If you are at all inter­est­ed in the future of cin­e­ma tech­nol­o­gy, the ener­getic retelling of dark age Norse Anglosax­on Anglo-Sax­on leg­ends or theme park rides then Beowulf 3D is the thing for you this week­end. The 3D ver­sion only screens at Read­ings and I under­stand from Road­show, the dis­trib­u­tor, that only two cin­e­mas in New Zealand are equipped to screen it: Read­ings at Courte­nay Cen­tral and Hoyts Sylvia Park in Auck­land.

The dig­i­tal equip­ment required to screen Beowulf in 3D cost upwards of $100k and is only in Cin­e­ma 5 (i.e. not one of the big ones). That cost puts it out of reach of all Welling­ton cin­e­mas apart from Read­ings (and pos­si­bly Sky City at Queens­gate) until the eco­nom­ic dri­vers to replace 35mm film become over­whelm­ing. Check the list­ings care­ful­ly as the 3D ver­sion is def­i­nite­ly the one to see. The flat ver­sion can also be found at Regent-on-Man­ners and Sky City Queens­gate.

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

A whole day late, sor­ry. Curse this day job.

Direc­tor Karen Mon­crieff assem­bled a superb cast for The Dead Girl, a film about the impact of a mur­der on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent and unre­lat­ed groups of char­ac­ters; told in five chap­ters. Fea­tur­ing high­ly applaud­ed per­for­mances from Toni Col­lette, Mar­cia Gay Hard­en, Mary Beth Hurt and tem­po­rary Welling­ton­ian Gio­van­ni Ribisi, plus James Fran­co and Mary Steen­bur­gen. The Dead Girl is play­ing now at The Empire in Island Bay and Rial­to.

I don’t think I’m giv­ing too much away if I reveal that The Heart­break Kid is only the third film I have failed to com­plete since I start­ed review­ing for the Cap Times back in Sep­tem­ber last year. Ben Stiller reunites with the Far­rel­ly Broth­ers for the first time since There’s Some­thing About Mary in 1998 in a roman­tic com­e­dy that is nei­ther. Play­ing at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners and Sky City Queens­gate.

Nina’s Jour­ney is a Holo­caust dra­ma from Swe­den fea­tur­ing present day rem­i­nis­cences from the real Nina: Vari­ety called it “low-key but pow­er­ful”. It screens at the Para­mount, exclu­sive­ly. The Pent­house gets two exclu­sives this week. First­ly, art-house dra­ma Bel­la has been praised by Chris­t­ian media for what they call a “pro-life” stance; Roger Ebert said, “It’s about lov­able peo­ple hav­ing impor­tant con­ver­sa­tions and is not pro-choice or pro-life but sim­ply in favor of his feel­ings — and hers, if she felt free to feel them.”

Final­ly, also at the Pent­house and direct from the Fes­ti­val, is The Secret Life of Words: a fol­low-up to Isabel Coixet’s love­ly and sad film My Life With­out Me from 2003. Words also stars Sarah Pol­ley and fea­tures Tim Rob­bins who won’t look quite as tall as usu­al as he’s play­ing an oil rig work­er being nursed by Pol­ley after an acci­dent.

All these films will be reviewed next week at Funer­als & Snakes, and (space-per­mit­ting) in the Cap­i­tal Times on Wednes­day.