The Wrestler posterPick of the week at the movies must be The Wrest­ler, Mickey Rourke’s tri­umphant return to major leagues after years wan­der­ing in the wil­der­ness. It’s a comeback of sorts for dir­ect­or Dar­ren Aronof­sky, too. His last film, The Foun­tain, was a strange and beau­ti­ful fable about try­ing to escape death but he’s prob­ably best-known for Requiem for a Dream, nine years ago. Rourke plays a rung-out and strung-out pro­fes­sion­al wrest­ler try­ing to rein­vent his life out­side the ring. Read­ings, Pent­house, Light­house Petone.

In oth­er news, Eliza­beth Banks (Zack and Miri Make a Porno) tries a change of pace as a (pos­sibly) evil nanny in the chiller The Unin­vited (Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate) and my favour­ite B‑movie action hero Jason Stath­am returns as the eponym­ous Trans­port­er in the third epis­ode of Luc Besson’s action series. Big ques­tion in Trans­port­er 3? Is Frank Mar­tin gay. The dir­ect­or has a per­fect action movie name: Olivi­er Mega­ton. Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate.

[The rest of this week’s new releases after the jump.]

Before the Rains car­ries the name of the esteemed pro­duc­tion com­pany Mer­chant Ivory (A Room With a View, Remains of the Day) but does­n’t fea­ture any input from the three cre­at­ive forces behind the com­pany, screen­writer Ruth Praw­er Jhab­vala, James Ivory or Ismail Mer­chant (who died in 2005). It could eas­ily fit into the Mer­chant Ivory can­on, how­ever, as it tells the story of an ideal­ist­ic young Indi­an dur­ing the wan­ing days of the Brit­ish occu­pa­tion, forced to choose between his ambi­tion for the future and loy­alty to his past. You’ll find it at the Pent­house and the Light­house Petone.

At the Film Archive you have the chance to see the last ser­i­ous Peter Jack­son film, 1994’s Heav­enly Creatures – play­ing at 7.00pm tonight and Sat­urday, and Monday’s Film Soci­ety screen­ing is Mauvais Sang, a very off-beat thrill­er from dir­ect­or Leos Carax, described by one crit­ic as “one of the world’s most excit­ing film­makers”.

The com­mer­cial releases will all be reviewed in the Cap­it­al Times next Wed­nes­day (and online at Funer­als & Snakes soon after­wards). Feel free to add your own opin­ions in the com­ments.