The Paperboy
This is the swampy thriller by Lee Daniels (Precious) in which Nicole Kidman, playing a hot-mess Southern vamp, urinates on High School Musical heart-throb Zac Efron, orgasms from telepathic intercourse with John Cusack and spends a good chunk of the flick in a sexually frustrated state. Set in Florida in 1969, the film follows a journalist (Matthew McConaughey) as he investigates the death sentence given to Kidman’s bad-boy fiancé (Cusack). Love it, hate it, but see it. Out February 28
Barbara
Directed by talented Berlin-based director Christian Petzold and set in East Germany in 1980, this cold war drama centres around Dr Barbara Wolff (Nina Hoss, in her fifth Petzold film), exiled to a remote town for applying for an exit visa to join her lover in the West. Under close surveillance by the brutal and relentless Stasi, Barbara plans her escape and attempts to alienate herself from those around her. Beautifully dramatic, dense and delicately haunting. Out March 7.
Oz: The Great and Powerful
From Judy Garland’s Dorothy to Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baums has been adapted for the screen many times, but no version has been as magical or colourful as this epic by Spider-Man auteur Sam Raimi. Oz takes as its premise the arrival in Oz of the wizard (James Franco) and also stars Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams as the three witches. Fantastical. Out March 7.
I Give It a Year
Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall star as young, mismatched newlyweds trying to make it through the bumps of their first year together. I Give It a Year boasts an excellent cast — Simon Baker (in his smoothest role yet), Jason Flemyng and Anna Farris — as well as the producers behind Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually, and Sacha Baron Cohen’s long-time collaborator Dan Mazer, in his directorial debut. This Brit romcom is witty, honest and hits all the right notes. Out February 28.
Harper's BAZAAR Australia, March 2013.