THIS YEAR'S MOVIES, PART FOUR

Three women in difficult financial straits team up to steal money set to be destroyed at their workplace, the Federal Reserve. This comedy caper is much less bad than its poster would suggest, and it's a relief to see Keaton give a watchable performance again after Because I Said So. The film has some laughs but drags a lot, though the funniest moment was the end credits anti-piracy notice, coming after 100 minutes extolling the joys of larceny. Typical studio message -- stealing is good, but just don't steal from us.

It worked for Toy Story, Shrek and Ice Age, so why not a sequel to Madagascar? Just as long as it's not followed by Another Shark Tale.

Dempsey realizes he's fallen for engaged gal pal Monaghan in this cross-gender version of My Best Friend's Wedding. From the director of Leonard Part 6, though I doubt he lists that prominently on his resume.

More youthful dancing, from the writer of Step Up. Why do all these movies (Step Up, Stick It, Take the Lead, Save the Last Dance) have such forgettable, interchangeable titles?

Streep sings ABBA! The popular stage musical featuring classic ABBA songs comes to the screen, with the American cinema's most respected actress belting tunes to beat the band. Oscar bait or future midnight movie? You decide.

Brody as a bullfighter, from the director of Martian Child and Max.

Cooper plots to kill wife Clarkson rather than divorce her in this noirish 40s drama from the director of Forty Shades of Blue and The Delta.

I am beginning to think that writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer may be the smartest people in Hollywood, because despite lacking any talent for comedy whatsoever, they manage to get a major studio to release a new comedy film of theirs every year. On the plus side, Sean Maguire does an amusing Gerard Butler impression, Bader and Sorbo do some welcome underplaying, Christopher Lennertz' score finds the right tone (though it's probably not hard to parody a score that was so derivative the studio had to publicly apologize), and the usual knee-jerk gay panic humor is justified by 300's bizarre mix of homophobia and homoeroticism. But in all of Meet the Spartans' excruciating 84 minutes, there were only two moments that even remotely amused me (the first sight of the baby Leonidas, and Leonidas' failed attempt at a stirring, St. Crispin's Day-style speech), and the rest is intolerable. The filmmakers seem to acknowledge that their audience is comprised of idiots, as they have to overexplain even the most obvious references ("Xerxes looked like the fat guy from Borat," "Her rage consumed her like Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3") and continually stop the film with unamusing product placements and endless "parodies" of American Idol, America's Next Top Model and Deal or No Deal.

Photographer Cooper discovers a serial killer roaming New York's subways in this adaptation of a Clive Barker story. With that title, I'm guessing they're not going for a crossover audience.

Long-in-development biopic with Penn as the openly gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, and Brolin as his assassin, Dan White.

Spike Lee moves onto new turf with his latest joint, a WWII drama.

Hapless nanny McDormand has madcap adventures with actress Adams in 1930s London. Great cast, not bad trailer, and film music fans are always eager for the latest Paul Englishby score (I'm sorry, that was mean. He may be a wonderful composer, and at any rate he has an awesome name for this kind of movie).

The creators of Smallville team with the director of Dragonheart to revive the Brendan Fraser/Mummy franchise, as the series moves to the Far East and Bello takes over the Rachel Weisz role.

Has Oscar-nominee Kate Hudson really been reduced to playing a love interest for Dane Cook? And in a film from the director of The Whole Ten Yards? Aren't agents supposed to protect actors from things like this?

Critics' darling Wong Kar-Wai directs his first English-language feature, so get ready for gorgeous shots and deadly pacing. Surprisingly, the script was co-written by master mystery novelist Lawrence Block (Eight Million Ways to Die).

Michael Chabon's debut novel about a sexually confused young man and his relationship with a slightly older couple has been talked about as a feature for so long that its original director, Alan J. Pakula, has been dead for nine years. Thurber, who ultimately adapted and directed, is the auteur behind Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, so proceed with caution.

The stars of Unfaithful reunite, but this time Gere is the lover, not the husband, with award-winning theater director Wolfe making his feature debut. From the title, you can tell it's based on a novel; unfortunately, it's from the author of The Notebook, Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember.

For once, Jodie Foster makes a film her children can see, with this juvenile Romancing the Stone about an agoraphobic adventure novelist who gets into a real life adventure to help a little girl.

Beckinsale plays a reporter threatened with jail for not revealing the source who blew the cover of a covert CIA agent. A fictional version of the Judith Miller/Valerie Plame incident, it should be interesting to see someone try to make a palatable movie heroine out of Miller; if filmmaker Rod Lurie (The Contender, The Last Castle) succeeds in this, he probably deserves an Oscar.

The director and one of the stars of last year's Wild Hogs reunite for a similarly titled comedy. And you thought anticipation for the new Indiana Jones film was high.

The latest Asian-horror remake isn't as dreary and incoherent as Pulse, and it doesn't hurt that Shannyn Sossamon is one of the most gorgeous women in contemporary films, but this is still a largely unnecessary and unscary remake.
POSTPONED FROM LAST YEAR

Back in the 1930s, Henry VIII was a corpulent grotesque (Charles Laughton); in the 1960s, he was a handsome, rugged fellow (Robert Shaw, Richard Burton). Now, in the new century, he's a hunky dreamboat -- first Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in TV's The Tudors, now Eric Bana in this feature which officially lost its Oscar bait status when it got pushed from 2007 to early 2008. Portman and Johannson play the Boleyn sisters, rivals for Henry's affections, and the script is by The Queen's Peter Morgan, which is surprising considering how clunky the dialogue in the trailer is ("So, you're the other Boleyn girl," quips Henry). Edward Shearmur was originally announced to score, and replaced by Cantelon, who scored The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Everything Is Illuminated (Variety calls Cantelon's score "rich").
POSTPONED FROM LAST YEAR

Rudd's fiance Longoria Parker dies, comes back as a ghost. This romantic comedy got pretty bad reviews when it opened a few weeks ago, and even I, a longtime Rudd fan, wasn't willing to pony up the ten bucks, and I paid to see Meet the Spartans (if only so I could hate it with impunity).

Horror thriller about the aftermath of a plane crash, a change-of-pace project for indie drama director Garcia (Nine Lives, In Treatment).

Ricci tries to find love, despite an unfortunate nose, in a romantic fable that's spent a long time on the shelf -- waiting, perhaps, for McAvoy to finally become a household name.
POSTPONED FROM LAST YEAR, AND THE YEAR BEFORE THAT

In the oddest teaming of the year, the maker of indie dramas like George Washington, Undertow and the upcoming Snow Angels directs a script from the creators of Superbad, a stoners-on-the-run comedy.

Is it time already for a remake of the Gwyneth Paltrow/Aaron Eckhart literary romance? Not exactly; this one is a remake of a 2002 Korean thriller about a car accident resulting in a personality switch. The directors made the original Swedish version of The Invisible.

Expectations for remakes of classic horror films are always high and hard to live up to; luckily, the makers of this new slasher film picked a movie only remembered for its title (and its star, Jamie Lee Curtis), allowing expectations to be lowered suitably. And the writer also penned The Covenant and The Forsaken, so expectations should be at a center-of-the-earth level.

The new James Bond is back, with the most obscure (and frankly, worst) title in the entire Ian Fleming oeuvre. Seriously, releasing a mega-budget franchise entry with a three-word title whose only widely recognizable word is "of" is not a sensible move. True, I'm glad they didn't call it Casino Royale 2: The Revenge or Bond 22: Blofeld Boogaloobut Quantum of Solace isn't much of an improvement.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com