June, New Titles, 'True Grit', 'Blue Valentine'

True Grit

The Coen brothers return, offering their own distinctive take on Charles Portis's revenge-western novel. Jeff Bridges assumes the role of the cycloptic avenger Rooster Cogburn which won John Wayne an Oscar in 1969.

Blue Valentine

The title of this mature and moving new US indie captures the tug of war between the excitement of new love and the misery of its slow, painful death. Young American filmmaker Derek Cianfrance bats us back and forth between all sorts of emotions and moods – hot and cold, hope and despair, energy and lethargy – as he shares with us the exciting beginning and dispiriting end of the five-year marriage.

Other new stuff

How Do You Know

Unstoppable

Marketing Of Madness

No Strings Attached

Glass Lips

Childrens Hospital season 1&2

June, New Titles, 'The Green Hornet', 'Next Three Days', 'Hit List'

This wonky but charming action caper documents the crime-thwarting travails of Britt Reid aka The Green Hornet (Seth Rogen doing Seth Rogen), a lingo-spouting party boy and publishing heir, and Kato (a film-stealing Jay Chou), his quiet Chinese expat mechanic-cum-sidekick who is happily saddled with most of the inventing and fighting duties. Their enemy is debonair crime kingpin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz, rolling out his Oscar-winning, hot-hot-hot-hot-COLD! Hans Landa turn), and with the aid of a slickly remodelled vintage Chrysler, some custom-moulded masks and a pair of silly hats, the pair set out to obliterate the criminal scourge of LA.

The Next Three Days

Fred Cavayé’s popular 2008 French prison-break melodrama ‘Anything for Her’ becomes a terse, overly serious, character-driven potboiler in the hands of Paul Haggis, the writer-director of ‘Crash’ and ‘In the Valley of Elah’. The plot – Russell Crowe’s browbeaten family man finds his life falling apart when his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is convicted of murder and decides to bust her out – promises high-stakes drama and high-octane action, so it’s a shame that it takes ‘The Next Three Days’ well over an hour to get going. When it does, the film is gripping, intense and highly enjoyable. But it’s a long, tough slog to get there.

Other New Stuff...

The Hit List (2011), Cuba Gooding Jr. in a twist on 'Strangers On A Train', as his wishlist of people he'd like dead start dying

Journey Of The ChildMen - Mighty Boosh on Tour

Wonders Of The Solar System

June, New Titles, 'Black Swan' 'Uncle BoonMee...' 'The Fighter'

It’s best to switch off the more sensible side of your mind, along with any idea that you’re going to experience a documentary-style portrait of the world of ballet, before encountering Darren Aronofsky's ‘Black Swan’. It’s a film that really only works if you let yourself be swirled up, like its main character, in a storm of hysteria, paranoia and tears: it’s too impulsive and emotional to be picked apart at the level of logic and too ludicrous to exist in a world other than its own. It’s huge fun, but only if you’re willing to swallow its more bonkers excesses.

Uncle BoonMee Who Can See His Past Lives

And if that isn't the right kind of bonkers for you, then try this Thai noodle. The film joins a dumpy, softly-spoken tamarind farmer (Boonmee) as he takes metaphysical stock of his time on earth while he slowly, gracefully succumbs to kidney disease. As the film rummages through his subconscious, we meet friendly apparitions of his late wife and his son, the latter of whom has been cross-bred with a monkey. We even get a glimpse of a past life when he inhabited the body of a horny catfish.

Other New Stuff for June

La Signora Senza Camelie (1953) Region 2

La Signora Senza Camelie (1953) Blu-Ray

Map Of The Sounds Of Tokyo (2009)

Of Gods And Men (2010) Region 2

Inside Job (2010)

Tamara Drewe (2010)

Restrepo (2010)

Canterbury Tales, The (1972) Region 2

Lemmy (2010)

Last Train Home (2009)

Dead Man (1994) Blu-Ray

Made In Dagenham (2010)

American: The Bill Hicks Story (2010)

Eden Is West (2009)

Two In The Wave (2009)

Morning Glory (2011)

Fighter, The (2010)

Black Swan (2010) Blu-Ray

Another Year (2010)

May, New Titles, 'Glenn Gould', 'The Tourist', 'Love And Other Drugs'

GENIUS WITHIN: The Inner Life Of Glenn Gould

It's an inescapable fact that Gould's singular musical insights – the way he brought out in Bach a mesmeric unity of sound – could only have arisen from a singular personality. An enigmatic musical poet — and the most documented classical musician of the last century — world-renowned pianist Glenn Gould continues to captivate international audiences twenty-six years after his untimely death. Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould humanizes the legend, weaving together an unprecedented array of unseen footage, private home recordings and diaries, as well as compelling interviews with Gould’s most intimate friends and lovers — all exploring the incongruities between Gould’s private reality and his wider image.

THE TOURIST

This is a remarkable film. Take the Oscar-winning director of the universally acclaimed ‘The Lives of Others’, and add not one, but two Oscar-winning screenwriters – Julian Fellowes (‘Gosford Park’) and Chris McQuarrie (‘The Usual Suspects’). Throw in Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, attractive locations in wintry Paris and Venice. Sounds like it can hardly miss, right? Well, ‘The Tourist’ is remarkable because its not inconsiderable talent pool has delivered a would-be ‘light-hearted international crime caper’ which runs the gamut from idiocy to tedium and back again, all the while exuding a smug sense of self-satisfaction which is frankly inexplicable. Long for the days of red London buses, Shirley MacLaine in oriental eye make-up, swishy dissolves and cocktail-hour music? Well, stick with the ’60s celluloid fluff of your choice because it certainly doesn’t get any better here.

(Time Out Film)

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

Woody Allen's latest continues his bumpy ride along the bottom. A shoddy, shallow, unfunny, medium-weight London ensemble drama upscaled to the big screen without a trace of Woody on it, save for the jaunty jazz soundtrack. Almost everyone is mis-cast. File alongside Stephen Frears' upcoming 'Tamara Drewe' for disappointing fare from formerly brilliant director now in the doldrums.

Oh, the story? Alfie leaves Helena to pursue his lost youth and a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine (Punch), Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller. Unhappy in her marriage, Sally develops a crush on her handsome art gallery owner boss, Greg (Banderas), while Roy, a novelist nervously awaiting the response to his latest manuscript, becomes moonstruck over Dia. Zzzzz.

INSPECTOR BELLAMY (2008)

SOMEWHERE (2010)

BEHIND THE BURLY Q (2010)

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (2010)

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (2010) BLU-RAY

TANGLED (2010)

RUBBER (2010)

WAR YOU DON'T SEE, THE (2010)

I, DON GIOVANNI (2009)

LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS (2010)

LITTLE FOCKERS (2011)

LAST EXORCISM, THE (2010)

JACKBOOTS ON WHITEHALL (2010)

RED HILL (2009)

DILEMMA, THE (2010)

MORNING GLORY (2011)

May, New Titles, 'King's Speech'

Buttoned-down British royal suffers speech impediment and hires unconventional Aussie quack to conquer his fear of public oratory. So it’s thanks to the best efforts of writer David Seidler, director Tom Hooper and, especially, leads Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush that ‘The King’s Speech’ isn’t just an enlightening period drama, but a very entertaining, heartfelt and surprisingly funny crowd-pleaser with a glint of Oscar gold in its eye.

Other new stuff in May

BIGGER THAN LIFE (Criterion)

WHO IS HARRY NILSSON?

HIDEAWAY

CANNESMAN

THE DILEMMA

DILLINGER IS DEAD

MACGRUBER

GENIUS WITHIN: Glenn Gould

KES

FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN

SOMEWHERE

BEHIND THE BURLY Q

BROADCAST NEWS

INSPECTOR BELLAMY

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

A WOMAN, A GUN, AND A NOODLE SHOP

April, New Titles, 'Harry Potter 8.1', 'Tron Legacy', 'Megamind'

For over a decade, Disney’s ‘Tron’ was the red-headed stepchild of ’80s genre movies, seen as a blatant attempt to cash in on the arcade craze, a film bursting with style but lacking in substance. But as times changed, ‘Tron’ was re-evaluated: arcade culture was now fashionably retro, and as our world became increasingly digitised, the film’s ideas of virtual reality and complex computerised systems became oddly prescient. It also didn’t hurt that this coincided with Jeff Bridge's rise from dependable leading man to countercultural icon.

Even so, the announcement two years ago that Disney was beginning work on a sequel seemed optimistic in the extreme: not only would this be the longest-gestating franchise attempt in cinema history, but were there really enough retro-nerds around to make the film a genuine commercial prospect? Now, thanks to a geek-targeted marketing campaign of staggering intensity, ‘Tron: Legacy’ is one of the most anticipated multiplex releases of the season. But can the film live up to the slavish hype?

The answer is… sort of.

And then came Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Anyone who complained that the previous episode in the ‘Harry Potter’ saga felt too much like scene-setting for the final showdown will be equally disappointed with ‘Deathly Hallows Part 1’. A film with no beginning and no end but a whole lot of expository middle, this is the least satisfying instalment in the series since Chris Columbus folded up his director’s chair.

Bill Nighy's dour, dandified Minister of Magic sets the tone with a barbed speech bemoaning the state of the magical nation: murders, disappearances and raids are becoming commonplace and no one, it seems, is safe. Least of all our bespectacled hero, who bids farewell to the suburbia of his youth before being whisked away in the film’s only outright action sequence, a dizzying high-speed flying-bike chase through the Dartford tunnel.

Megamind

A steady flow of superhero-movie conventions are given the wink-wink treatment in this hyperactive Dreamworks animation about Megamind, a blue, bulbous-headed scoundrel, voiced by Will Ferrell, who plunges into depression when he unexpectedly kills his rival, Metro Man (voiced by Brad Pitt), and finds himself short of anyone to foil his schemes. At a low ebb (and holding a torch for feisty, Jean Seberg-a-like reporter Roxanne Ritchi, voiced by Tina Fey) he entertains the notion of giving up evil altogether.

If this sounds a little like the recent ‘Despicable Me’, that’s because it rolls with a similar idea, albeit employing a more realistic animation style and a strain of reference-heavy humour aimed at a slightly more mature audience. But the film also pinches a few pages out of the ‘Kick-Ass’ rule book, notably in the way it dismantles the archetypal ‘masked crusader’ and delights in revealing the mundane chores of life as a full-time master of chaos: those jumbo-collared leather capes don’t just stitch themselves, you know.

Other new stuff

Criterion's 'Sweet Smell Of Success'

Criterion's 'Topsy Turvy'

Criterion's 'Senso'

Criterion's 'Still Walking'

Blood Out

An Ordinary Execution

April, New Titles, 'Catfish', 'I Love You Phillip Morris', 'Red'

'Catfish'

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel's brother.. Riveting documentary about nerdy New York artsy hipster who Facebook-friends a gifted 6 year old rural painter in upstate Michigan and falls for her 19 year old sister Megan. His brother is filming the entire affair as it develops online, and they take a roadtrip, far from their metropolitan comfort-zone, to meet the family at last...

See the finished documentary that started so many arguments among old friends about whether it was a set up or not. (Clearly not, surely? - Ed.)

Other titles

Red

Voyage Of The Dawn Treader

Lemmy

Wild Target

Another Year

Certified Copy

The Maid

Peepli Live

Ivul

Get Low

Treme

The Magician (Criterion)

House (Criterion)

This Way Of Life

Wagner And Me

I Love You Phillip Morris