> May 2 - X-Men 2

The title of this one was changed to "X2: X-Men United." The only thing worse than this title is the reason the change was made: allegedly, to eliminate confusion that "X2" and "X-Men II" referred to the same movie. Excellent. If such confusion actually exists -- and I'm not convinced it actually does -- it is marketing's fault in the first place. So what does marketing do to fix it? Make it worse.

I am SO SICK of dumb marketing titles like this. It's bad enough when they do things like "ID4" and "MiB" but at least those aren't part of the official title.

Do we really need two X's in the title? Bag this one with "D2: The Mighty Ducks" and "Artificial Intelligence: A.I." Nothing like titling for attention deficits. If you miss part of the title, it's ok, because it's internally redundant.

Now that I think about it, maybe it's not idiot marketers after all. Maybe David Mamet funds his future projects with side work titling movies.

> July 2 - Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
>
> I love the Terminator series, but without James Cameron at the helm, I dunno.

Past trailers I've seen for this haven't looked great, but I saw a more recent one just today, and it looks much, much better. You can only trust trailers so far, but with a marketing-friendly blockbuster like this, a bad trailer is a bad sign. So I'm a bit more stoked for this now.

> July 2 - Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
>
> Interesting that this and Terminator 3, in which [Reese Witherspoon] plays a terminator, open the same day.

She does not. I thought I recognized her as being a terminator in the trailers, but it turns out it's Kristanna Loken. I'm not familiar with her, but darned if she doesn't look a lot like Reese, especially when you only get quick-cut looks at her. http://www.imdb.com/Name?Loken,%20Kristanna

> July 11 - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

It's not enough that this, too, has a dumb marketing acronym ("LXG") but now the title has been changed to just "The League." Never mind that now it sounds like a baseball movie, it's a bad replacement for a great title. Titles are so *dull* these days. Sometimes simplicity works: "Hook" and "Cobb" and "JFK" are pretty good titles, but I shudder at the increasing notion that all titles have to be monosyllabic logos. Sheesh, even Mr. Bean lost his salutation in the transfer from television to film. I suppose if "Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" were to be remade today, it would be called, simply, "Strangelove." Similarly, "They Call Me Mister Tibbs" would be, you guessed it, "Tibbs." At least the Bond movies still have titles with spunk to them.

> July 25 - Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

While I'm on the subject of titles, I have to say, kudos to anybody who releases a movie with two colons in it. This is also a bad title, but at least it's colorful. Now that I think about it, I'm almost shocked it (or the original) wasn't called "Lara." Hey, the TV movie spin-off of "It's a Wonderful Life" was called "Clarence," so it wouldn't be unprecedented.