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.