Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The Iron Giant posterSchool hol­i­days start on Monday and Hol­ly­wood is doing its bit to turn your kids’ brains to mush with Trans­formers, an enormo-budget extra­vag­anza about cars that turn in to robots (or the oth­er way around). Pro­duced by Jerry Bruck­heimer and dir­ec­ted by Michael Bay, Trans­formers should give the boys plenty of bang for your buck (while the girls get to swoon over cur­rent heart-throb Shia LaBeouf). Play­ing all over town includ­ing Read­ings Cour­tenay Cent­ral; Sky City Queens­gate; Embassy; Regent-on-Man­ners.

Sens­ible-shoe wear­ing girls may well get more out of the latest incarn­a­tion of teen detect­ive Nancy Drew, this time star­ring Julia Roberts’ niece Emma. A slightly smal­ler release this one, at Read­ings Cour­tenay Cent­ral and Sky City Queens­gate only.

After the jump: Heart­break Hotel, Starter for Ten, Francesca and Nun­zi­ata and The Iron Giant.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Paris je t'aime posterIt’s as if the gurus in Hol­ly­wood know that here in Wel­ling­ton the Film Fest­iv­al approaches and they’re try­ing to get the pop­corn mater­i­al out of the way before it is over­powered by more cereb­ral delights. Actu­ally, that can­’t be true, pretty much every week is like this…

The latest in the seem­ingly end­less series of Will Fer­rell sports movies in which our the star improvs him­self a fea­ture film while play­ing an emo­tion­ally stun­ted man-child is Blades of Glory and the sport this time is – Ice Skat­ing! Fig­ure Skat­ing to be exact. Fer­rell is joined by Napo­leon Dynam­ite’s Jon Heder as the two pair up to be the first all-male Olympic Ice Dan­cing cham­pi­ons (Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate).

After the jump: Fant­ast­ic Four: The Rise of the Sil­ver Surfer, Par­is je t’aime, Eden and Break­fast at Tiffany’s.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

UPDATE: How Much Do You Love Me? is also play­ing at the Light­house in Petone.

Ocean's 13 posterThis week’s block­buster is the third install­ment in the Pitt/ Clooney/ Damon/ Soder­bergh smug-fest, Ocean­’s 13. This time the 11 from the first pic­ture are joined by Ellen Bar­kin and Mr Hoo-Haa him­self, Al Pacino. Dimin­ish­ing returns? You be the judge at Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate, Pent­house or Empire Island Bay.

More down-to-earth is the messed-up Aus­sie no-budget romance Puppy (Para­mount), described as a “weird and won­der­ful jour­ney”. Anoth­er messed-up romance starts Thursday at the Para­mount: How Much Do You Love Me? stars Mon­ica Bel­luci as a pros­ti­tute who gets paid 100,00 euros a month to live with a lot­tery win­ner – until the money runs out. Also star­ring Gérard Depardieu.

Bridge to Ter­abith­ia, Pierre­point, Scenes of a Sexu­al Nature and Off the Grid – after the jump.