Mean season (continued)

JULY

Disaster struck Ethan Hawke when he lost the gorgeous Uma Thurman; perhaps Before Sunset (July 2) is his way to recovery. Richard Linklater’s return nine years later to the bittersweet romance of Before Sunrise reunites Hawke with Julie Delpy, if only briefly, in Paris.

They’ll always have Vienna. And no doubt Ethan and Julie had a lot of catching up to do. But what do we really know even about those with whom we are supposedly most intimate? In first-time director Pieter Jan Brugge’s The Clearing (July 2), Robert Redford plays a businessman kidnapped by loose cannon Willem Dafoe. When wife Helen Mirren tussles with the FBI trying to release him, she learns a few things about her model husband she never suspected.

Is no one sacred? Will another paragon of macho virtue and leadership crumble in Antoine Fuqua’s (by way of producer Jerry Bruckheimer) "demystified" version of Camelot, King Arthur (July 7)? Clive Owen takes the role of the legendary king and Keira Knightley plays Guinevere in a historical epic emphasizing grit and carnage rather than magic and romance.

Certainly the reputation of the crusading journalist is in decline, and Anchorman (July 9) isn’t likely to restore it. Directed by SNL writer Adam McKay, this comedy suggests that local news stations of the ’70s were kind of a cross between Old School and Broadcast News. Will Ferrell stars as the reigning Ted Baxter–like blowhard of the title; Christina Applegate is the spunky Mary Richards type.

With news gatherers like those, little wonder that no one realizes the robots have taken over the world! Oh, wait, that won’t be until 2035, at least in Alex Proyas’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s classic I, Robot (July 18). Will Smith is a "robotophobe" police investigator looking into a murder that may have been committed by an automaton in what looks like a dystopic thriller along the lines of Blade Runner and Artificial Intelligence: A.I.

If Smith’s hero finds his humanity threatened in I, Robot, he might also find his masculinity challenged by Catwoman (July 23). There’s no Batman or Gotham City in this reinvention of the leather-clad super-powered vixen by French director Pitof (Vidocq). Instead, there’s Halle Berry in a revealing outfit wielding a whip and combatting a secret evil empire overseen by Sharon Stone.

Meanwhile, maybe we don’t have to wait until the year 2035 for the automatons to take over. Matt Damon returns as Robert Ludlum’s rebellious, programmed assassin in The Bourne Supremacy (July 23), and his idyllic getaway with Franka Potente ends when a killer claiming the Bourne identity knocks off the Chinese premier. Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday) directs this reminder that neither one’s memory nor the CIA is to be trusted

Ludlum probably got some of his inspiration for Bourne from the perversely hilarious escapades of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate (July 30). Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, and Jon Voight star as Jonathan Demme updates the tale of brainwashed POWs, setting his movie in the first Iraq War rather than in Korea. So what does it say about the election of 1992, not to mention that of 2004? "It’s got political dimensions," says Demme. "But it’s not a political statement."

What the political dimensions might be of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (July 30) are hard to fathom, but its overall dread, paranoia, and xenophobia are hard to ignore. In what seems like a combination of The Blair Witch Project and Dogville, the inhabitants of the title town live in a tenuous truce with mystery beings dwelling in the woods. Joaquin Phoenix, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and Bryce Howard (Ron’s daughter in her screen debut) star.

AUGUST

Two decades after Travis Bickle let loose in Taxi Driver, that icon of crazy, violent rebellion has been reduced to mere Collateral (August 6). Jamie Foxx plays an LA hack who inadvertently becomes the chauffeur, and potential victim, of hitman Tom Cruise as he travels from job to job. Michael Mann is about the third director attached to this much postponed project, which also stars Dennis Farina and Jada Pinkett-Smith.

If driving a cab for Tom Cruise sounds like a losing proposition, how about being a spectator to the match-up of Alien vs. Predator (August 13)? It’s like choosing sides between al Qaeda and the Republicans. Paul W.S. Anderson directs this duel between the franchises, and one can only hope it’s better than Freddy Vs. Jason. Sanaa Lathan, Raul Bova, Lance Hendricksen, and Ewen Bremner star.

The world as a pawn in a struggle between equally evil adversaries — that’s one way to look at things. Another is that it’s all a case of simple demonic possession. Which brings us to Exorcist: The Beginning (August 20), a prequel that recounts young Father Merrin’s first encounter with the diabolical in post–World War II Africa. The production of the film seems almost as fraught with devilish mishaps as the tale itself. Original director John Frankenheimer quit the project and died shortly thereafter. He was replaced by Paul Schrader, whose finished version was canned by the studio (it will be released on DVD when the film comes out). Renny Harlin ended up directing a whole new movie, with Stellan Skarsgård in the title role as the crusader against Hell whose faith is failing.

In the end, I think that what moviegoers and voters alike are looking for is a Hero (August 20). Whether Zhang Yimou’s martial-arts epic set in ancient China and featuring a multi-layered, Rashomon-like narrative fills that need remains to be seen. Jet Li, Tony Leung, and Maggie Cheung star as assassins who like their colleagues Matt Damon, Tom Cruise, and the mystery man in The Manchurian Candidate have trouble keeping their stories straight. That might be a familiar problem for candidates and voters as election day nears.