This has got to be one of the best movies about the theatre I’ve seen. Orson Welles was such a charismatic, larger than life figure that I can imagine stepping into his shoes would be a daunting task for any actor, yet as Welles, newcomer McKay does a stellar job.

The film is set in 1937 when Welles' Mercury Theatre were about to stage their first production: Julius Caesar - set in Mussolini's fascist Italy. We see this production take shape through the eyes of Richard Samuels, a young actor who manages to rise through the cast into a speaking role. He is star struck, but manages to keep his head, even when a romance with Sonja Jones threatens to overtake him.

All facets of theatre life are brought to life; the long hours, endless rehearsals, quirky personalities and egos as well as the hazards of stage machinery and props. Efron and Danes turn in good performances and make an attractive couple, but this is McKay's show. He gives his Welles a weight and charisma that make it possible to understand the power this simple man had over those both older and more experienced than he.

Entertaining, informed and never less than insightful, this film is a great companion to the great man's own work.

trailer: www.youtube.com

web: meandorsonwellesthemovie.com

Fashion designer Tom Ford shows off his visual flair with his first feature, a melancholy of slice of life in the day of a suicidal man. Colin Firth gives a career defining performance as George, the English professor who has recently lost his lover and is living a solitary existence in terrible pain.

The film follows him through one day, from his waking in bed alone, a fountain pen leaking ink across pristine white sheets. In this one day he puts his affairs in order, empties his bank vault and gets through to one of his students with a diatribe about fear that has little or nothing to do with the text they are studying. It is the 1960s and the Cuban missile crisis is in the news and the atmosphere of terror is oppressive, hanging over even the most light-hearted moments.

As his best friend, the perennially disappointed Charly, Julianne Moore once again proves what a versatile actress she is. The longing she feels for George and the regret she has over the way her life has eventuated are evident in every movement, every glance she makes. Her drunk scene is a high-point in a film filled with highs.

But we all knew Julianne Moore could act. It is Colin Firth's performance that deserves every accolade he has gotten and more. I have never rated him highly as a performer, but after seeing this film, am forced to reconsider my position. His performance is worth the price of admission alone.

This is a film that will resound long after you leave the theatre, not because of its enormous emotional wallop, but because it leaves behind a residue of sadness and regret that clings to you, and you will find yourself revisiting moments and themes over and over again in the hours and days that follow your viewing. In its own way it is devastating, yet it does it in such a subtle nuanced way, you do not realise the effect it has had until much later.

Just go see it!

web: www.asingleman-movie.com

trailer: http://www.youtube.com

Based on the highly successful novel by Steig Larssen, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a taut and twisty thriller. Mikael is a journalist who has been sentenced to three months in prison following his revealing of a financier’s dodgy tax shelters. Still at large while waiting for the date his incarceration is to begin, he is contacted by an industry tycoon, Venger, who has a forty-year-old mystery he would like solved. Impressed by Mikael's journalistic work, and his tenacity when he knows he is onto something, Venger hires him to try and get some answers.

Mikael moves to Venger's island community and begins investigating, helped with his odd quest by a Goth woman hacker, Elsbeth. Elsbeth has a criminal past of her own, and is reluctant to give away anything about her past.

I can't say much more about the plot without giving it away, so I'll stop here. Anyone who has read the book is likely to be a little disappointed by how compressed the novel has become in this screen translation, despite it being close to two and a half hours long. But for those who haven't read it, there are enough plot twists, dramatic turns and unsavoury characters to fill two regular movies. With news of a US version going into production already, make sure you don't miss the Swedish original!

web: loshombresquenoamabanalasmujeres.es

trailer: youtube trailer

Nominated for 10 Cesar Awards - the French Oscars - Welcome tells the story of the bond that grows between a listless, recently divorced Calais swimming instructor and a Kurdish boy who wants desperately to learn to swim. Having endured three months of clandestine travel to reach Calais from Iraq, Bial is trying to get to London to reunite with his girlfriend. Simon is about to finalize his divorce from Marion, one of the volunteers helping the refugees who flood through the port in hope of a better life in the UK. On an impulse, Simon offers Bial and his friend Zoran a bed for the night, something that is illegal.

The film deals powerfully with the grey areas of morality surrounding the treatment of refugees, but rather than being a big 'message movie', Welcome focuses on the individuals. The performances are fantastic, each character fully drawn and nuanced. While we may question Simon's choices, we can recognize where they have come from and enjoy the way his character develops from the impulse that sets him in motion.

This is a rewarding and superbly made piece of cinema. Don't miss it.

trailer: youtube.com

It is 1984 and eleven-year-old 'Boy' lives with his grandmother, brother and various cousins in a small town on the east coast of New Zealand. His father has been absent for years, ever since his mother died giving birth to his brother, Rocky. The film opens with Boy giving an oral report to the class, explaining who he is and where his father might be. To Boy, his father is a war hero, deep-sea diving adventurer and expert escape artist. Boy is just waiting for his Dad to come home, certain that when he does, life will be better. He might even get to see his idol, Michael Jackson.

So when Alamein (named for the WWII battle) does show up, the reality jars with Boy's fantasy of the man. Having been in prison for years, Alamein returns with two mates in tow to search for some cash Alamein buried in a paddock. He wears a gang patch and claims to be the leader of the Crazy Horses. He has a nice car, and that impresses the kids around the small costal town, if not the adults. Boy sets to bonding with this father, despite his not being quite what he imagined.

As in his previous film, Eagle vs Shark, Waititi manages to seamlessly blend reality and fantasy so the border between the two is blurred. Little brother Rocky's drawings come to life whenever he activates the 'super-powers' he believes he was left with after killing their mother by his birth.

Touching, quirky and full of purely New Zealand moments, Boy is whimsical, tragic and delightful. And whatever you do, don't leave before the closing credits. If you do, you will miss the priceless sight of the entire cast doing a haka in the style of Michael Jackson.

web: www.boythemovie.co.nz

trailer: http://www.youtube.com

Last year's Young @ Heart showed us how singing in a choir could be an uplifting and life affirming activity for people of any age and ethnicity. The Choir confirms this, and adds to it the redemptive qualities that singing in a group can have for a group of hardened criminals.

Shot over four years, The Choir takes us inside Leeukwop Prison, South Africa's largest penitentiary. Jabulani, a teenaged robber, and his fellow inmates struggle for survival, rebellious and angry. When Coleman, a wily old bank robber asks him to join the prison choir, his life is changed forever. The film follows the choir as it prepares to perform at the National Prisoner Choir Competition.

The prisoners are amazingly open, Davie having spent considerable time in the prison, gaining their trust. The stories they tell are often horrific, but we need to see where these people have come from if we are to fully appreciate the distance they have come. Music has changed their lives in such an immense and significant way that it is impossible not to be overcome by emotion when the beautiful voices soar.

This is an inspiring film about finding hope and freedom in one of the unlikeliest places on earth.

trailer: youtube trailer

The follow-up to the hugely successful The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire picks up the story of Lisbeth Salander about a year and a half after the previous film ended. She has been lying low, not even communicating for several months with Millenium editor Mikael Blomqvist. But now she is ready to come home.

Mikael has been working with a freelance journalist, Dag, who, with his girlfriend, has discovered that some very influential Swedes are involved with girls who have been illegally trafficked. About to go public with names, Dag and his girlfriend are murdered and the gun bears prints belonging to none other than Lisbeth Salander.

Soon the police, as well as some very bad men are after her, forcing the tattooed woman to go to extreme measures to keep safe. Her past will not stay buried and as the search for her deepens, we learn more about it and why these bad men might be so eager to get their hands on her. Finally she must meet her past, face to face.

That’s all the plot detail I can go into without giving too much away. Rest assured though, this is a tightly woven thriller with enough action to keep it dynamic even as it examines the darker sides of the characters' psyches. Clearly a bridging story, the film is open-ended, leaving us hanging on the edge of our seats for answers that will, I hope, be forthcoming in the third instalment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

As in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Noomi Rapace is perfect as Salander. She brings to the character a steely toughness that is not hard or mean but underlined with vulnerability and sensitivity. Creating a character this nuanced and complex on screen is no easy feat, yet Rapace makes it easy, even when some of the supporting cast make their villains almost cartoonish.

trailer: www.youtube.com

web: www.millenniumtrilogymovie.com

Diane Kruger stars in this French thriller as a blissfully married wife and mother whose life is thrown into turmoil when she is wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison. Convinced of her innocence, her husband decides to spring her from jail.

First time director Cavaye manages to keep his suspense set-pieces on the right side of plausible and strong performances from Vincent Lindon and Diane Kruger make this a better than average entry into the prison escape movie genre. Beginning the film as a conservative, tweedy schoolteacher, Julien makes the transformation to a driven jail-breaker look natural. Never do we question him or his motives. That he is clearly intelligent, and a thorough researcher makes him all the more plausible. Rather than making this a balls out action film, Cavaye allows the characters room to live and breathe. There are touching moments between Julien and his young son and tense scenes between him and his estranged father.

Taking up a small portion of the running time is Kruger as the imprisoned Lisa. But despite her scant screen-time, she makes her presence felt throughout the film. After all, it is all about her.

As Julien sets his plan in motion, earlier than he had planned to due to a twist of fate, things move fast. Cavaye manages to maintain a high level of tension throughout this action-packed, will he-won't he scenario and you will be on the edge of your seat for the entire twenty minute sequence, impatient to find out if Julien gets away with it.

Enjoyable, exciting and extremely well paced, this noirish thriller will satisfy and thrill even the most jaded film-goer.

trailer: youtube trailer

'The Sun Came Out' is a locally made, intimate, behind the scenes look as Neil Finn invites world class musicians - Johnny Marr, KT Tunstal, Bic Runga, Don McGlashan, members of Radiohead, Wilco and others to New Zealand to write and record an album for the charity Oxfam and put on some live shows, all within a very tight time frame. This is a unique glimpse into the workings of these great artists, their impressions of a New Zealand summer at Piha and the camaraderie of like-minded people thrown together under a great common cause. Witness the love, the humour and especially the music

trailer: youtube.com

web: www.7worldscollide.com

Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2009, Michael Haneke's latest film is as disquieting and frightening as any of his earlier works (Funny Games, Benny's Video) if less in your face about it. Here the setting is an idyllic pastoral village just before WWI. A series of seemingly unconnected accidents, beginning with the doctor being injured when his horse is tripped by a wire, set the villagers reeling.

The village is small and everyone knows each other. The Baron and the Pastor keep the villagers firmly under control with their rigid hierarchy, meting out brutal punishment on anyone who dares to break the iron-bound rules. As the 'accidents' continue - a barn is burned, a child is savagely beaten – a sense of dread pervades the village.

The story is narrated by the village school-teacher, something that is not a coincidence; it is the children who are contaminated by the air of malice and distrust that falls over the village as the horrors continue. The film is long and introduces a large cast of characters as it winds through its discomforting tale, each new scene a possible clue as to who might be the perpetrator of the crimes.

Haneke is known for his shocks, for the horrific images that remain seared on your brain long after you leave the cinema. In The White Ribbon, I was waiting for that moment, expecting something that would jolt me from my seat with its sheer power. I was not disappointed, but rather than the shock coming from a single moment, it was the culmination of the film that left me reeling with the dawning realization that the village was not changing so much as exposing a poison that had lurked beneath for many years.

While not exactly an explanation for the rise of the Nazis in Germany, there is certainly more than a hint here of a hypocritical society desperately in need of change. Powerful, frightening and never less than enthralling, this film has a cold precision that will leave you with a sense of wrongness that you may not be able to shake or understand until long after leaving the cinema. It did not have quite the effect The Piano Teacher had on me, but was no less shocking, albeit in a slightly different way.

trailer: www.youtube.com

web: www.thewhiteribbon.ca

In Venice, 1763, writer Lorenzo da Ponte leads a life of sin and excess. Originally a priest, his numerous affairs lead to his exile in Vienna in 1781. He is introduced by his friend and mentor, Giacomo Casanova, to the King's preferred composer, Salieri and one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As a means to undermine his rival's career, Salieri tricks Mozart into hiring da Ponte as his librettist. Little does he know that da Ponte's expansive personality and exploits in Vienna will inspire Mozart's most powerful composition, Don Giovanni.

Lusciously shot and with the most gorgeous costumes seen on screen for a long time, I Don Giovanni is a spectacular film in the best sense of the word. 18th century Venice and Vienna are painstakingly recreated.

History buffs may sneer at a few historical inaccuracies, but they exist more as shorthand for the storytelling than as malicious distortions of the facts. This is a human drama with an historical setting, not an historical drama.

Spanish director Saura is known for the passion he brings to the screen, and music has long been a favourite subject for him through such films as Carmen, Salome and Tango. The actors are uniformly good and the women in particular are spectacularly good looking.

This is a stunning looking film with plenty of love, lust, jealousies and creative tensions to keep it engaging from first scene to last.

web: www.luckyred.it/iodongiovanni

Britain's answer to Gran Torino stars Michael Caine, and actor whose face and voice are almost as familiar to movies-goers as those of Clint Eastwood. It is a revenge thriller that depends on an older actor to convince us that he is still capable of acts of extreme violence. If anyone can, it’s Caine.

Harry Brown lives in a London housing estate with his dying wife. The estate has been taken over by drug dealers and nobody is safe on the streets anymore. To begin with Harry seems a lonely sad geezer who spends his days with a mate, Leonard, playing chess in the pub on the estate. Leonard’s life is as miserable as Harry's. The thugs have been shoving dog poo through his mail slot. One day, when they shove burning newspaper through as well, he loses it and heads to an underpass the gang controls to confront them.

Frampton, a young police officer has to tell Harry that his friend has been killed. Harry tells the police officer that the police have no power in the area and she has to agree. Harry takes matters into his own hands, seeking revenge for Leonard’s death and trying to take back the neighbourhood for decent folk.

The film succeeds because Caine never steps out of character. Even when things turn ugly and he is forced to do things he never thought he would, he remains an old geezer. The film brings up several issues including police power, and urban crime, but the issues never bog down what is, at the heart, a darn good story.

Dramatic, powerful and completely without the CGI that most films seem dependent on these days, Harry Brown relies on good storytelling and characterization to create a compelling and riveting film.

web: www.harrybrownthemovie.co.uk

With Sea Shepherd's actions in our own waters making headlines recently, there seems no better time to screen this outstanding documentary about the organisation's founder, Paul Watson. The film takes us through Paul's activist background; his first claim to fame is having been the youngest founding member of Greenpeace. Once he realized that Greenpeace were primarily about raising funds and awareness and less about actually protecting the ocean, he left them to form his own organization to do more.

Now he is best known as the vigilante environmentalist who arrests illegal fishermen and shark-finners (see Sharkwater which we screened in 2008 for his scene stealing turn). This documentary covers several of Paul's most recent and noteworthy accomplishments including the time Paul saw Japanese fishermen fishing illegally. He rammed their boat after documenting their criminal act. The Japanese vessel filed a complaint against him. Paul admitted guilt and provided his videotape of the infarction as evidence to the courts. The fishermen never turned up to court and ended up dropping all charges, claming the event never happened.

A more disturbing section of the film deals with the Canadian culling of baby fur seals. Not only is the slaughter of these beautiful creatures horrific to watch, but the spewing invective coming from the cullers at the Sea Shepherd crew is full of blind, misguided hatred.

In the face of such a glowing portrayal, it would be easy to imagine that director Ron Colby kept something off camera, some darker side of Watson that he doesn’t wish to show. But Paul is an open book, admitting openly to damaging vessels whose occupants are performing illegal acts. But he also proudly claims never to have killed or injured anyone in the process. He has complete knowledge of maritime law, and is enforcing it in places where no national government is doing so.

Charismatic and committed, Paul Watson is a vigilante, but not in the classic sense of the word. The cause he champions is an important one, and he and his organization are clearly taking on a role that nobody else is willing to. This film will, I'm sure, bring more people together to support him.

web: www.pirateforthesea.com

The MacRae brothers won the Australian version of Project Greenlight with the script for The View From Greenhaven, and it is easy to see why this was picked as the winning script. Dorothy and Dashiell are a retired couple living in the idyllic town of Greenhaven. Dash is a grumpy old bastard, at odds with everyone and everything, while Dot grins and bears it, the very picture of the long suffering wife. When their daughter Kate, and son-in-law present them with a mystery train trip as a gift, Dash reacts with customary bad-temper. Dot decides this is the last straw, and tells Dash he'll have to make an effort and come with her, or she’ll leave for good.

The mystery train trip takes them to the least likely and worst place imaginable, and Dash’s attitude threatens to ruin the trip for everyone.

Chris Haywood and Wendy Hughes are wonderful as Dash and Dot, every world-weary glance or gesture rings with truth. They are ably supported by the rest of the cast, all well written, fully developed characters with their own lives to live.

Feel good has never felt this good, and with shades of It's a Wonderful Life, this is an auspicious debut for two young film makers I hope we will see much more of in the future.

trailer: imdb.com

Famously anonymous yet attention seeking street artist Banksy turns his hand to cinema with this odd documentary that manages to be both about the artist, and by the artist, without ever getting close to him. Thierry Guetta is a hyperactive Frenchman in LA who is obsessed with filming everything he comes across. On a trip to France, he hangs out with his cousin, street artist Space Invader and discovers that he loves the thrill of street art. Back in LA he throws himself into meeting and filming as many street artists as he can, getting intimately involved with them and their work.

It is through these friendships that Guetta meets Banksy and the elusive artist allows Guetta to follow and film him as he does his work so long as his face is never exposed. Through Guetta's camera we see Banksy erect a blow up Guantanamo Bay prisoner at Disneyland, erect a twisted red phone booth on a London Street and get a look at the boxes of counterfeit banknotes with Lady Di’s face on them that Banksy produced.

Fascinated to see what Guetta has made out of the footage, Bansky asks to see the finished doco and is horrified at the result. He then urges Guetta to go out and make his own art and takes over the film project, following Guetta as he mounts the most insanely huge, self-indulgent and talentless art exhibition possible.

The film is hilarious and disturbing by turns, and its commentary on the art world is both cynical and painfully adroit. This film is not just for street-art aficionados, or art buffs. There are enough cons and conspiracy theories here to fill a dozen films, and Guetta is a mad guide through it all.

web: www.banksyfilm.com

Anyone who thinks Joan Rivers is nothing more than a poster-girl for plastic surgery should see this film. Filmmakers Stern and Sundberg spent a year with Rivers (her 75th) and have managed to put together a complex and multi-layered portrait of a woman who is much more than just a funny gal.

Driven is the only word you can use to describe the woman. She begins the film lamenting the white space in her diary, comparing it to those from the heyday when she was booked for 3 or 4 events a day. Unable to rest, she sets about filling those pages, taking whatever work she can get, and making her own work when she can't get it.

She is unapologetic about her lifestyle, saying she prefers to work hard and keep herself in the luxury she likes, rather than living carefully. And seeing the interior of her New York apartment, you know she's telling the truth.

She is a born entertainer, trying out new material on anyone she comes into contact with. After the opening night of her play in London, she pores over reviews with her assistant, gleaning as much meaning from each one as she can.

Frank about everything, Rivers does not shy away from discussing her own family tragedy, explaining that a TV movie she and daughter Melissa did about their lives, playing themselves was therapy.

This is a thoughtful and thought provoking portrait of a woman whose career has spanned five decades, and continues to persevere long after most women performers have gracefully faded from the spotlight.

web: ifcfilms.com