Rescue Dawn posterIn 1998 Wern­er Herzog made an acclaimed doc­u­ment­ary called Little Dieter Needs to Fly about Ger­man-born Viet­nam hero Dieter Den­gler and his adven­tures as a US Navy pilot. He obvi­ously had a big con­nec­tion to that story as he has now gone back and made a fea­ture about the most amaz­ing chapter of Dengler’s life: the escape from a jungle-bound Viet Cong pris­on camp after 6 months of near star­va­tion. The Dark Knight’s Chris­ti­an Bale stars. Rialto exclus­ive.

Jack Nich­olson and Mor­gan Free­man star togeth­er as two old men on their last legs in The Buck­et List, dir­ec­ted by Rob Rein­er. It opens today at Read­ings, Empire, Light­house Petone and Pent­house. Also, from the com­mer­cial depart­ment is tele­port­ing adven­ture Jump­er star­ring Hay­den Christensen and Samuel L. Jack­son. Rumours that the pro­posed sequels to Jump­er will be called Sweat­er and Pullover are simply reck­less. Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners.

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

If heavy­weight urb­an drama is more your style, check out We Own The Night: Mark Wahl­berg stars as a New York cop try­ing to save his dead­beat broth­er (Joa­quin Phoenix) from the Rus­si­an mafia. The great Robert Duvall also fea­tures. Read­ings and Empire.

The Para­mount, des­pite it’s extens­ive Fringe duties, finds the space to open two films this week. Red Road is an indie drama from Scot­land (by way of Lars von Tri­er­’s Dan­ish pro­du­cers Zen­tropa) abut a CCTV oper­at­or in Glas­gow who sees the last face on Earth that she expects in her mon­it­or. Deli­ri­ous stars Steve Bus­cemi as a low-rent paparazzi whose tenu­ous hold on real­ity slips even fur­ther when his home­less protégé (Michael Pitt) is dis­covered by a hot young star (Alis­on Lohmann). Writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Tom DiCillo, whose Liv­ing in Obli­vi­on is the best satire of Indie-film ever.

Good­bye Bafana is based on the mem­oirs of a South Afric­an pris­on guard whose 20 year rela­tion­ship with one pris­on­er changed his atti­tudes and his life. The pris­on­er was Nel­son Man­dela and he is played by Den­nis Hays­bert who plays anoth­er Pres­id­ent in the TV series 24. Joseph Fiennes is the guard and the film is dir­ec­ted by Bille August (fest­iv­al favour­ite Pelle the Con­quer­or) Pent­house exclus­ive.

Red Road has already been reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes, and reviews of the oth­ers will appear some­time around next Wed­nes­day (and in the Cap­it­al Times on the same day).