Fast & Furious posterAt last I get some time to pre­view this week’s new releas­es and, frankly, it hard­ly seems worth it. I’ve just got in from two of the most dispir­it­ing expe­ri­ences I’ve had in a cin­e­ma in some time. Full reviews will come when I’ve had a chance to find the right kind of lan­guage to describe pre­cise­ly how unam­bi­tious Fast & Furi­ous and 17 Again are, a chal­lenge I must rise to before Cap­i­tal Times dead­line on Mon­day night. Fast & Furi­ous is the fourth in the series of petrol-head thrillers and orig­i­nal stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walk­er are both back. That fact might mean some­thing to some­one, some­where.

Mean­while, High School Musi­cal star Zac Efron gets a vehi­cle of his own as the young ver­sion of depressed 37 year old fail­ure Matthew Per­ry. Some not quite explained mag­ic gives him his young body back and the chance to put things right. Both Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate.

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

If you real­ly must go to the cin­e­ma to see some­thing new this week­end, maybe the two Asian con­tenders will be more your style: Hong Kong thriller Sniper is a Read­ings exclu­sive and Ong bak 2 means mar­tial arts nut-job Tony Jaa is back — he also directs this time around. That’s an Embassy exclu­sive. Final­ly, I’m try­ing to keep my sched­ule clear for Mon­day night’s Film Soci­ety screen­ing of the art­house clas­sic Diva (in 35mm at the Para­mount).

The com­mer­cial releas­es will be reviewed in next week’s Cap­i­tal Times (and online at Funer­als & Snakes soon after). If you’ve seen any of these (or just want to talk about how deep the piles of rub­bish get after a Fast & Furi­ous screen­ing), add your thoughts to the com­ments.