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.