The King's Speech posterIt’s that time of year when the seri­ous Oscar con­tenders start rolling out. The plan is usu­al­ly to release a film between the Gold­en Globes (or the Oscar noms) and the Acad­e­my Awards night, max­imis­ing the atten­tion before your films turn into losers (as most of them will). So, it’s going to be a busy few weeks for those of us who appre­ci­ate qual­i­ty, and we can expect a few com­mer­cial palate cleansers at the same time.

This week’s con­tender is The King’s Speech, direct­ed by Tom Hoop­er (The Damned Unit­ed) and star­ring Col­in Firth and Geof­frey Rush. I’m for­tu­nate enough to have seen this one already and it’s easy to rec­om­mend. In fact, while it does­n’t demon­strate the fire­works of films like The Social Net­work, True Grit or Black Swan this is a film that’s very hard to argue against.

Firth plays King George VI (known to the fam­i­ly as Bertie), sec­ond son to George V (Michael Gam­bon) and who grew up with a chron­ic stut­ter. This would­n’t have been a prob­lem except — it was the dawn of the radio age and the peo­ple expect­ed to hear from their lead­ers and his dubi­ous old­er broth­er (Guy Pearce) was not only tak­ing up with a divorced woman but was also sym­pa­thet­ic towards the fas­cist men­ace across the chan­nel.

All tra­di­tion­al treat­ments hav­ing failed, Mrs King (lat­er the Queen Mum), played by Hele­na Bon­ham Carter, finds a failed Aus­tralian actor turned speech ther­a­pist (Rush) to try and save the day. Play­ing all over town (Empire, Light­house Petone, Read­ings, Pent­house, Para­mount, Event Cin­e­mas Queens­gate and Embassy) from today, you’re going to find it hard to escape over the next few weeks.

The Fight­er is the true sto­ry of “Irish” Micky Ward, a jour­ney­man box­er who over­came adver­si­ty to become some­thing of a leg­end in the 80s. Already the win­ner of two Gold­en Globes (for what they are worth), The Fight­er is a bit of a van­i­ty project for Mark Wahlberg as Ward, Chris­t­ian Bale plays his trainer/brother, and there are two strong women involved — Amy Adams and Melis­sa Leo. Light­house Petone, Read­ings, Pent­house and Event CIn­e­mas Queens­gate.

More fun than that sounds, The Green Hor­net is a super­hero com­e­dy writ­ten by the team that gave us Super­bad in 2007 — Seth Rogen and Evan Gold­berg. Rogen him­self plays play­boy media heir Britt Reid who for larks invents a masked iden­ti­ty to fight crime but dis­cov­ers that LA gang­sters (includ­ing Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds Oscar win­ner Christoph Waltz) play for keeps. Fel­low Welling­ton­ista Robyn and I checked this out ear­li­er this evening and were effi­cient­ly enter­tained. The Green Hor­net is in 3D and 2D at Read­ings and Queens­gate and 3D only at the Empire in Island Bay.

As is so often the case, the poor old Para­mount brings up the rear but they have an inter­est­ing look­ing biopic of the great French pop leg­end Serge Gains­bourg. It was in the Fes­ti­val last year and Bill Gos­den said, “Car­toon­ist Joann Sfar proves a bold and inspired choice as direc­tor, inter­po­lat­ing occa­sion­al pup­pet action into a pacey account of the defin­ing dra­mas – and great­est hits – of Gainsbourg’s lurid life.”

All these films, plus advance looks at Black Swan and The Hopes and Dreams of Gaz­za Snell, will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes next Tues­day and in the Cap­i­tal Times the fol­low­ing day. Tell us what you’ve enjoyed at the movies in the com­ments.