(500) DAYS OF SUMMER
Release date: July 24
Director: Marc Webb
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Chloe Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler
What the (500) crappy synopses I read about this movie have led me to believe is that (500) Days Of Summer is a way-too-quirky-for-the-room comedy about a guy (Gordon-Levitt, the kid from 3rd Rock From The Sun who your dad said would never amount to anything) who falls in love with a woman (Deschanel, who jacked her face from Katy Perry) who doesn’t believe in love. And, apparently, parentheses make (terrible) titles cool.

ALIENS IN THE ATTIC
Release date: July 31
Director: John Schultz
Cast: Ashley Tisdale, Robert Hoffman, Tim Meadows, Kevin Nealon
Listen, Tisdale. You’re 24 years old and way hotter than you should be – enough with making millions off Disney Channel shows and tween movies. It’s about time you read Lindsey Lohan’s Guide to Career Suicide. The Tiz plays the eldest of several “teenage” kids in the Pearson family who discover a group of aliens living in the attic of their Maine vacation home. Now, it’s up to the Pearsons to stop them from taking over the world.

ALL GOOD THINGS
Release date: July 24
Director: Andrew Jarecki
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lily Rabe
… must come to an end, right? Clever. I can’t wait to not see how that ties into this film. The heir to a New York real estate dynasty (Gosling) falls for a snaggle-toothed (reportedly) beautiful girl from the other side of the tracks (Dunst). When the girl disappears, a grizzled detective (Morgan) investigates, resulting in death and general upheaval. Because this is a Weinstein Company film, a July 24, 2009 release date could easily mean Spring 2011.

BRUNO
Release date: July 10
Director: Larry Charles
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen
From the comedic mind that brought you Borat, the mustached Kazakhstani immigrant who traveled the U.S. seeking cultural learnings for make benefit his glorious nation, comes Bruno (Baron Cohen), a gay Austrian fashionista and news reporter who travels the country interviewing unsuspecting people about fashion, entertainment and homosexuality. Prepare yourself for a whole new bank of catch phrases that won’t die. Very nice!

FUNNY PEOPLE
Release date: July 31
Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana
Did you see the trailer for this Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express, etc.) film? If so, then you don’t need to see it, because the trailer spoils every plot point. Sandler plays George, a successful stand-up comedian who discovers he has one year to live. In his last days, George befriends a struggling comic name Ira (Rogen), only to rediscover the meaning of life when he finds out he’s not going to die.

G-FORCE
Release date: July 24
Director: Hoyt Yeatman
Cast: (voices of) Sam Rockwell, Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, Tracy Morgan
The icy scraping noise you hear is the sound of Walt Disney’s body rolling over in its cryogenic chamber. The cause? His company is releasing this movie, about a team of secret agent guinea pigs, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, National Treasure, Pirates of the Caribbean) and starring the dynamic voice talent of Nicolas Cage (Nothing You Should Have Seen In The Last Five Years) as a mole named Speckles.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
(press photo)
Release date: July 15
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon
Things are changing at Hogwarts. The evil Lord Voldemort and his followers are reeking havoc across both the Muggle and wizarding worlds, and the school for witchcraft and wizardy is not the sanctuary it once was. No one knows this better than Harry Potter (Radcliffe), who senses more than ever that there is a traitor in their midst. The only question is, who? Disturbingly unconcerned, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Gambon) helps Harry search for the key to Voldemorts weakness and prepares him for a final showdown that he’ll have to face alone.

I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER
Release date: July 10
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Hayden Panettiere, Paul Rust, Jack Carpenter, Lauren Storm
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t receive the press release stating that Hayden Panettiere had ceased being a snotty blonde elf and begun being a sex symbol. This month, she plays Beth Cooper, a popular high school cheerleader (typecast much?) who becomes the subject of lust in the nerdy valedictorian’s (Rust) graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his door – stumpy legs and all – to show him a good time.

ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS
(press photo)
Release date: July 1
Director: Carlos Saldanha
Cast: (voices of) Ray Romano, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, John Leguizamo
The Ice Age crew returns for a third installment of prehistoric pratfalls. And though each character has its own issues to deal with – Manny (Romano) and Ellie (Latifah) are expecting a baby mammoth, Diego (Leary) thinks he’s gone soft and Scrat gets a feisty girlfriend – the crew bands together to save Sid (Leguizamo) when he stumbles upon a hidden underground dinosaur oasis and is subsequently imprisoned for stealing dino eggs.

ORPHAN
Release date: July 24
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, Vera Farmiga, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder
John (Sarsgaard) and Kate (Farmiga) adopt a 9-year-old girl named Esther (Fuhrman) after they lose their baby, only to discover that she may be evil. They then adopt seven more kids and strike up a television deal. Orphan, directed by a 35-year-old, Barcelona-born director Jaume Collet-Serra, should not be confused with the 2007 horror movie The Orphanage, directed by 34-year old, Barcelona-born director Juan Antonio Bayona.

PUBLIC ENEMIES
Release date: July 1
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup
In the 1930s, John Dillinger (Depp) was named America’s first Public Enemy Number One by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Crudup). The American press and public revered Dillinger and his gang for charismatically robbing banks across the Midwest – banks that helped cause the Great Depression. Hoover taps FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale) to hunt down the elusive gangster and bring him to justice.

THE UGLY TRUTH
Release date: July 24
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Katherine Heigl, Gerard Butler, Cheryl Hines, Eric Winter
People kind of hate Katherine Heigl right now, so I’m sure this movie will do great. In a role unlike any she’s ever taken, Heigl plays a morning show producer named Abby who just can’t seem to find the right man. But that all changes when a chauvinistic correspondent (Butler) joins the team and utilizes Abby to prove his theories on men, women and relationships. And guess what? He falls for her just as she falls for someone else.

THE SCREENING ROOM
Every month, resident Fly film geek David Onda disappears into a super-secret underground movie lair for VIP pre-screenings of the illest upcoming box office releases. He praises. He pummels. He’s paid in popcorn.

THE HURT LOCKER
(press photo)
Release date: In select theaters now, opens wide July 24
Runtime: 131 minutes
Rated: R
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes

In 2004, at the height of the war in Iraq, journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal (In the Valley of Elah) spent several weeks with a United States Army bomb squad in Baghdad. His experience would lay the groundwork for his true fiction screenplay The Hurt Locker.

The film follows an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team through its last 38 days in Iraq. This group of three soldiers – Staff Sergeant William James (Renner), Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Geraghty) – carries out one of the most vital and dangerous jobs of this war: disarming or safely detonating improvised explosive devices.

To create a stark authenticity to the film, director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) shot this film in Jordan, just miles from the Iraq border and home to nearly a million Iraqi refugees. Bigelow, true to form, takes an unconventional approach to this movie, shooting on four hand-held cameras at different angles simultaneously, giving the film both guerrilla-reminiscent realism and gripping suspense. A boatload of credit goes to director of photography Barry Ackroyd (United 93), who reaffirms his skills in the docudrama department.

The Hurt Locker thrives on the theme of mortality – constantly looking over your shoulder for death – and the deterioration of the human psyche. The result is both heartbreaking and revelatory, especially to those unaware that such bomb units exist. Bigelow shows a masterful handling of the suspense/ thriller genre, creating excruciating tension throughout.

Though the film stars relative unknowns, it lends itself well to the realism of the film, helping the audience believe that they are watching actual soldiers risking their lives. Cameos by Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes offer credibility to the film, but do little else.

Renner delivers a breakout performance as William James, a balls-to-the-wall bomb tech who has disarmed more than 800 bombs in his career. Renner ably relates the emotional turmoil and post-war struggle to assimilate that many soldiers deal with.

In one memorable scene, James stands alone in a U.S. supermarket aisle struggling over a decision as mundane as which cereal to buy. Just weeks prior, he was staring imminent death in the face while calmly disarming a bomb. As she does in other aspects of the movies, Bigelow achieves in showing us this irony rather than explaining it to us.

If I question the film on any aspect, it is the over-the-top attitude of the James character. While I have no military experience, the irresponsible and reckless way in which James conducts himself seems over-exaggerated, if not a bit unrealistic. The already colorful personalities of these soldiers and the inherent danger of the setting and situations were more than enough to fuel the narrative.

Otherwise, The Hurt Locker is one of the best war films that I’ve seen in some time. Skillfully directed action and rich cinematography guide a dizzyingly realistic film about some of modern war’s unsung heroes and their sacrifices.

-by David Onda