri­ences in the com­ments below.