Tag: review

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

It’s Labour Week­end and, as such, you can pretty much guar­an­tee that the weath­er will be filthy and the movies will be the place to be. So, what is there to choose from?

Nora Eph­ron made Sleep­less in Seattle back in the day (and wrote When Harry Met Sally) and now she has cun­ningly merged two best-selling books into one film – Julie & Julia. On one hand Julie Pow­ell (Amy Adams) attempts to cook every recipe in Julia Childs’ fam­ous cook­book for a blog pro­ject and on the oth­er hand Meryl Streep por­trays the real Julia Childs and her trans­form­a­tion from Amer­ic­an intel­li­gence agent to one of the great cooks of Europe. Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Embassy (shar­ing with the Itali­an Film Fest­iv­al), Light­house, Sky City Queens­gate.

Cinephilia: Italian Film Festival

The Itali­an Film Fest­iv­al once again sur­veys the best of recent Itali­an com­mer­cial cinema. Based at their entirely appro­pri­ate new home of the Embassy Theatre, the Fest­iv­al screens 16 dif­fer­ent fea­ture films over the next two weeks and the range means that there will (almost cer­tainly) be some­thing for every­one.

High­lights include The Girl By the Lake, a grip­ping psy­cho­lo­gic­al who­dunit that won sev­er­al Dona­tello Awards (the Itali­an Oscars) in 2008 as well as two prizes at the 2007 Venice Film Fest­iv­al. Set dis­tinct­ively in the north­ern Itali­an Dolemite region, the film fol­lows the police invest­ig­a­tion of a young girl’s death. Inscrut­able detect­ive Toni Servillo dis­cov­ers sev­er­al sus­pects, mean­while his per­son­al own life isn’t going so well.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

As that old war film quote goes, “it’s quiet, too quiet”: only three films open­ing this week­end as the mad rush of the last few weeks works its way through the sys­tem.

Back from the Fest­iv­al (and haven’t I had to say that a lot recently?) is An Edu­ca­tion, adap­ted by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber­’s mem­oir of grow­ing up in 1960s Eng­land “before it became the 60s”. Wise bods are pick­ing new­comer Carey Mul­ligan for an Oscar nom­in­a­tion next year as the lead, and she’s very sol­id sup­port from the likes of Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson and Peter Saarsgard (whose Eng­lish accent is very good judging by the trail­er). The dir­ect­or is Lone Scher­fig who came out of the Dogme move­ment in the late 90s but also made the dark com­edy Wil­bur Wants to Kill Him­self. Empire, Pent­house and Light­house.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Freakin’ school hol­i­days. 9 – count ’em – new films are open­ing this week and most of them are designed to keep rest­less young people out of the hair of their eld­ers and bet­ters. Time is short so I’m just going to list them here:

• G‑Force. Talk­ing cute rodents audi­tion to be spe­cial agents by tak­ing down super-vil­lain Bill Nighy. Read­ings (3D), Empire (2D), Sky City Queens­gate (3D).
• Fame. The re-hash­ing of beloved 80s pop­u­lar trash con­tin­ues (Footloose is next). Read­ings, Empire, Embassy, Sky City Queens­gate
• Shorts. Robert Rodrig­uez puts togeth­er anoth­er vir­tu­ally homemade digit­al fantasy for kids – in the spir­it of Shark Boy and Lava Girl and we all know how much we loved them. Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate
• The Secret of Moon­acre. Former anim­at­or Gabor Csupo made the smart Bridge to Ter­abith­ia the year before last and this is aimed at a sim­il­ar age group. Read­ings, Para­mount.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Still, they are return­ing from the Fest­iv­al: Moon by Bowie’s boy Duncan Jones is a Para­mount exclus­ive which should do quite nicely for them as they pre­pare for new own­er­ship (dis­cuss rumours you might have heard in the com­ments). After three years alone min­ing the moon Sam Rock­well might be going slightly nuts and ima­gin­ing that he’s got com­pany. Or is he?

The Pent­house and the Light­house both share Steph­en Frears’ Chéri and the doc­u­ment­ary that launched the Fest­iv­al back in June, The Septem­ber Issue. Chéri is based on two nov­els by Colette and is a cher­ished pro­ject by acclaimed screen­writer Chris­toph­er Hamp­ton (Dan­ger­ous Liais­ons, The Diving Bell and the But­ter­fly).

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

I think the high­light of the Wel­ling­tonista cinema-going week is likely to be a toss-up between the won­der­ful Van­guard ret­ro­spect­ive at the Film Archive or the restored print of Cas­ab­lanca. The Para­mount has been bring­ing back the ven­er­able old favour­ite reg­u­larly for the last 20 years (always with new­er prints it should be said) and it’s still a big draw. Do you need to know the plot? Read Tom G’s sum­mary here at Ornery World. Two shows a day until Sunday.

Fresh­er fare is on offer else­where but noth­ing is likely to be as sat­is­fy­ing. Atone­ment dir­ect­or Joe Wright returns to the screen with a mod­ern day drama (and more Oscar-bait), The Soloist. Jam­ie Foxx plays a gif­ted cel­list, blighted with men­tal ill­ness and Robert Downey Jr is the hack who befriends him. Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house.

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