Super Bad posterAfter a dis­ap­point­ing week of un-sus­pense­ful sus­pense films we wel­come a couple of poten­tially comed­ic com­ed­ies this week. Firstly, from Judd Apatow, cre­at­or of The 40 Year Old Vir­gin and Knocked Up, comes Super Bad. Co-writ­ten by Knocked Up star (and funny guy) Seth Rogen with child­hood friend Evan Gold­berg when they were about 14, it fol­lows two High School kids (who at one point were going to be called Seth and Evan) on a search for booze and girls so they can lose their vir­gin­ity before they go to col­lege. Play­ing at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Sky City Queens­gate.

The 40 Year Old Vir­gin him­self, Steve Carell, stars in an un-anti­cip­ated sequel to Jim Carrey’s Bruce Almighty: Evan Almighty. Carell returns as Evan Bax­ter: egot­ist­ic­al news­caster in the ori­gin­al; egot­ist­ic­al Con­gress­man in this one and Mor­gan Free­man is also back as God. Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Sky City Queens­gate.

[The rest of this week’s releases after the jump]

John Tra­volta gets to fat up for fun in Hair­spray, a Broad­way music­al ver­sion of the John Waters film from 1988. This one is get­ting the widest release of the year, so far: Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners, Pent­house, Sky City Queens­gate.

The Embassy is being taken in an art­house dir­ec­tion by oper­at­ors Sky City: first example of the new regime is Per­fume: The Story of a Mur­der­er, an adapt­a­tion of one of the best-loved nov­els of recent years. Also play­ing at Rialto and the Pent­house, though why any­one would choose to see it at the Rialto when the Embassy is only a ten minute walk away is bey­ond me. (OK, price and ses­sion choice, maybe)

The Pent­house is deal­ing with their winter doldrums by open­ing films faster than they can be made: also open­ing this week in Brook­lyn is I Do (Prête-moi ta main), anoth­er French romantic com­edy.

Finally, one of the best music doc­u­ment­ar­ies of recent years returns to the Para­mount from the Fest­iv­al: Joe Strum­mer: The Future is Unwrit­ten. And this year’s Itali­an Film Fest­iv­al got itself launched last night. The pro­grammes should be avail­able across town any minute now but if you can’ wait here’s the offi­cial site.