While the Film Fest­iv­al dom­in­ates the screens at the Embassy, Para­mount, Te Papa, the Film Archive (and par­tially takes over the Pent­house) there are still main­stream releases being flung to the four winds.

As a writer, Mike White has been respons­ible for some of the weird­est (Chuck & Buck), the straight­est (The Good Girl) and the fun­ni­est (The School of Rock) films of recent times. Year of the Dog is his first film as a dir­ect­or and is about a decent, single, sec­ret­ary (played by per­en­ni­al sup­port­ing act­ress Molly Shan­non) and her quest to replace her deceased pet. It’s a romantic com­edy and the sup­port­ing cast is pretty flash: includ­ing John C. Reilly and Peter Sar­sgaard. Pent­house exclus­ive.

The uplift­ing story of Wil­li­am Wil­ber­force (Ioan Gruf­fudd) and his quest to out­law slavery (inspir­ing – or inspired by – the hymn) is told in Amaz­ing Grace. Also star­ring the won­der­ful Romola Garai who will be here in less than a month to star with Ian McK­el­len in “King Lear” and “The Seagull”. Pent­house, Read­ings, Light­house Petone and Rialto.

Knocked Up is the story of an unlikely couple who, after a one-night-stand, are forced to deal with the preg­nancy that binds them togeth­er. It’s by the team that made The 40-year-old Vir­gin and stars Seth Rogen (pro­moted from sup­port­ing act­or in the pre­vi­ous film) and Kath­er­ine Heigl. A hoot by all accounts. Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Light­house Petone, Sky City Queens­gate.

Finally, prob­ably co-incid­ing with the Dowse’s “Making of” exhib­i­tion, King Kong gets anoth­er trot out at Queens­gate at 2.30pm on Sunday.

It’s Film Fest­iv­al time of year, that two and a half week peri­od when watch­ing three films a day becomes more than shame­ful self-indul­gence, its almost oblig­at­ory.

Like life itself, pre­par­ing for the Film Fest­iv­al is all about choices. You start with a vir­gin pro­gramme and then, over a peri­od of weeks, notes are scrawled, dates are checked, friends are con­sul­ted and pre­views like this are read and then dis­carded. You check the timetable won­der­ing wheth­er you can leave work to, er, post a let­ter for a couple of hours on Fri­day morn­ing; you find your­self at lunch­time check­ing how long it really does take to walk briskly between Te Papa and The Embassy, and you try and for­get those moments dur­ing past Fest­ivals when you come out of a dis­ap­point­ing but worthy Finnish drama at the Para­mount and pass hordes of happy people who saw the extraordin­ary Japan­ese anim­a­tion at The Embassy instead.

The whit­tling is relent­less as the forces of time and space require choices to be made. To add an oth­er lay­er of com­plic­a­tion to your per­son­al pro­cess here’s my list of the less obvi­ous options, some of which I’ve been lucky enough to pre­view, but mostly I’m hanging out to see them like every­one else.

The rest of the pre­view, after the jump.