April 29 - Fast Five

It's kind of amusing how the participation of the original leads of this
series, Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, correlates rather directly with the
rise and fall of their stardom. Neither turned out to be the box office
knock-outs the first film promised they might be, so they reunited in the
fourth film and are back for the fifth. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson joins
them this time, probably for the same reason.

Will this be any good? There's no reason to think it won't be exactly like
the other installments in this series, so no.

May 6 - Thor

The studio seems confident about Thor, positioning it in one of the most
lucrative weekends of the summer (where Iron Man previously knocked one and
a half out of the park), instead of dumping it in the off-season. But Marvel
needs this one to strike gold, or Tony Stark's going to have to carry
The Avengers all by himself. And the trailer, I must say, looks awful.
So do they believe just because they have to? Or will this turn out to be
the joyous surprise Iron Man was? We'll know soon.

May 6 - The Beaver

Jodie Foster directs this comedy-drama about an executive (Mel Gibson) who
starts using a beaver hand puppet to communicate with people. Is it just me
or would this be a hard sell even without Gibson's off-screen controversies?
This is the kind of movie that, if it works, it'll be a delight, because it'll
work in a fresh, new way instead of being a repackaging of other recent
successful movies. But for the time being, I'm skeptical. Interested, but
skeptical.

May 13 - Bridesmaids

Will Judd Apatow's guy movie formula work for the other sex? I dunno. The
guy version doesn't really work for me either.

May 20 - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Even when these movies falter, Jack Sparrow is still one of the great
blockbuster movie characters. This time Gore Verbinski cedes the director's
chair to Rob Marshall, whose Chicago was good despite his complete incompetence
at filming musicals. His Memoirs of a Geisha was also good but forgettable,
and Nine was soulless despite the richness of the raw materials. He might not
ruin the franchise, but I can't see him adding anything of value either.

Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley have ridden off into the sunset; replacing
them are Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane, which sure seem like an improvement.
(I like Knightley in her other films, but she was always wooden in these.)

I can't see this being great, but I'm on board for it anyhow.

May 20 - Midnight In Paris

Woody Allen's annual address drifts to the lighter side this time. It's about
a family visiting Paris and learning life lessons while there. Every couple
established at the outset will almost certainly split up by the end.

Allen's work had a slight uptick last year, but it's been all too long since
I liked one of his movies. I keep hoping for a huge Lumet-style comeback
before the curtain closes, but I don't know.

May 27 - The Hangover, Part II

The first movie was better than it had any right to be, but the early word on
the sequel is pretty weak.

May 27 - Kung Fu Panda 2

DreamWorks has done really well lately, with How To Train Your Dragon being
absolutely wonderful and Kung Fu Panda a solidly enjoyable ride. So far,
DreamWorks has yet to do a truly great job with a sequel, but I'm optimistic
about this. One reason is the directorial debut of Jennifer Yuh, who has done
various jobs in the art department of some gorgeous-looking movies, like
the underrated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and, of all things, Dark City.

May 27 - The Tree of Life

I've lost count of how many times I've already previewed this upcoming Terrence
Malick flick. It keeps getting pushed back. Maybe the studio felt it was
violating some law of the universe that Malick movies shouldn't come out more
often than about once a decade. Anyway, I refer you to my earlier blurbs
about this movie.

June 3 - X-Men: First Class

This really needs to improve on the Wolverine prequel. This one chronicles
the backstory of Charles Xavier and Magneto. Director Matthew Vaughn has
previously done three movies, no two anything remotely alike. All were
successful in their own ways, so maybe that means Vaughn is versatile enough
to tell a good story and not just crank through a familiar genre. Still, if
it bombs, it wouldn't be the first time a big budget has taken out a promising
director.

June 10 - Super 8

J.J. Abrams teams up with producer Steven Spielberg to make this nostalgic
fantasy about a kid with a Super 8 camera. He sets out to make a little movie
and stumbles into a big situation of some sort. For all the work Abrams has
his name tied to, this is really only his third time directing a theatrical
film. The other two were Mission: Impossible III, the best of that franchise,
and Star Trek, a foolhardy venture that wound up being impossibly good.
I don't know enough about this movie yet to be truly revved up for it, but I'm
very eager to see it.

June 17 - Green Lantern

Superhero movies are pretty safe bets these days, but what makes them
particularly attractive to the studios is their breakout potential. Most
other blockbuster genres have a ceiling to them, but you never know when
Batman or Iron Man or Wolverine is going to shatter what anybody ever thought
possible. My best guess is that Green Lantern stands a slightly better chance
of breaking out than Thor does. Partly that's because Martin Campbell is
behind the camera. He's not infallible (see "The Legend of Zorro"), but he's
on a hot streak now, with his last two films being the surprisingly terrific
Edge of Darkness and the transcendent Casino Royale.

June 17 - Mr. Popper's Penguins

Jim Carrey inherits six penguins and transforms his apartment and his life
in taking care of them. It's based on a popular children's book. Director
Mark Waters did a decent job with The Spiderwick Chronicles but has done better
with less literary teen flicks like Mean Girls and the Freaky Friday remake.
Still, I think this is one to keep an eye on.

June 24 - Cars 2

The original Cars was a good movie but nevertheless probably Pixar's weakest,
following as it did a predictable formula and generally lacking the meatier
undercurrents in Ratatouille, WALL*E, Up, and Toy Story 3. But that may not
hold true of Cars 2. Although I've learned never to judge a Pixar movie by
its trailer, the one for Cars 2 demonstrates an important difference: whereas
the first movie was a nostalgic look at rediscovering a forgotten way of life,
the sequel is an adventure movie, which gives the characters a chance to
explore the unknown. This is what all of Pixar's best movies have done -- it's
a formula that self-evidently harnesses Pixar's strengths while being loose
enough to permit great originality and variation within it.

June 24 - Bad Teacher

Jake Kasdan directs Cameron Diaz in this salty school-set comedy about
dating hijinks among the teachers. Kasdan's films have all been edgy in one
way or another: Zero Effect was a (great) comedic thriller; Orange County,
a slapstick farce; The TV Set, a biting satirical look at the television
industry. All three were good, but Orange County was the weakest of the three.
It just wasn't as smart as the other two, and unfortunately Bad Teacher looks
like it travels that same road. Still, it may still be worth checking out.

July 1 - Transformers: Dark of the Moon

After first getting all huffy, as he is wont to do, about the savage reviews
of Transformers 2, Michael Bay eventually relented and admitted that it stunk.
So this is allegedly a "back to basics" installment in the series, which is
just awesome for a series that never had any "basics" to start with. It's not
like Transformers was a masterwork of rigid storytelling discipline, right?
Still, anything that moves the needle back from where Transformers 2 went has
to be a good thing. But when the plot is TRANSFORMERS ON THE MOON! it doesn't
exactly inspire confidence. James Bond went to the moon once. Not a pretty
sight.

July 1 - Larry Crowne

Tom Hanks (who also directed) reteams with Julia Roberts in this comedy-drama
about a guy who loses his job and goes back to school. It sounds like the kind
of serious effort that gets lost in the shuffle of a crowded season. But
maybe I just can't shake the specter of Charlie Wilson's War. Uninteresting
plot synopsis aside, the stars still got it, and I'm always interested in what
Hanks gets up to behind the camera.

July 8 - One Day

Lone Scherfig got a fair amount of recognition for 2009's An Education, though
to be fair most of the attention went to breakout star Carey Mulligan and
writer Nick Hornby. But although I think Mulligan is terrific, the film felt
thin to me: dressed up and looking gorgeous but without the real underlying
substance it purported to have.

But it's probably wrong to use my thoughts on An Education to form any
expectations of One Day. Different star (Anne Hathaway). Different writer
(unknown to me). The premise is intriguing: it's a romance that catches up
with a couple on the same day each year over 20 or so years. One of the
reasons I loved 500 Days of Summer was that it took the story of a romance
and played with the timeline so as to juxtapose the different stages of a
relationship with each other and highlight the differences. Seems like this
idea lends itself to the same kind of experimentation. I'm intrigued.

July 8 - Zookeeper

Kevin James is a zookeeper. He's unlucky in love. Hitch isn't around, so the
animals in the zoo start talking to him and giving him advice on romance.
Every time one of these broad comedies works, I'm surprised. I'd rather see
something subtler and cleverer. But James has a good track record, as they
things go. Hitch and Paul Blart were both better than they should have been.

July 15 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Somehow I haven't caught Part 1 yet, so I don't have much to say about this
that I haven't said in previous previews. Here's hoping David Yates improves
for the grand finale.

July 15 - Winnie the Pooh

These characters are timeless. I love that Disney is going back to hand-drawn
animation for this, and also that they're apparently putting more money and
care into this than in other recent (but still enjoyable) installements in this
franchise. Also encouraging is that this film is adapting five of the
original A. A. Milne stories.

July 22 - Captain America: The First Avenger

Patriotism is regrettably out of style these days. Is this movie going to
go all out waving the flag, or be embarrassingly coy (as Superman Returns was)?
The more important question is, is there actually a story to tell here?
Has Cap ever survived a transition out of the comic book pages?

Joe Johnston directs, which is a mildly positive sign. Johnston is a pretty
solid director, a member of what I guess I must now call an older school of
filmmaking, in that he doesn't try to compensate for a bad story with a lot of
fast cutting. After The Rocketeer, Jumanji, October Sky, and Hidalgo, he
can be forgiven the occasional The Wolfman. He's back in superhero territory,
where he made his best film, but that was 20 years ago.

July 29 - Cowboys & Aliens

The title really makes this sound like a hammy genre spoof, maybe like
Monsters vs. Aliens. But apparently the film only starts with its premise
(many films seem to think the premise is enough) and tries to be a seriously
good western beyond that. That's important. The science fiction will take
care of itself, but if you can't believe a science fiction western as a
*western*, it'll fall apart.

Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde is a seriously slick cast, too.

July 29 - The Smurfs

The Smurfs return in 3D animation. I love the Smurfs, but I think I love them
more as a memory than as an actual experience. As much as it's occasionally
fun to quote Brainy or Jokey or imitate Gargamel (yes, I'm dating myself VERY
SPECIFICALLY), I've never been moved to seek out the original cartoon again.
And my instinct is that the Smurfs aren't going to work in a different medium
with more modern filmmaking rhythms and humor.

August 5 - Rise of the Planet of the Apes

With one of his worst films, Tim Burton royally botched an earlier attempt to
reboot this franchise. Now a newer director is going to give it a shot, which
means it'll probably be more of a vanilla-flavored studio film than an
auteur's take. A similar thing happened with The Incredible Hulk -- it was
even worse, if more palatable, than Ang Lee's Hulk.

Both franchises have big storytelling challenges. Hulk's, which neither film
mastered, was figuring out how to make the green-skinned version of the
character sympathetic. Apes' is all about staying out of the uncanny valley.
The cheesy 70s films (sort of) worked, paradoxically, because the special
effects were so bad. Hey, Star Trek was fine too, right? And when the special
effects got better, that was okay too, because you still had real people with
makeup on. But the new Apes movie is doing an awful lot with CGI characters,
and that's a risky proposition. Still, I guess Andy Serkis has played a CGI
ape convincingly before, so maybe there's nothing to worry about. But I'd be
less worried if Weta were involved.

Barring that hurdle, there is a temptation I don't trust Hollywood not to
succumb to, which would be to overload this film with lots of environmental
moralizing. It's the kind of thing that makes Hollywood feel good about itself,
but it sucks the fun right out of things like this. There's really no reason
this shouldn't be a rousing action-adventure film, but I have my doubts that
this is what it's really going to be.

August 12 - Final Destination 5

Remember how the fourth film (stupidly just called "The Final Destination")
was the last entry in the series? I do too. Horror franchises should
seriously never do that.

August 19 - Fright Night

Remake of the 1985 film, still unseen by me.

August 19 - Conan the Barbarian

I'm all about sword-and-sorcery movies, so even though I didn't much like
Scwharzenegger's Conan flicks, I'll have to chase this one down on DVD.

August 19 - Spy Kids 4: All the Time In the World

Rodriguez, I'm reluctantly concluding, is way more interesting than good.
Sin City was remarkable, and the first couple Spy Kids movies were okay,
but by and large his work consists of disappointments. Both his pulpy
70s throwbacks and his kid fantasies have taken a real nosedive lately,
so I'm not at all optimistic about his latest.