THE KING'S SPEECH (*****)
Dir: Tom Hooper. Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter
It's easy to forget how satisfying English drama is when it's done well. While easy to dismiss as merely ideal Oscar bait – Brit royalty, personal afflictions overcome, etc - and a soft target for (well-justified) criticisms of historical inaccuracy, you forgive it all when you watch because it is simply so perfect.
Here it all comes together. The cast are on top form: Colin Firth is heartbreakingly complex and subtle as the King in waiting, terrified of having his stuttering revealed in public; Geoffrey Rush, the uncommon but common Australian speech therapist, never gets too cute despite being handed the lion's share of delightful monarchy-baiting lines; Helena Bonham Carter is just a doll; the rest, including Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi and a host of top UK thesps are effortlessly right.
And, best of all, the script gives real room for the actors to bring depth to their characters: it has zingers a-plenty but still finds time for moments of telling contemplation.
It goes without saying that the whole thing absolutely looks the bizzo, so all you have to do is sit back and watch people who really know what they're doing do it really well.
A pleasure.

Apparently, some people were expecting Black Swan (****) to be a fairly straight ballet film and left cinemas in shock. I hope that's true. In case word's not out yet, Black Swan is a lurid psychological horror flick, charting its heroine's descent into madness as she struggles to incarnate both the chaste white swan and the unrepressed black swan of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. The only non-horror element is the lack of bloodshed, otherwise it's all crazy dream sequences, hallucinations and bad juju. Natalie Portman leads a quartet of great female performances and the dancing is dynamically rendered. But don't take it too seriously…
Written, directed and produced by Simon Rumley, Red White & Blue (***) is a tough little Austin, Texas-set indie, following the life of promiscuous Erica (Amanda Fuller) as she man-hops and looks for work. Said man-hopping leads her to Noah Taylor's damaged Iraq veteran and a tentative relationship. There's also the story of a young guitar player and when eventually the characters intersect, it is with predictably unfortunate results. It's a very ‘Sundancey' film, slow and observational despite the occasional bouts of sex and violence, superbly acted, and building towards an intense climax of depressingly believable brutality.
Lost City Raiders (*) is one of those trashy cheap rip-offs that you watch by mistake. But it'll only take five minutes before you realise the unendurable level of bollocks you are about to subject yourself to, so take my advice and turn it off immediately. James Brolin stars in this Made-for-TV nonsense about a post-global warming world, now covered in water. He's a salvager, tasked by the ‘New Vatican' to recover a mythical artefact that has power to make the waters recede a la Moses. Cheap and tedious with no redeeming excesses.
Sometimes you just despair about television in New Zealand. Along comes a new series from the creators of The Wire, a programme generally talked of as amongst the best ever; it's set in a city recovering from a natural disaster; already it's midway through the second season in America and has been renewed for a third. Yet we here had to wait till it hit DVD shelves. Treme (*****) – pronounced ‘Tremay' after the key musical district – is a brilliant New Orleans slice of life: musicians, cooks, bar owners, Mardi Gras chiefs, the everyday people of the Crescent City trying to get back on their feet and hussle and keep it together. Great slow-burning vital drama with constant bursts of amazing music. Best thing I should have seen on television all year.