As that old war film quote goes, “it’s quiet, too quiet”: only three films open­ing this week­end as the mad rush of the last few weeks works its way through the sys­tem.

An Education posterBack from the Fest­iv­al (and haven’t I had to say that a lot recently?) is An Edu­ca­tion, adap­ted by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber­’s mem­oir of grow­ing up in 1960s Eng­land “before it became the 60s”. Wise bods are pick­ing new­comer Carey Mul­ligan for an Oscar nom­in­a­tion next year as the lead, and she’s very sol­id sup­port from the likes of Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson and Peter Saarsgard (whose Eng­lish accent is very good judging by the trail­er). The dir­ect­or is Lone Scher­fig who came out of the Dogme move­ment in the late 90s but also made the dark com­edy Wil­bur Wants to Kill Him­self. Empire, Pent­house and Light­house.

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

At the mul­ti­plexes this week are Couples Retreat, a com­edy for grown-ups which brings togeth­er a few of the big­ger names of recent years: Vince Vaughan (a very big name), Jason Bate­man, Jon Favr­eau, Mal­in Aker­man and Temuera Mor­ris­on. Three couples try and solve their prob­lems by going on hol­i­day togeth­er and it’s Jean Reno’s job to sort them out. Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate.

Anoth­er can­did­ate for this year’s beef­cake is Chan­ning Tatum who has used his looks and his physique to win him­self star­ring roles in films like Step Up and G.I. Joe, but has also demon­strated some depth work­ing with dir­ect­ors like Michael Mann (Pub­lic Enemies) and Kim­ber­ley Peirce (Stop-Loss). Fight­ing looks more like the former than the lat­ter – Tatum plays a cage fight­er on his way to the top, man­aged by Ter­rence Howard. It might be Rocky for the Ulti­mate Fight­ing crowd, or it might not. Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate.

This year’s most styl­ish film fest­iv­al starts next Wed­nes­day night at the Embassy. The Itali­an Film Fest­iv­al is nev­er less than inter­est­ing and the mix looks good again. Des­pite the fact that the Nicolin­i’s food at the their func­tions always man­ages to effort­lessly get the media on-side, I will attempt to review the films with the utmost inde­pend­ence. I’ve got four DVDs to watch and I’ll post my pre­view here sim­ul­tan­eous with it’s inser­tion in the Cap­it­al Times next Wed­nes­day. The oth­er releases will be reviewed in the same paper on the same day and online at the new look Funer­als & Snakes shortly after­wards.