Category: Film

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Clive Owen has his second big film of the year in cinemas now, fol­low­ing the romantic-thrill­er Dupli­city in March. The Inter­na­tion­al is a full-time thrill­er about an inter­na­tion­al bank­ing con­spir­acy and it’s dir­ec­ted by Run Lola Run’s Tom Tyk­wer. Naomi Watts plays second-fiddle. What happened to her career? Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate and the Empire, Island Bay.

All the oth­er releases this week go straight to the art-house: 2008 Cannes-win­ner The Class gets a sea­son imme­di­ately after head­lining the World Cinema Show­case (Para­mount), as does The Gro­cer­’s Son, about a young French waiter forced by his father­’s ill­ness to return to rur­al Provence and run the mobile gro­cery van – a situ­ation about which he is not happy. Pent­house and Light­house Petone.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

At last I get some time to pre­view this week’s new releases and, frankly, it hardly seems worth it. I’ve just got in from two of the most dis­pir­it­ing exper­i­ences I’ve had in a cinema in some time. Full reviews will come when I’ve had a chance to find the right kind of lan­guage to describe pre­cisely how unam­bi­tious Fast & Furi­ous and 17 Again are, a chal­lenge I must rise to before Cap­it­al Times dead­line on Monday night. Fast & Furi­ous is the fourth in the series of pet­rol-head thrillers and ori­gin­al stars Vin Dies­el and Paul Walk­er are both back. That fact might mean some­thing to someone, some­where.

Mean­while, High School Music­al star Zac Efron gets a vehicle of his own as the young ver­sion of depressed 37 year old fail­ure Mat­thew Perry. Some not quite explained magic gives him his young body back and the chance to put things right. Both Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Pick 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.]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

It’s a busy week at the Para­mount: exclus­ive sea­sons of Atom (The Sweet Here­after) Egoy­an’s new drama Ador­a­tion and the doc­u­ment­ary The Spir­it of the Mara­thon star­ted today along with a shared sea­son of Al Pacino Shakespearean vehicle The Mer­chant of Venice. Pacino plays Shylock, and fans of his Richard III doco Look­ing for Richard will already know Pacino’s facil­ity and enthu­si­asm for Shakespeare’s greatest char­ac­ters. Mer­chant is also play­ing at the Light­house in Petone.

Tony Gil­roy’s debut fea­ture Michael Clayton was a stand-out last year and he’s con­struc­ted a new (although light­er) cor­por­ate thrill­er in Dupli­city. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts star as spies team­ing up to sting two rival com­pan­ies. I enjoyed it a lot but remem­ber almost noth­ing. Regent-on-Man­ners, Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

I expect there’ll be an awful lot of dis­ap­poin­ted 15 year olds when they dis­cov­er that long-awaited graph­ic nov­el adapt­a­tion Watch­men has been rated R16 des­pite being trailered in front of every big movie since The Dark Knight. Evid­ently, it earns the rat­ing being every bit as bloody as the book (not to men­tion fea­tur­ing 50 foot high blue pen­ises). Dir­ect­or Zack Snyder looks to have used plenty of actu­al frames of Moore & Gib­bons work as inspir­a­tion (much as he did with 300 in 2006) but it remains to be seen if he can suc­cess­fully film the “unfil­mable” book: Read­ings, Empire, Embassy, Sky City Queens­gate.

The Para­mount provides plenty of bal­ance as usu­al, open­ing two Amer­ic­an doc­u­ment­ar­ies this week. Gonzo: The Life & Work of Hunter S. Thompson (which sort of speaks for itself) and Crazy Love (of which I said in my Fest­iv­al pre­view last year: “… it helps to not know too much detail going in, as the reveals are deli­ciously handled. Suf­fice to say that love is blind, in more ways than one.”

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Anoth­er light-ish week of cinema releases to report: Read­ings have so much con­fid­ence in the new Rob Schneider pris­on-com­edy Big Stan that the only even­ing ses­sions are at a dead­en­ing 9.20pm at night. Accord­ing to IMDb this is the first film dir­ec­ted by the Deuce Bigelow star which means we now have the phrase “a film by Rob Schneider” to ter­rify and depress us. Also Sky City Queens­gate.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

With most Wel­ling­ton screens grown­ing under the weight of Oscar-bait, only Read­ings (and Sky City Queens­gate if you are so inclined) is open­ing any­thing new this week. My Bloody Valentine 3D was well atten­ded at sneak pre­views last week but sadly isn’t much of a film. It’s a remake of a beloved hor­ror of the same early-80s (same vin­tage as last week’s Fri­day the 13th). Apart from the title though there isn’t any­thing ter­ribly ‘Valentine‑y’ about it.

A poten­tial date movie (for a cer­tain kind of date, maybe) is Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the new film by Clerks’ Kev­in Smith. Love­able schlub Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) stars with Eliza­beth Banks in a com­edy about flat­mates need­ing to find money for the rent.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

This has to be the most middle-of-the-road week for new cinema since I star­ted these little updates. Check these out:

First up Mar­ley & Me, a rom-com-weepy best-seller adapt­a­tion star­ring Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Owen Wilson as a couple who adopt a puppy. Click here for the Defamer.com spoil­er. Read­ings, Empire, Light­house Petone, Sky City Queens­gate. Then we have He’s Just Not That Into You, the first film to be based on a best-selling book based on a throwaway line of dia­logue from “Sex and the City”: Read­ings, Empire and Sky City Queens­gate.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

More Oscar con­tenders hit our screens this week­end. Gus Van Sant’s biop­ic of the first openly gay elec­ted politi­cian in the USA, Milk opens today at Read­ings, Pent­house and Light­house Petone. Sean Penn plays San Fran­cisco city super­visor Har­vey Milk who was assas­sin­ated by fel­low city offi­cial Dan White in 1978. Penn is sup­por­ted by Josh Brolin (No Coun­try for Old Men), Emile Hirsch (Into the Willd) and James Franco (Pine­apple Express).

I got to see Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire last Fri­day at the Embassy - if it does­n’t romp home with the best pic­ture Oscar I’ll be very sur­prised. Kin­et­ic, col­our­ful and heart­felt, it’s an object of great beauty. Slum­dog is also play­ing Read­ings, Pent­house and Light­house Petone.

[The rest of this week’s releases – and there’s heaps – after the jump]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

As Oscar night approaches anoth­er of the expec­ted heavy­weight con­tenders goes into cinemas: Sam Mendes’ Revolu­tion­ary Road reunites Kate Wins­let and Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time since Titan­ic (still the highest gross­ing film of all time fact-fans) in a story of a middle-class 1950s couple dis­sat­is­fied with the Amer­ic­an sub­urb­an dream. Based on (what I under­stand to be) an awe­some nov­el by Richard Yates. Play­ing at Light­house Petone, Regent-on-Man­ners, Read­ings, Pent­house and Sky City Queens­gate.

Road­show will be hop­ing that Clint East­wood light­ning will strike twice at the Oscars and are using that rare tac­tic, the sneak pre­view, to launch his new film (and his last as an act­or) Gran Torino. His last per­form­ance was in the multi-award-win­ning Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby in 2004. You can see Gran Torino early at Empire, Read­ings, Pent­house and Sky City Queens­gate. (East­wood’s oth­er new film Changeling opens on Feb 12)

For those inclined toward the crap­pi­er end of the mar­ket there’s Bride Wars, a “com­edy” star­ring Anne Hath­away and the woe­fully-man­aged Kate Hud­son. Please note that I totally have an open mind about this film – I just don’t have any hope or faith: Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners, Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate.

The Pent­house keeps it classy with a big­gish-budget French WWII movie called Female Agents about some young French women enlis­ted into the Brit­ish Spe­cial Forces and sent on a sui­cide mis­sion to res­cue a Brit­ish geo­lo­gist. True story appar­ently. Mean­while the Para­moun­t’s eclect­ic run con­tin­ues with a Czech com­edy-drama called Beauty in Trouble. It’s by one of my favour­ite film­makers, Jan Hrebejk who made the fant­ast­ic Divided We Fall from 2000. Also at the Para­mount, for just a few ses­sions, is a surf­ing movie called Bustin’ Down the Door.

All of the above will be reviewed in next week’s Cap­it­al Times (and online at Funer­als & Snakes), although I may draw the line at the surf­ing flick.