SUMMER GUIDE: (100) Days of Summer Movies

June 30

Love Ranch

Taylor Hackford (Ray) directs his wife, Helen Mirren, along with Joe Pesci, in the so-crazy-it-has-to-be true story of Sally and Joe Conforte, whose 1970s Reno brothel, known as "Mustang Ranch," led the way to legalized prostitution in Nevada.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

A dreamboat vampire, a hunky werewolf, a confused teenage girl — stop us if you've heard of this one. Directed by David Slade (30 Days of Night)

July 2

The Girl Who Played With Fire

For the second film in the Stieg Larsson "Millennium Trilogy" (the first was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace return as a financial journalist and tattooed hacker, respectively, who are once again up to their necks in murder and intrigue.

The Last Airbender

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) adapts Nickelodeon's animated fantasy series about a 12-year-old (Noah Ringer) with the ability to control all four elements — Water, Earth, Air and Fire. No pressure there.

Twelve

Gossip Girl heartthrob Chace Crawford is the best-looking drug dealer on Manhattan's Upper East Side and Emma Roberts his clueless girlfriend in this adaptation of Nick McDonell's bestseller, published, famously, when the author was only 17. Directed by Joel Schumacher (St. Elmo's Fire) and featuring Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as Crawford's rival.

July 7

The Kids Are All Right

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play a Southern California lesbian couple with two teenagers they had with the sperm of an anonymous donor. When the kids track down their biological father (Mark Ruffalo), the mothers are more than a little freaked. Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon).

July 9

Countdown to Zero

In this documentary about the likelihood of a nuclear bomb going off in the near future, director Lucy Walker divides the cause for a possible detonation into three categories: accident, miscalculation, or insanity.

Despicable Me

There are villains aplenty in this 3D animated comedy, chief among them the cranky, unfulfilled Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), whose plan to steal the moon is hitting a few snags.

Great Directors

Some of the world's filmmaking iconoclasts — Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch and Agnès Varda among them — discuss their methods and madness in this documentary by Angela Ismailos.

Predators

The alien creature that stalked Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 1987 and then spawned a host of bad sequels is back, thanks to executive producer Robert Rodriguez. Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne and Topher Grace are the unlucky mercenaries about to become alien bait.

[Rec] 2

This sequel to the decidedly creepy Spanish horror film Rec (the Hollywood version was called Quarantine) picks up moments after the original ended, as a special ops team enters a Barcelona apartment whose inhabitants are infected with a virus that turns them drooly and demonic.

July 16

The Concert

A disgraced Russian conductor (Aleksei Guskov) seeks to rewrite history in this drama from Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu. Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) co-stars.

Inception

Arguably the most anticipated movie of the summer, if not the year, this thriller from writer-director Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) is shrouded in secrecy. We do know that Leonardo DiCaprio heads up a team of "dream thieves" that includes Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ken Watanabe (though maybe he's the bad guy).

Kisses

A ten-year old boy fights with his father on Christmas Eve and runs away to Dublin, with a neighbor girl in tow. Filmmaker Lance Daly's follow-up to The Halo Effect has been much admired on the festival circuit.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Nicolas Cage, teaming up again with National Treasure director Jon Turteltaub, plays a modern-day conjurer who enlists an NYU student (Jay Baruchel) to help him save the world from an evil wizard (Alfred Molina). The adventure film is reportedly inspired by the Mickey Mouse sorcerer sequence in Fantasia (that scares us just a little bit).

July 23

Dinner for Schmucks

The schmuck is Barry (Steve Carell), a nerd deluxe who's thrilled to be invited by his boss (Paul Rudd) to a dinner for big shots. What Barry doesn't know is that he's being set up for big-time ridicule in this comedy from director Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers).

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel

With the full cooperation of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, Canadian filmmaker Brigitte Berman looks back at Hef's tumultuous early days, when his newfangled ideas about nudity, sex, gay rights and drug use, among other things, shocked magazine readers and seriously annoyed the Feds.

Life During Wartime

It's been 12 years since writer-director Todd Solondz's hilarious yet emotionally wrenching suburban black comedy Happiness. In this sequel, the filmmaker catches up with the original characters, but has recast all the roles, as if to acknowledge that neither he nor his characters can possibly be the same people a decade later.

Ramona and Beezus

In the film version of young adult novelist Beverly Cleary's iconic "Ramona" character, first created in the 1950s, 11-year-old Joey King plays the spunky third grader with Disney Channel star Selena Gomez as her older sister Beatrice, a.k.a. "Beezus."

Salt

Angelina Jolie channels her inner Jason Bourne — she leaps, she kicks, she kills — in director Phillip Noyce's action thriller about a CIA operative who's accused of being a Russian spy. Liev Schrei­ber and Chiwetel Ejiofor co-star.