Black Swan posterI under­stand that New Zea­l­and is pro­por­tion­ally the biggest mar­ket in the world for dance movies – the Step Ups, Stomp­ing the Yards, dance battle films are huge here – so I won­der wheth­er that will hold true for a psy­cho­lo­gic­al drama set in the world of clas­sic­al bal­let. Black Swan is Dar­ren Aronof­sky’s fol­low-up to The Wrest­ler and the first of about half a dozen Nat­alie Port­man films that are due out this year.

Port­man is a brittle young dan­cer, plucked from the chor­us to play the Queen in a new pro­duc­tion of Swan Lake in New York. Can she hack the pres­sure? Well, no, actu­ally, but the film is all about how she fails to hack it. My review is in the cur­rent Cap­it­al Times and also online if you click here. The film itself is every­where: Empire, Light­house Petone, Read­ings, Pent­house, Event Cinemas Queens­gate and Embassy.

Also already reviewed at both loc­a­tions is The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell – an Auck­land-made pic­ture described as a comedy/drama even if there isn’t much com­edy in it. Gazza Snell (Aus­sie act­or Wil­li­am McInnes) dis­cov­ers that you need more than just a big heart when a fam­ily tragedy starts to shake his world apart. It’s a Para­mount excius­ive.

Finally, we get to see one of the sur­prise hits of the Amer­ic­an sum­mer, Sec­ret­ari­at is the true story of the extraordin­ary race­horse who in 1973 won the first Triple Crown in 25 years. That’s a very big deal appar­ently. An unlikely man­age­ment team of a woman own­er (Diane Lane), eccent­ric train­er (John Malkovich) and a black groom (Nels­an Ellis) lead the lit­er­ally big-hearted horse to unpre­ced­en­ted suc­cess and the film is one of those feel-good pic­tures that used come along a lot more often from the Walt Dis­ney Com­pany. You can find it at the Light­house Petone, Read­ings, Pent­house and Event Cinemas Queens­gate.

Sec­ret­ari­at wil get its review on Tues­day at Funer­als & Snakes (and in the Cap­it­al Times on Wed­nes­day).

Finally, there’s a spe­cial screen­ing of one of my favour­ite films of the last few years, Jafar Panahi’s Off­isde on Sunday even­ing at 6.15pm at the Para­mount. Jafar Panahi was recently imprisoned for six years by the Ira­ni­an author­it­ies (and also banned from mak­ing films for a fur­ther 20) and the screen­ing is part of a glob­al cam­paign to have the film­maker released. Off­side is the delight­ful story of four foot­ball mad Teher­an girls who try and sneak in to a male only inter­na­tion­al match. I reviewed it here in 2007.