Van Helsings and Riddicks, Potters and Shreks; Catwomen and Spider-Men. There’s a lot of stuff to pull out of the closets this summer and most of it is exactly what we’d expect.
Summer traditionally is the season of fun, and that’s what Hollywood is putting in the theaters once again: movies intended to pass our time entertainingly and excitingly, to take us out of the heat and plop us in those air-conditioned stadium seats.
They’ve no doubt succeeded . . . some of the time. There are also offbeat or foreign gems such as Takeshi Kitano’s “Zatoichi” from Japan, Hector Babenco’s “Carandiru” from Brazil and Jim Jarmusch’s “Coffee and Cigarettes” from the good old USA. There’s also “Troy,” one Hollywood blockbuster that, like “The Lord of the Rings” or “Master and Commander,” reminds us that big movies can be terrific ones as well.
There’s a lot more too — and, like you, I haven’t seen the vast majority yet. As 1959’s Gigdet or today’s Olsen twins might say, “Let’s hit the beach.” (And as always, listed release dates are subject to change.)
May 7
“NEW YORK MINUTE”
(Director: Dennie Gordon. Starring: Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen). Those super-cute twins, playing sisters (one a rebel, one a Republican) invade the Big Apple, with truant officer Eugene Levy hot on their trail.
“VAN HELSING”
(Director: Stephen Sommers. Starring: Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh). Gabriel Van Helsing (Jackman), the scholarly vampire hunter of “Dracula,” gets his own movie in this special effects extravaganza from “Mummy”-master Sommers, packed with references to classic Universal horror movies.
“THE AGRONOMIST”
(Director: Jonathan Demme). Documentary on the life and martyrdom of famed Haitian radio journalist-activist Jean Dominique. In English and Spanish, subtitled.
“SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER . . . AND SPRING”
(Director: Kim Ki-duk). Lyrical rite-of-passage film on the lives of two monks, one old, one young, as the seasons and their roles change.
“SUPER SIZE ME”
(Director: Morgan Spurlock). What happens when a moviemaker turns on the cameras and converts his diet to all-McDonald’s-all-the-time? A surprise Sundance hit had them, uh, lovin’ it.
May 14
“TROY”
(Director: Wolfgang Petersen. Starring: Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Peter O’Toole). Another saga spurred by the face that launched a thousand ships and dozens of movies: Helen of Troy’s (Diane Kruger). Also around: Achilles (Pitt), Paris (Bloom), Hector (Eric Bana) and the Trojan War bunch.
“BREAKIN’ ALL THE RULES”
(Director: Daniel Taplitz. Starring: Jamie Foxx and Gabrielle Union). Foxx becomes a best-selling adviser on breaking up relationships, then has trouble starting and keeping one with best friend Morris Chestnut’s gal (Union).
“THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD”
(Director: Guy Maddin. Starring: Isabella Rossellini and Maria de Medeiros). Maddin, the master of retro ersatz ’20s-’30s filmmaking, stages a bizarre Canadian contest for the world’s saddest songs and musicians. Hint: Kern and Hammer-stein’s “The Song Is You” gets the most playtime.
“TWILIGHT SAMURAI”
(Director: Yoji Yamada). An aging samurai (Hiroyuki Sanada) is the focal point for this old-style historical drama from “Tora-San” series writer-director Yamada.
May 19
“SHREK 2”
(Director: Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon. With the voices of Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy). Sequel (from the same filmmakers) to one of 2001’s biggest commercial/critical hits: The fairy-tale-in-reverse where the monster (Myers) actually won the beautiful princess (Diaz) — and deserved to.
May 21
“VALENTIN”
(Director: Alejandro Agresti. Starring: Rodrigo Noya, Carmen Maura). Buenos Aires lad living with his grandmother (Maura) yearns to be an astronaut and longs even more for his father to start a new family. In Spanish, subtitled.
“STATESIDE”
(Director: Reverge Anselmo. Starring: Val Kilmer). Shades of “An Officer and a Gentleman”: Rich kid Mark Deloach (Jonathan Tucker) has a rough time with a Marine drill instructor (Kilmer), who turns boys (well, big guys) into men.
May 28
“THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW”
(Director: Roland Emmerich. Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal). The next Ice Age hits New York City, just as Professor Quaid was about to drop by to save son Gyllenhaal. More worldwide disaster from Emmerich (“Independence Day”) who likes to put his actors (here including Emmy Rossum and Sela Ward) through the worst.
“RAISING HELEN”
(Director: Garry Marshall. Starring: Kate Hudson, Joan Cusack). The trials and humors of sudden motherhood — a plucky young woman is forced to raise her late sister’s kids — as delivered by “Pretty Woman’s” director and the belle of “Almost Famous.”
“SAVED!”
(Director: Brian Dannelly. Starring: Mandy Moore). Unaware of the perils of casting first stones, a Southern Baptist High School ostracizes a pregnant classmate (Moore), a sin that won’t go unnoticed.
“COFFEE AND CIGARETTES”
(Director: Jim Jarmusch. Starring: Roberto Benigni, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Wu Tang Clan). Jarmusch’s wry black-and-white “SNL” comedy segments, all of which have a similar setup — two or three people gabbing over coffee and cigarettes — are strung together for a comedy anthology that’s definitely stranger than paradise.
“LOVE ME IF YOU DARE”
(Director: Yann Samuell). Another French psychological romance about dangerous amours: Childhood chums keep playing forbidden games well into adulthood. In French, subtitled.
“SOUL PLANE”
(Director: Jessy Terrero. Starring: Tom Arnold, Snoop Dogg). A hefty lawsuit gives an imaginative young guy the chance to design and run the airline — and the friendly skies — of his dreams.
“THE TRILOGY” PART ONE: ON THE RUN, PART TWO: AN AMAZING COUPLE, PART THREE: AFTER THE LIFE.
(Director: Lucas Belville.) In this festival hit, a fascinating blend of three genres, the same story is told from three views, becoming a crime thriller, comedy or drama, depending on whom we’re watching. In French, subtitled.
“A SLIPPING DOWN LIFE”
(Director: Toni Kalem. Starring: Lili Taylor, Guy Pearce). Penetrating look at a small-town crush, from the Anne Tyler novel: Outsider Taylor falls for pop singer Pearce and her life changes — for better and worse.
June 4
“MINDHUNTERS”
(Director: Renny Harlin. Starring: LL Cool J, Val Kilmer). Seven young would-be FBI profilers are plagued by serial killings that are obviously being committed by one of them.
“HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN”
(Director: Alfonso Cuaron. Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Gary Oldman, Emma Watson). The third in the “Harry Potter” series returns the leads (minus the late Richard Harris, replaced by Michael Gambon) to Hogwarts, for more fun and sorcery, adding a new director: Cuaron, of both “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and (more pertinently) “A Little Princess.”
“BUKOWSKI: BORN INTO THIS”
(Director: John Dullaghan). America’s favorite lower-depths novelist-poet and ex-postal employee, Charles Bukowski — who emerged from alcoholism and poverty into world literary fame — is profiled and deservedly celebrated.
“CARANDIRU”
(Director: Hector Babenco). Based on the memoirs of a dedicated Sao Paolo prison doctor, Drauzio Varella, and his eyewitness accounts of Brazil’s most famous prison riot, this is another unblinking true-crime drama from Babenco, maker of the 1981 classic “Pixote.”
June 11
“THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK”
(Director: David Twohy. Starring: Vin Diesel, Judi Dench, Thandie Newton). Riddick, Diesel’s tough character in writer-director Twohy’s hit 2000 thriller “Pitch Black,” returns in a sci-fi adventure that sounds a bit like “Star Wars” filtered through the “Matrix.”
“THE STEPFORD WIVES”
(Director: Frank Oz. Starring: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler). There’s something wrong with those perfect suburban housewives. Ira Levin’s novel and the 1975 Bryan Forbes movie put a new term into the English language. This well-cast remake from “In & Out” team Oz and Paul Rudnick brings it back.
“BAADASSSSS!”
(Director: Mario Van Peebles. Starring Mario Van Peebles). One of the major African-American indie hits of the ’70s, Melvin Van Peebles’ in-your-face outlaw saga “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” is recalled by son Mario — who made his acting debut in “S.S.B.S.” and here plays his dad.
“TAMALA 2010: A PUNK CAT IN SPACE”
(Director: tol. ). Japanese anime at its weirdest and wildest: A cute but foul-mouthed kitty traverses space and time to battle the Dark God of Death.
“THE BIG ANIMAL”
(Director: Jerzy Stuhr). One of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s actors, Stuhr (“White”) here uses an old unfilmed Kieslowski screenplay for an uncharacteristically gentle comedy about a domesticated camel. In Polish, subtitled.
“STRAYED (LES EGARES)”
(Director: Andre Techine. Starring: Emmanuelle Beart). An intense World War II-era drama from Techine (“Wild Reeds”) about a beautiful young mother (Beart) fleeing Nazi invaders and her romance with another, more mysterious young fugitive.
“THE BLIND SWORDSMAN: ZATOICHI”
(Director: Takeshi Kitano. Starring: Kitano). A major prize winner and critical hit at Toronto: Kitano’s new version of the classic samurai hero series that starred Shintaro Katsu as deadly blind swordsman Zatoichi. In Japanese, subtitled.
June 16
“AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS”
(Director: Frank Coraci. Starring: Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan). Coogan and Chan assume the roles of Phileas Fogg, and Passepartout, played by David Niven and Cantinflas in the Oscar-winning ’56 version, most famous of the many adaptations of Jules Verne’s globe-circling adventure.
June 18
“CONTROL ROOM”
(Director: Jehane Noujaim). The controversial documentary and Sundance hit about Arab news network Al Jazeera, a look at objectivity and journalism, which convincingly shows abuses of both by the Bush administration.
“DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY”
(Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber. Starring: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn). Once again, an underdog local team (led by Vaughn) goes up against a monolith (led by Stiller). Odd new wrinkle: The sport is that old school recess mainstay, dodgeball.
“DARKNESS”
(Director: Jaume Balaguero. Starring: Anna Paquin). Paquin in the country discovers that a dark past haunts her house and all kinds of gruesome things are about to happen.
“STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL”
(Director: Byambasuren Davaa, Luigi Falorni). Critically admired German documentary about the relations between camels and camel-herders in the Mongolian Gobi Desert.
“THE TERMINAL”
(Director: Steven Spielberg. Starring: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci). Hanks plays a stateless Eastern European refugee in pre-9/11 times, who has to take up residence, illegally, in New York City’s airport. Zeta-Jones is his flight attendant amour, Tucci an airport security nemesis.
June 23
“THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR”
(Director: Tod Williams. Starring: Jon Foster, Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger). The oft-adapted novelist John Irving, with part of his 1998 “A Widow for One Year” refashioned by director/screenwriter Williams. It’s about a teenager who falls in love with the wife (Basinger) of a novelist (Bridges).
“WHITE CHICKS”
(Director: Keenan Ivory Wayans. Starring: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans). The Wayans brothers try to do “Some Like It Hot,” as adaptable FBI agents who act as bodyguards (and eventually doubles) for two ditzy heiresses.
June 25
“TWO BROTHERS”
(Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud. Starring: Guy Pearce). The brothers are a pair of tiger cubs: one a ferocious predator, the other a famed circus animal.
“THE NOTEBOOK”
(Director: Nick Cassavetes. Starring Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands). A young couple who fell in love as teenagers reunite after WW II; from the Nicholas Sparks book.
“GARFIELD”
(Director: Peter Hewitt. With the voice of Bill Murray). The comic cat finally hits the screen, a few meows late.
“NICOTINA”
(Director: Hugo Rodriguez. Starring: Diego Luna). Violent, tongue-in-cheek thriller about a scam gone wrong, with “Y tu Mama Tambien’s” Luna as a computer hacker turned criminal. In Spanish, subtitled.
“THE MUDGE BOY”
(Director: Michael Burke. Starring: Emile Hirsch). A Sundance project: Small- town motherless Vermont boy suffers from “outsider” stigma, taunts and betrayal.
“DE-LOVELY”
(Director: Irwin Winkler. Starring: Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd). Gay songwriting great Cole Porter got a dubious movie bio in 1946’s cleaned-up “Night and Day” (with Cary Grant). This one promises a more factual basis.
June 30 (the date as published has been corrected in this text)
“SPIDER-MAN 2”
(Director: Sam Raimi. Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina). Marvel Comics phenom Peter Parker (Maguire), whose alter-ego is the web-spinning crime fighter Spidey, returns with old pals and a new movie villain: Molina as grabby Dr. Octopus.
July 2
“AMERICA’S HEART AND SOUL”
(Director: Louis Schwartzberg). A documentary celebration of America, in cross-country images, interviews and song.
“GODZILLA” (50TH ANNIVERSARY RERELEASE)
(Director: Ishiro Honda. Starring: Takashi Shimura). Tokyo’s favorite monster in his first attack and the original cut. In Japanese, subtitled.
“THE CLEARING”
(Director: Pieter Jan Brugge. Starring: Robert Redford, Willem Dafoe, Helen Mirren). “Insider” producer Brugge comes up with a social thriller about an industrialist (Redford) kidnapped by an angry ex-worker (Dafoe).
“BEFORE SUNSET”
(Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy). One of the great ’90s romances, Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” is revisited by the director-writer. Stars Hawke and Delpy remain in this nine-years-after Parisian sequel.
July 7
“KING ARTHUR”
(Director: Antoine Fuqua. Starring: Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, Ioan Gruffudd). Moving from “Training Day” to “Morte d’Arthur,” Fuqua tackles the much-filmed legend of King Arthur (Owen), Guinevere (Knightley), Lancelot (Gruffudd) and the Knights of the Round Table. This approach is grittier.
July 9
“ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY”
(Director: Adam McKay. Starring: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate). Powered by “Elf” receipts, “SNL” titan Ferrell brings us the ’70s satiric sage of a raunchy news anchor and his battles with political correctness and a female interloper (Applegate).
“MY SISTER MARIA”
(Director: Maximilian Schell). Schell’s heartbreaking portrait of his elder sister, ’50s and ’60s renowned actress Maria Schell, and her sad deterioration.
“RIDING GIANTS”
(Director: Stacy Peralta). Surfing documentary (stretching back to the ’50s) from the director of the hot Venice Beach skateboard doc “Dogtown and Z-Boys.”
July 16
“THE CORPORATION”
(Directors: Jennifer Abbott, Mark Achbar). Scathing inside look at corporations past and present; the speakers include Michael Moore, Winston Churchill, George W. Bush and Josef Stalin.
“SEDUCING DR. LEWIS”
(Director: Jean-Francois Pouliot). Canadian comedy about a small town trying to “seduce” a doctor (David Boutin) into a five-year residency needed to attract a plastics plant.
“THE INTENDED”
(Director: Kristian Levring. Starring: Janet McTeer). Primo actress McTeer and Dogma 95 director Levring (“The King Is Alive”) collaborated on the script of this thriller about dark doings at a Malaysian trading post.
“I, ROBOT”
(Director: AleProyas. Starring: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan). Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, which gave us the priceless “Three Laws of Robotics,” here become a sci-fi vehicle for Smith, who plays the future cop trailing a robot murder suspect.
July 23
“A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD”
(Director: Michael Mayer. Starring: Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn, Dallas Roberts). Another, earlier novel by Michael Cunningham (“The Hours”) inspired this bisexual triangle drama with Farrell torn between two lovers, female and male.
“THE BOURNE SUPREMACY”
(Director: Paul Greengrass. Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Joan Allen). Damon returns to the scene of the crimes from the twisty 2002 Robert Ludlum smash, “The Bourne Identity.” With new direction from Greengrass (“Bloody Sunday”).
“SHE HATE ME”
(Director: Spike Lee. Starring: Reynaldo Rosales, Monica Bellucci, Ellen Barkin). Lee, on a rest from big issues, takes on the subjects of biotechnology and professional babymaking in this comic outing.
“CATWOMAN”
(Director: Pitof. Starring: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt). Gotham City’s feline femme fatale in a sexy Batman-less updating from Berry and the “Alien: Resurrection” effects guy Pitof.
July 30
“THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE”
(Director: Jonathan Demme. Starring: Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep). The classic John Frankenheimer-Richard Condon thriller about a brainwashed Cold War assassin updated to the post-Gulf War era; with Washington and Streep in the Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury parts.
“FATHER AND SON”
(Director: Aleksandr Sokurov). The latest from the director of the great “Russian Ark” is a mystical study of a father-son bond in a military environment. In Russian, subtitled.
“GARDEN STATE”
(Director: Zach Braff. Starring: Braff, Natalie Portman). A quirky small-town romance between a TV actor and an epileptic is at the center of this Sundance movie.
“THE VILLAGE”
(Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Sigourney Weaver). Shyamalan, the fright-master of “The Sixth Sense,” tries some 19th Century horror in this tale of beasts in the woods and love in bloom.
“HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE”
(Director: Danny Leiner. Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn). A fast-food comedy about Third World college roommates Cho and Penn on the make in America.
“METALLICA — SOME KIND OF MONSTER”
No-holds-barred look at rock band Metallica and their troubles, done surprisingly with their consent.
“THUNDERBIRDS”
(Director: Jonathan Frakes. Starring: Bill Paxton, Ben Kingsley). The cult British TV puppet sci-fi series becomes the live-action effects-action tale of a USAF colonel (Paxton) and his five talented, heroic sons.
Aug. 6
“STANDER”
(Director: Bronwen Hughes. Starring: Thomas Jane). Dramatic study of racial relations in South Africa, centering on white cop Andres Stander (Jane).
“ALIEN VS. PREDATOR”
(Director: Paul W.S. Anderson. Starring: Alexa Woods, Sebastian de Rosa). Oh, give us a break. Somewhere in Antarctica, Sigourney Weaver’s old nemesis takes on Schwarzeneggers’s old foe–without Sig or Ahnald to add star power.
“COLLATERAL”
(Director: Michael Mann. Starring: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith). After “Magnolia,” Cruise exposes his nasty side again — as a hit man on a murder tour of L.A. in a commandeered cab, with Foxx driving.
Aug. 11
“THE PRINCESS DIARIES 2: ROYAL ENGAGEMENT”
(Director: Garry Marshall. Starring: Anne Hathaway, Julie Andrews). One of 2001’s most popular (if sappy) romances about an American girl turned princess (Hathaway) was “Roman Holiday” lite to begin with; the sequel promises, maybe, more adult appeal.
Aug. 13
“OPEN WATER”
(Director: Chris Kentis). An indie horror-suspense movie about swimming in shark-infested waters; done without effects and reportedly very scary.
“YU-GI-OH!”
(Director: Ryosuke Takahashi). The Japanese TV cartoon series about future teenagers transferred (unwillingly?) to film.
“WE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE”
(Director: John Curran. Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts). From another story by Andre Dubus, whose “Killers” inspired “In the Bedroom,” this infidelity drama mixes and matches two friendly couples in a sexual tangle.
Aug. 20
“EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING”
(Director: Renny Harlin. Starring: Stellan Skarsgaard). Harlin, surprisingly, takes us back before the beginning of the William Friedkin-William Peter Blatty 1973 horror classic about demonic possession.
“BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS”
(Director: Stephen Fry. Starring: Emily Mortimer, Dan Aykroyd, Peter O’Toole). Writer-director Stephen Fry has a go at Evelyn Waugh’s witty “Vile Bodies,” a satiric tale of England’s idle young rich between wars and (here) during WWII. It begins bright and blithe, descends into darkness.
“CELLULAR”
(Director: David R. Ellis. Starring: Kim Basinger, William H. Macy). Colin Farrell had trouble with phone booths, but Bill Macy should stay away from cell phones. In this thriller, a wrong cellular number triggers a desperate hunt for crooks and kidnappers.
“I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD”
(Director: Mike Hodges. Starring: Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Hodges and Owen, who teamed up for the noir critical hit “Croupier,” rejoin forces for more noir: a “Get Carter-ish” look at London gang life with Owen as a retired crook lured back in after his brother’s murder.
“WITHOUT A PADDLE”
(Director: Steven Brill. Starring: Matthew Lillard, Burt Reynolds). A comic version of “Deliverance,” with Reynolds, sadly, as one of the backwoods villains.
“DANNY DECKCHAIR”
(Director: Jeff Balsmeyer. Starring: Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto). Whimsical Australian comedy about hard-working Danny (Ifans) who goes sailing accidentally off into the skies on a balloon-carried deck chair and finds his life changed.
“PLAYTIME”
(Director: Jacques Tati. Starring: Tati). One of the all-time great French comedies: Tati’s magical, almost wordless look at the playground of modern, mechanized Paris, as experienced by bumbling, gangly M. Hulot. In French, subtitled.
Aug. 27
“ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID”
(Director: Dwight H. Little). As if the first “Anaconda” weren’t enough, here’s another, spurred by a hunt for the rare life-enhancing Black Orchid.
Also
“FACING WINDOWS”
(Director: Ferzan Oztepek). A hot Italian drama, from the director of “Steambath.” Italian, subtitled.
“SINCE OTAR LEFT”
(Director: Julie Bertucelli).
A Cannes prize-winner, Bertucelli’s look at modern Georgia follows three women adjusting to the Chekhovian crumbling of an empire. French and Russian, subtitled.
