May/June
Kicking & Screaming
May 13
Will Ferrell + kids + soccer rage = money in the bank. (See also: Will Ferrell: Big Man on Campus)
Mad Hot Ballroom
May 13
The thrilling dance doc kids will actually enjoy sitting through.
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
May 19
George Lucas’s long-awaited wrap-up of the Star Wars saga.
The Longest Yard
May 27
Chris Rock: We still love you, even after the Oscars.
Madagascar
May 27
A local ’toon: Animals escape Central Park Zoo.
Saving Face
May 27
A hysterical miracle of genre science that recombines the DNA of romantic comedies, coming-out tales, and Asian-American mother-daughter dramas to produce a smart new hybrid.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
June 1
Fab teen-girl heaven withRory Gilmore and Joan of Arcadia.
Cinderella Man
June 3
Ultrabuff Russell Crowe, typecast as a boxer.
High Tension
June 3
Cécile de France: Europe’s most gory and stylish horror star.
Lords of Dogtown
June 3
June’s skater-dude teen flick. (See also: Skater Boi Victor Rasuk)
Rock School
June 3
School of Rock inspired this documentary that kids will actually enjoy sitting through.
The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D
June 10
Robert Rodriguez, who conjured up the homicidal prostitutes of Sin City, is back with this imaginary-friends fantasy.
The Honeymooners
June 10Cedric the Entertainer as Ralph Kramden could be boffo: Barbershop on a bus.
Howl’s Moving Castle
June 10
Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) returns.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
June 10
This summer’s most ludicrous, most photographed, best-tressed hotties (oops: best-tressed relief workers) star as gun-toting, skirt-hiking, hair-tousling, spouse-assassinating killers. (see also: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Coin Summer’s First New Euphemism: ‘Relief Work’)
Batman Begins
June 15
The season’s most hotly anticipated popcorn flick.
Me and You and Everyone We Know
June 17
An oddly openhearted, almost romantic, often comedic drama about a performance artist, a shoe salesman, some children, sex, and the distance between them all. (see Q&A with writer/director/co-star Miranda July)
Rize
June 24
David LaChapelle’s exhilarating “krump” break-dancing doc.
Bewitched
June 24
Will Ferrell, plus witchy, nose-twitchy Nicole Kidman. (See also: Will Ferrell: Big Man on Campus)
George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead
June 24
The zombie king comes home.
Herbie: Fully Loaded
June 24
Check out those headlights: A winking car stars with Lindsay Lohan.
March of the Penguins
June 24
Self-explanatory documentary kids will actually enjoy sitting through.
The War of the Worlds
June 29
Steven Spielberg is reaching further back in the pop-culture past in his reworking of H. G. Wells’s 1898 Mars-attacks novel.
July
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
July 1
A stylish French remake of James Toback’s Fingers.
The World
July 1
China’s Jia Zhangke imports his festival hit.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
July 5
The director who made Batman gothic and Sleepy Hollow terrifying has reclaimed Roald Dahl’s original, distinctly creepy vision of Willy Wonka, while also reinventing him as a sixties pop impresario, played by Johnny Depp.
Dark Water
July 8Motorcycle Diaries’ Walter Salles switches gears for this horror flick.
The Fantastic Four
July 8
It’s tough to create a live-action movie about a guy who stretches, a woman who can be invisible, a wiseacre who can turn himself into a human torch, and another guy who looks like he was built out of a pile of rocks left over from a Connecticut-stone-fence project.
Murderball
July 8
Quadriplegic rugby! (A documentary.)
Saraband
July 8
Ingmar Bergman delivers an update on his indelible 30-year-old classic Scenes From a Marriage.
Hustle & Flow
July 13
A cheap and gritty movie about a Memphis hustler determined to become a rapper. (See also: Breakout Star Terrence Howard)
Happy Endings
July 15
Maggie Gyllenhaal, lean and mean in Don Roos’s Sundance hit.
Wedding Crashers
July 15
The new-school Old School, starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. (See also: Will Ferrell: Big Man on Campus)
The Bad News Bears
July 22
Billy Bob Thornton in the Walter Matthau role; if Billy could make a bad Santa a hit, his boozing baseball coach should be a crowd-pleaser.
Edukators
July 22
Hot Teuton Daniel Brühl, poised for a crossover.
The Island
July 22
Michael Bay cheerily exploits the most obvious silver lining in the prospect of human duplication: that no self-respecting nerdy scientist in a dingy lab who dreams up the ultimate clone would waste his time producing a smaller version of himself, à la Dr. Evil. No, if at all possible, he will replicate the impossibly beautiful Scarlett Johansson. (See also: Scarlett Johansson 2.0)
9 Songs
July 22
Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.
Last Days
July 22
Pouty Michael Pitt as a Cobain-like rock martyr.
The Aristocrats
July 29
This doc collects more dirty jokes than an FCC chairman.
Sky High
July 29
Kurt Russell’s superhero spoof.
Stealth
July 29
Jamie Foxx, post-awards/karaoke circuit, cuts loose in an action flick.
The Brothers Grimm
July 29
Disaster-prone Terry Gilliam completes a film!
Tropical Malady
July 29
Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul imports his festival hit.
August
Broken Flowers
August 5
Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray reteam, after their lovely vignette in Coffee and Cigarettes.
Grizzly Man
August 5
The last of the summer’s three Werner Herzog docs. Hooray for Herzogapalooza!
The Dukes of Hazzard
August 5
How high will Jessica Simpson’s Daisy Dukes go?
Junebug
August 5
A subtle, artful film that introduces a southern guy (Alessandro Nivola) who moves to a city, then travels back home with his gallery-owner wife.
The Pink Panther
August 5
Steve Martin is probably the only contemporary comedian who could make you set aside your memories of Peter Sellers.
Shaw brothers’ kung-fu films
August 5–21
BAMcinématek screens nine of the Shaw Brothers Studios’ high-kicking martial-arts classics.
2046
August 5
An achingly beautiful meditation on love and loss. (See also: Hong Kong Heartthrob Tony Leung)
Four Brothers
August 12
John Singleton conjures the month’s most improbable cast: Mark Wahlberg and OutKast’s André Benjamin, as brothers.
Asylum
August 19
Ian McKellen, marvelously sinister as a ward’s master puppeteer.
The 40 Year Old Virgin
August 19
Daily Show and The Office star Steve Carrell continues witty, ironic silliness as the title character.
Red Eye
August 19
Wes Craven plucks all our terrorism fears with an airline thriller.
Romance & Cigarettes
August 19
A musical that may be the most outlandish indie of the season. (See also: James Gandolfini: The Fat Man Sings)
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
August 19
Nobody does bloody retribution better than Korea’s Park Chanwook.
Valiant
August 19
The talking-pigeon ’toon.