Box Office

ROCKET SCIENCE

Cast: Reece Thompson, Anna Kendrick, Nicholas D'Agosto

Director: Jeffrey Blitz

Blitz, director of the popular spelling-bee documentary Spellbound, helms this comedy about a chronic stutterer who joins his high school debate team at the insistence of the school's beautiful debate-team queen.

RUSH HOUR 3

Cast: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker

Director: Brett Ratner

Quick, go rent the first two and bone up on the elaborate back story.

STARDUST

Cast: Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Peter O'Toole

Director: Matthew Vaughn

A young Englishman follows a falling star and ends up in the fantasy land of Faerie, where the star is a beautiful woman (Danes) being hunted by an evil witch (Pfeiffer). Based on a graphic novel by the revered writer Neil Gaiman.

THE SIGNAL

Cast: A.J. Bowen, Justin Welborn, Anessa Ramsey, Scott Poythress

Directors: David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry

Told in three parts by three directors, this horror film traces what happens when a mysterious electronic transmission ignites a city's murderous aggressions.

AUGUST 17

FANBOYS

Cast: Sam Huntington, Chris Marquette, Dan Fogler, Jay Baruchel

Director: Kyle Newman

A comedy about four sci-fi-geek best friends who travel cross-country to break into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch and somehow screen the as-yet unreleased Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

THE INVASION

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig,

Jeremy Northam

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

In the umpteenth riff on Jack Finney's classic 1955 novel, The Body Snatchers, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist (Kidman) comes to believe that the reason people around her are acting stranger than usual is that aliens have taken them over.

PENELOPE

Cast: Christina Ricci, Catherine O'Hara, Peter Dinklage, James McAvoy, Reese Witherspoon

Director: Mark Palansky

A modern-day fable about a young woman afflicted with a pig snout of a nose, the result of a family curse that can be broken only if she finds love.

SUPERBAD

Cast: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader

Director: Greg Mottola

A coming-of-age comedy about two high school nerds (Cera and Hill) who spend a fateful night trying to lose their virginity. Produced by Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) and directed by Mottola, whose debut film was the terrific indie comedy Daytrippers.

WEDDING DAZE

Cast: Jason Biggs, Isla Fisher, Joe Pantoliano

Director: Michael Ian Black

After losing the girl of his dreams, Anderson (Biggs) spontaneously proposes to a waitress (Fisher), who accepts. Will love blossom?

AUGUST 24

THE COMEBACKS

Cast: David Koechner, Bradley Cooper, Matthew Lawrence

Director: Tom Brady

In this spoof of inspirational sports movies, the unluckiest coach in sports (Koechner) gets one last chance when he takes over a no-talent football team with the worst record in history.

GOOD LUCK CHUCK

Cast: Dane Cook, Jessica Alba

Director: Mark Helfrich

Poor Chuck (Cook) becomes a babe magnet for all the wrong reasons after word gets out that, for some mysterious reason, any woman who sleeps with him is destined to fall in love with the next man she meets.

AUGUST 31

BALLS OF FURY

Cast: Dan Fogler, Christopher Walken, George Lopez, Maggie Q.

Director: Robert Ben Garant

At the behest of the FBI, agent Randy Daytona (Fogler), a former pingpong champ, re-enters the fray on a secret mission to defeat his father's arch-rival and possible killer (Walken).

DEATH SENTENCE

Cast: Kevin Bacon

Director: James Wan

A new adaptation of a 1975 novel by Brian Garfield, which was a sequel to Garfield's earlier Death Wish, the book that spawned a hit film for tough guy Charles Bronson. In this updated version, a businessman (Bacon) turns vigilante after a street gang attacks his family.

HALLOWEEN

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane

Director: Rob Zombie

In what amounts to sacrilege to many serious horror fans, rocker turned filmmaker Rob Zombie (House of 1,000 Corpses) remakes John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic.

MR. BEAN'S HOLIDAY

Cast: Rowan Atkinson

Director: Steve Bendelack

Mr. Bean enters a church raffle and wins a vacation to France, where he wreaks his distinct brand of havoc.

THE BROTHERS SOLOMON

Cast: Will Arnett, Will Forte, Chi McBride

Director: Bob Odenkirk

Saturday Night Live's two Wills — Arnett and Forte (the latter scripted) — play not particularly bright brothers who want to fulfill their dying father's wish for a grandchild. One problem: They can't talk to women.

ALSO THIS SUMMER

BLACK SHEEP

Cast: Nathan Meister, Peter Feeney, Danielle Mason, Tammy Davis

Director: Jonathan King

In this horror comedy from New Zealand, a young man with a pathological fear of sheep returns to his family's farm to find that it's been overrun by mutant, flesh-eating sheep.

BLAME IT ON FIDEL

Cast: Nina Kervel-Bey, Julie Depardieu, Stefano Accorsi

Director: Julie Gavras

In 1970s Paris, a 9-year-old girl (Kervel-Bey) finds herself left to nannies and a houseful of noisy revolutionaries while her parents devote themselves to radical causes.

BROKEN ENGLISH

Cast: Parker Posey, Melvil Poupaud, Gena Rowlands, Drea de Matteo

Director: Zoe Cassavetes

In a rare dramatic role, Posey stars as a Manhattan hotel exec unlucky in love, until the night she meets and falls hard for a visiting Frenchman (Poupaud, who was so good in 2005's Time to Leave). For her feature debut, writer-director Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of the late John Cassavetes, cast her mother, the great Gena Rowlands, as Posey's disapproving mom.