Fanboys unite!

As superheroes, spys and a serious lack of aliens hit the big screen

By DAVID WILDMAN

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5.30 Sex and the City: The Movie

It's a good thing they mentioned in the title that this is a movie; otherwise some people might get confused and start thinking this is actually three episodes of the TV show strung together. Which is probably what it'll end up being. The thing is, the show was on HBO where they don't have to bother with innuendo—they can already deliver all the actual boobage and crude language you'd possibly want anyway. So it boggles the mind why anyone would be expecting anything new from these aging biddies. Upside: It's sure to be a successful date flick.

6.6 You Don't Mess With the Zohan

With the premise of Adam Sandler playing an Israeli counterterrorist expert who moves to Manhattan to become a hair stylist, this could be another SNL-style one-joke sketch stretched out for 90 minutes. But then again, Judd Apatow is sharing screenwriter credits with Robert Smigel and Sandler, so there's a chance it could be funny, assuming Sandler doesn't overact his part. Judging from the trailer, there are actual laughs to be had here, although the fact that director Dennis Dugan previously cut the cheese with I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry doesn't exactly fill one with optimism.

6.13 The Happening

It was inevitable that Shyamalana ding-dong would hook up with Marky Mark at some point. Be afraid. Not that Wahlberg isn't a fine actor—The Departed proved his mettle—it's just that the clever auteur who brought us The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable hasn't had a success in a long while, and this one, about some unknown killer gas, has the odor of desperation about it. Likely twist ending: Aliens have already killed everybody, so the entire cast is all wandering around dead and they don't know it, but it's really a hundred years in the future and the whole thing is on a movie set. Or something.

6.13 The Incredible Hulk

If Iron Man hadn't been such an enjoyable piece of filmmaking, I'd probably be writing this off as another ill-advised remake. However, Edward Norton is always a smart, compelling presence, and he even took a hand in writing the screenplay. The cast is stuffed with notables: Liv Tyler, Tim Roth and William Hurt. Louis Leterrier (The Transporter) is a more than competent action director, and from the looks of the trailer, things seem to move with the right amount of emphasis on Bruce Banner's internal conflicts as well as his badass big green monster exploits. So there is hope.

6.20 Get Smart

When Hollywood chooses to revive an old television comedy for the big screen, the results are usually less than stellar (witness Bewitched, The Honeymooners, The Dukes of Hazzard). But for some reason the idea of casting Steve Carell in the role Don Adams made famous seems like a stroke of genius. Maybe it's also because the original TV show was a well-conceived spy spoof by the great Mel Brooks that still seem topical and because the set design possibilities are endlessly enticing. And maybe it's because his co-star Anne Hathaway is really, really nice to look at. At the very least this one promises to be serious eye candy.

6.27 Wall•E

Cute alert: The aliens and robots in this thing are designed to melt your heart and explode the Christmas action figure sales when they release the DVD in December. Not since the Ewoks has a film been so blatantly positioned for success in the toy market. That said, it looks like a decent ride. Written and directed by Pixar's Andrew Stanton (A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo), the conceived story of Wall•E as the sole robot left to clean up the mess that is Earth, who then falls in love with an egg-like alien, is just too inventive to dismiss.

6.27 Wanted

Take superficial elements of The Matrix: An innocent guy gets sucked into a group of gun-toting outlaws who slip into slow motion every time some action happens. Replace Laurence Fishburne with Morgan Freeman. Replace Carrie-Anne Moss with a shades-wearing Angelina Jolie for some extra hard-edged sex appeal. Add lots of car chases, explosions and people jumping off buildings. Make sure you keep things moving so fast that the audience never gets a chance to sit back and realize what a preposterous bunch of nonsense it all is. Fill your bathtub with $1,000 bills and jump in. Don't forget to tip the hooker.

7.2 Hancock

If you subscribe to the widespread and reasonable viewpoint that we've already seen enough of Will Smith to last the rest of our collective lifetimes, Hancock will be a hard sell. And yet, the premise is irresistible in its flat out goofiness: Smith is a drunken bum with stinky clothes and superhero powers. Everyone hates him, even though he saves their asses (although not without some serious fucking up here and there). So he hires a really good PR guy, starts wearing a nifty suit, and before you know it, he's a true hero. At least until he has another drink.

7.11 Hellboy II: The Golden Army

After the hype of that lame ghost movie The Orphanage that Guillermo del Toro plastered his good name all over but really had little to do with, it's quite a relief to see the man who was the brains behind Pan's Labyrinth and the first Hellboy climbing back into the director's chair. This sequel looks to have all the visual style and spectacle of the original and then some, with Guillermo's penchant for creating creepy eyeless monsters on display in full force. Ron Perlman returns as the bright red demon snatched from the Nazis and turned into a good guy.

7.18 The Dark Knight

It's hard to fathom the fact that this was Heath Ledger's last film. From all indications it's a pretty serious work, and his final performance as The Joker is no laughing matter. Like Frank Miller in the late '80s, Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige) have taken the Batman franchise into a realm so dark, ominous and disturbing that it requires the rethinking of what a superhero is. With the removal of the weakest link, Scientology casualty Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes—now replaced with the far superior Maggie Gyllenhaal—this film has the potential to seriously break all box office records.

7.25 The X-Files 2

Or The X-Files: I Want to Believe, or something along those lines. I want to believe that this film actually exists, but the title has changed more times than John McCain's feeble mind and there is still no synopsis available or trailer posted. All we know for certain is that David Duchovny is in it, paranoid as ever, and that if they follow the pat storyline he's probably going to be pussywhipped by Gillian Anderson, who has had his 10-year-old kid by now. Creator Chris Carter also promises that there won't be any aliens. No fucking aliens?! Someone please me why I was looking forward to this one.

8.1 The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

If I haven't lost count, this is the third Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser as intrepid explorer Rick O'Connell. With Rachel Weisz smart enough not to reprise her roll or beat a dead horse, O'Connell's wife Evelyn is now played by Maria Bello. The two chase Jet Li, playing an ancient emperor come to life. This big screen series dates back to 1999, but the very first mummy movie seems to have cropped up around 1911. OK, so the special effects have come a long, long way to date, but aren't there enough CGI monster movie spectacles already this summer? Someone should let this franchise stay dead already.

8.8 Pineapple Express

Now we're talking. Seth Rogen and James Franco plus Judd Apatow multiplied by excessive amounts of weed and guns equals a serious good time. The trailer shows Rogen toking it up while driving down the road, crowing over huge bags of exotic dope called Pineapple Express with his drug dealer friend Franco, then he witnesses a grisly murder through a window and is too fucked up to pull away in his car. It's a fast-paced action buddy comedy with copious amounts of pot. Up In Smoke meets Silver Streak. It's the next logical step into drug-addled oblivion for a pop culture way too obsessed with reality: Total stonerama, man!

8.15 Tropic Thunder

With Choke bumrushed until later in the fall, Ben Stiller's Vietnam farce is the last summer film to look forward to. It's easy to forget what a genius Stiller is, because he is constantly appearing in crap like The Heartbreak Kid. But the man who came up with the idea of inventing a genre and then parodying it (Zoolander) is a formidable director/writer. His latest is about a hapless jungle-bound film crew making an Apocalypse Now-type feature, and they don't seem to realize their fake war is becoming real. Includes Robert Downey Jr. as a white guy playing a black guy, Nick Nolte, Jack Black and even Tom Cruise.