This week’s movie releases

You win an Oscar with a thriller steeped in the legacy of Argentina’s Dirty War — how do you follow it up? With a digital kids animation about table soccer, of course — at least, that is, if you’re Juan José Campanella. The Secret in Their Eyes director’s Foosball tells the story of Amadeo, whose life changes when the kid he once thrashed at table football returns home converted into a world-famous soccer player and hungry for revenge. Based on a tale by late writer-cartoonist Roberto Fontanarrosa, the film has broken box-office records in Argentina.

Also making unexpected career choices this week is Avengers director Joss Whedon, who follows up that blockbuster with, what else, but an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing shot in black and white in 12 days in his own home with friends. He even wrote the music himself.

Meanwhile, the cartoons continue in surreal sequel Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. This time round, inventor Flint learns the machine he devised in the first movie that turned water into food is now churning out “foodimals” — animal-food hybrids such as shrimpanzees and double bacon cheespiders — and sets out to destroy it once and for all.

Some grown-up fare comes in the form of Nicole Holofcener’s romantic comedy Enough Said, the late James Gandolfini’s penultimate movie. The Sopranos star features as the new boyfriend of divorced masseuse Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who realizes her best new client is his ex-wife (Catherine Keener) — who likes nothing better than complaining about her former spouse.

A kind of spin-off from the Wayans brothers’ Scary Movie franchise, A Haunted House finds Marlon Wayans going it alone spoofing found footage horror films such as Paranormal Activity. Just to warn you: a sequel is already in the offing.

Four kings

Four giants of world cinema — Portugal’s Pedro Costa and Manoel de Oliveira, Spain’s Víctor Erice and Finland’s Aki Kaurismäki — unite for portmanteau film Centro Histórico, which offers four stories set around the Portuguese city of Guimarães, last year’s European Capital of Culture. While Erice contributes a documentary about Guimarães’ once-booming textile industry, De Oliveira, who celebrated his 105th birthday last week, goes for a biting satire about the tourists who snap the city’s historic center.

Another cinematic collection, but this time by just one director, Juan Cavestany’s Gente en sitios features Maribel Verdú, Coque Malla, Raúl Arévalo, Antonio de la Torre and Eduard Fernández in a selection of stories in which the strange or chaotic make sudden incursions.