The Big Guns
* Today: "Iron Man" - Tony Stark isn't your typical superhero - a hard-drinking weapons manufacturer who creates a super-suit to atone for his sins - which is what makes Robert Downey Jr. seem like a perfect fit in director Jon Favreau's adaptation of the Marvel Comics title.
* May 9: "Speed Racer" - In the '60s, the cartoon race-car driver introduced the world to Japanese anime. Now the Wachowski brothers, in their first directing effort since the "Matrix" trilogy, apply whiz-bang visuals for what looks like an overdose of eye candy.
* May 16: "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" - Andrew Adamson, who directed "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," continues the saga, as the Pevensie kids return to Narnia to help thwart an evil king and bring the rightful heir (Ben Barnes) to the throne.
* May 22: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" - Harrison Ford pulls the bullwhip and fedora out of mothballs for another adventure, this time in the 1950s. Indy faces off with a Russian agent (Cate Blanchett), reunites with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and is saddled with a sidekick (Shia LaBeouf) who might be his son.
* May 30: "Sex and the City: The Movie" - The ladies are back, as fashion-forward writer Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) plans her big wedding to Mr. Big (Chris Noth) and other dishy developments. (Read more on Page XXX).
* June 6: "Kung Fu Panda" - DreamWorks Animation's latest effort is this funny and well-made computer-animated tale of a panda (voiced by Jack Black) who becomes an unlikely martial-arts hero. Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie and Seth Rogen are among the voice actors.
* June 13: "The Incredible Hulk" - Remember Ang Lee's 2003 version of "The Hulk"? Universal hopes you don't, as they try again to adapt Marvel Comics' big green Jekyll-and-Hyde character for the screen. Edward Norton plays scientist Bruce Banner; Liv Tyler plays his love interest.
* June 20: "Get Smart" - Does it seem like this adaptation of the '60s spy-spoof sitcom was just waiting for Steve Carell to become famous so he could play Maxwell Smart?
* June 27: "Wall-E" - Pixar's batting average leaves others in the dust, so hopes are high for this story of a little garbage-compactor robot cleaning up the Earth in the year 2805.
* July 2: "Hancock" - Will Smith returns to his favorite weekend, the Fourth of July (when "Independence Day," "Men in Black" and - don't tell anybody - "Wild Wild West" debuted). This time he's a down-on-his-luck superhero who's offered an image makeover by a P.R. guy (Jason Bateman).
* July 11: "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" - Guillermo Del Toro brings back Dark Horse Comics' red-skinned, cigar-chomping superhero (played by Ron Perlman), this time fending off world conquest from the mystical world (the inhabitants of which look like the characters from Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth").
* July 18: "The Dark Knight" - The team that made the dynamic "Batman Begins" - director Christopher Nolan and stars Christian Bale (as Batman/Bruce Wayne), Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman - are back. The wild card is The Joker, played (quite well, according to the buzz) by the late Heath Ledger.
* July 25: "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" - Speaking of getting the gang back together, director Chris Carter returns to guide his FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) through a very hush-hush mission.
* August 1: "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" - Did you know there are mummies in China, too? That's what Brendan Fraser finds out in the continuation of the adventure franchise, this time battling Jet Li as a shape-shifting emperor.
* August 8: "Pineapple Express" - Can Seth Rogen parlay his "Knocked Up"/"Superbad" karma into an action comedy? Here he plays a stoner who witnesses a corrupt cop killing someone, forcing him and his dealer (James Franco) have to flee the cops.
* August 15: "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" - Put those big yellow words on the screen and start the John Williams music, and audiences will follow like rats to the Pied Piper. George Lucas revisits young Obi-Wan and pre-Vader Anakin in this computer-animated story, set roughly between "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith."
Action
Blowing up things real good: Angelina Jolie recruits a new assassin (James McAvoy) to join her secret order in the visually stylish "Wanted" (June 27); Vin Diesel plays a mercenary smuggling a woman from Russia to China in the science-fiction actioner "Babylon A.D." (Aug. 29); the biker movie gets a shot at revival in the Quentin Tarantino-produced "Hell Ride" (Aug. 8), a story about a biker gang leader (Larry Bishop, who wrote and directed) out for revenge for a comrade's murder; and a laid-off guy (Zack Ward) battles the Taliban in the farcical "Postal" (May 23), adapted from the ultra-violent video games by the often-reviled director Uwe Boll.
Something bad is going on around the world, and a nervous band of survivors try to figure out what in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" (June 13). A bedridden man spins a fantasy tale for an injured girl in the visually-arresting "The Fall" (May 30). And a martial-arts instructor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is forced to enter fighting competitions in David Mamet's "Redbelt" (May)
Foreign intrigue: Michael Caine and Demi Moore conspire to steal diamonds in "Flawless" (opens today); Clive Owen plays an Interpol agent trying to break up an arms-smuggling ring in "The International" (Aug. 15); Nicolas Cage plays a hitman who falls for a Thai woman in "Bangkok Dangerous" (Aug. 22); and an undercover CIA agent (Don Cheadle) is suspected of aiding the terrorists he's infiltrated in "Traitor" (Aug. 29).
Horror: A couple (Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman) on vacation faces masked intruders in "The Strangers" (May 30); a photographer (Bradley Cooper) pursues a serial killer (Vinnie Jones) in "The Midnight Meat Train" (Aug. 1), based on a Clive Barker story; and Kiefer Sutherland plays a mall cop where the mirrors bring out people's dark sides in "Mirrors" (Aug. 15).
And before Brendan Fraser takes on another "Mummy" sequel, he takes us on a "Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D" (July 11), a modern take on the Jules Verne classic.
Comedy
What is your favorite ex-"Saturday Night Live" cast member doing this summer? Adam Sandler plays (and I'm not making this up) an Israeli secret agent who fakes his death so he can pursue his dream of being a Brooklyn hairdresser in "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" (June 6). Mike Myers trots out a new comic character, a Hindu mystic, in "The Love Guru" (June 20). An alien (Eddie Murphy) piloting an Eddie Murphy-shaped starship navigates through Earth customs in "Meet Dave" (July 11). And Will Ferrell pairs with his "Talladega Nights" pal John C. Reilly to play "Step Brothers" (July 25).
Reilly battles Seann William Scott to be manager of a corporate-owned grocery story in "The Promotion" (June 6). In "Tropic Thunder" (Aug. 15), Ben Stiller (who also directed), Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black play actors shooting a Vietnam War drama in a jungle where there's real shooting going on. An ex-Playboy bunny (Anna Faris) lands in a sorority house in "The House Bunny" (Aug. 22), written by the people behind "Legally Blonde." "The Office's" Rainn Wilson is "The Rocker" (Aug. 1), a has-been drummer with a second shot at fame. Aaron Eckhart plays a doormat of a guy who sees his life change when he starts mentoring a teen (Logan Lerman) in "Meet Bill" (to be determined). And high schoolers experience a wild campus weekend in "College" (Aug. 29).
On the seriocomic side: Helen Hunt makes her directorial debut in "Then She Found Me" (May 16), playing a schoolteacher who deals with her husband leaving and her biological mother (Bette Midler) showing up; a sheltered boy meets the school's menace, and together they make a "Rambo"-inspired home movie in the British "Son of Rambow" (May 23); Kevin Costner discovers the whole presidential election hinges on his ballot in "Swing Vote" (Aug. 1); and siblings come of age amid the political divisions of Italy in the '60s and '70s in "My Brother Is an Only Child" (June 13).
Comedy via Sundance: A clueless drama teacher (Steve Coogan) writes a Shakespearean sequel for his students in "Hamlet 2" (Aug. 22), the most expensive acquisition at Sundance '08; a teen drug dealer (Josh Peck) bonds with his marijuana-smoking shrink (Ben Kingsley) in "The Wackness" (July), a movie notable for Kingsley's make-out scene with Mary-Kate Olsen; a sex addict (Sam Rockwell) works through his problems, which include his mentally ill mom (Anjelica Huston), in the farcical "Choke" (August), based on the Chuck Pahalniuk novel; and Danny McBride goes from supporting jokester ("Hot Rod," "The Heartbreak Kid") to lead as a Southern tae kwon do instructor in "The Foot Fist Way" (June).
Drama
Stories about immigrants and America's immigration issues are a hot topic: A professor (Richard Jenkins) discovers two undocumented immigrants in his Manhattan apartment in "The Visitor" (May 9); "Crossing Over" (Aug. 22) looks at immigration through many characters, with a cast that includes Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd; an Arab-American girl (Summer Bishil) comes of age during the Gulf War in "Towelhead" (August), the directing debut of "Six Feet Under" creator Alan Ball; and Melissa Leo ("21 Grams") shines in "Frozen River" (August), the Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance, as a woman who gets entangled in illegal immigration across the U.S.-Canada border.
America doesn't have the monopoly on immigration stories. "Brick Lane" (July) is about Bangladeshi sisters - one at home, the other in an arranged marriage in London - who share their lives through letters.
Also from Britain: Evelyn Waugh's portrait of an aristocratic family during World War II, "Brideshead Revisited" (Aug. 1), gets a lush makeover with a cast that includes Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon; Colin Firth plays a man dealing with conflicting memories of his dying dad (Jim Broadbent) in "When Did You Last See Your Father?" (June); and a young man ("Lions for Lambs' " Andrew Garfield) faces parole after years in prison for a murder he committed as a child in "Boy A" (July 23).
On foreign shores: A Jewish boy comes of age in 1970, during the dictatorship in Brazil, in "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" (opens today); a British journalist (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and an Australian nurse (Radha Mitchell) rescue Chinese orphans during the Japanese occupation in "The Children of Huang Shi" (June); a Chinese woman is kidnapped and sold off as a bride in "Blind Mountain" (May 23); residents of a Chinese town about to be flooded by a massive dam try to salvage what they can in "Still Life" (May 23); the lives of four Turks and two Germans intersect in "The Edge of Heaven" (May 30); while the life of Genghis Khan is depicted in the Kazakhstan-made epic "Mongol" (June 6).
Lastly, good neighbors and a "miracle" find a terminally ill man (Luke Wilson) in the Christian-themed "Henry Poole Is Here" (Aug. 15).
Romance
Romantic films usually end with weddings, but weddings play a different role in these titles: Patrick Dempsey realizes he's in love with his best friend (Michelle Monaghan) - after she gets engaged to someone else - in "Made of Honor" (opens today); Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher find themselves married, and fighting over a casino jackpot, after a drunken night in "What Happens in Vegas" (May 9); a young woman (Amanda Seyfried) about to marry forces her mother (Meryl Streep) to confront the three men (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard) who may be the bride's father in the ABBA-based musical "Mamma Mia!" (July 18); a radio-show relationship expert (Uma Thurman) is the target of revenge for a guy (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) dumped by one of her listeners in "The Accidental Husband" (August 22).
Also: Women in a Beirut beauty salon have romantic adventures in "Caramel" (opens today); two surfing friends begin a romance in the gay drama "Shelter" (May 9); singer Norah Jones makes her acting debut, as a woman searching America for the answers about love, in Wong Kar-Wai's "My Blueberry Nights" (May 16); Woody Allen's latest, the oddly titled "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" (August 29), follows a Spanish painter (Javier Bardem) who strikes a relationship with two U.S. tourists (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall), riling up his ex-girlfriend (Penelope Cruz); and a French noblewoman (Jeanne Balibar) and a Napoleonic war hero (Guillaume Depardieu) share an ill-fated love in "The Duchess of Langeais" (to be determined), adapted from a Balzac short story by the French New Wave director Jacques Rivette.
Kids
Computer-animators take two different trips to outer space: A simian astronaut saves the day in "Space Chimps" (July 18), while three houseflies hitch a ride on Apollo 11 in "Fly Me to the Moon" (August 8).
Elsewhere, girls rule: The exploits of four jeans-sharing young women (Alexis Bledel, America Ferrara, Blake Lively and Amber Tamblyn) continue in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" (August 8); Abigail Breslin solves a string of burglaries as "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl" (July 2), based on an entry in the popular book series; "Akeelah and the Bee" star Keke Palmer plays a girl trying out for a Pop Warner football team in "The Longshots" (July 25), the directorial debut of Limp Biskit frontman Fred Durst; and Emma Roberts is a "Wild Child" (August 15), a spoiled rich kid in Malibu who's shipped off to a British boarding school.
Documentary
"Young @ Heart" (May 9) profiles a Massachusetts choir, with an average age of 80, that sings rock and roll. Errol Morris investigates the tortures at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in "Standard Operating Procedure" (May). "Note by Note" (June 20) follows the construction and craftsmanship of a Steinway piano. Comic Bill Maher takes on religion in the sure-to-be-controversial "Religulous" (July 11), directed by Larry Charles ("Borat"). And the lives of Indiana high-schoolers are profiled in the polished Sundance hit "American Teen" (July 25).
