Summer movies

Summer movie season kicks off today with Spider-Man 3 (quick review: it's more of the same for the franchise, but this time a little bit less).

I've also already seen and enjoyed Away From Her, Waitress and Paris je t'aime, which are playing in select cities and will expand through the summer. They're small and worthwhile alternatives to the bigger Hollywood offerings.

I wrote this preview a couple weeks ago, and finally found time to mention it here too.

I'm much more excited about this summer than I was about last summer but I have a hard time singling out a movie as the one I'm most looking forward to.

Last year even most of the movies I wanted to see turned out to be disappointing (and I think the only pleasant surprise was Monster House, which I didn't catch until DVD). But with appropriately sunny optimism, here are the ten movies I'm most excited about this summer (in no particular order):

favorite franchises return with The Bourne Ultimatum, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Ocean's 13;

promising Sundance titles Joshua and Rocket Science;

40 Year Old Virgin director Judd Apatow's heavily buzzed Knocked Up;

Pixar's latest, Ratatouille;

interesting actor/director combinations in A Mighty Heart (Angelina Jolie with Michael Winterbottom) and Talk to Me (Don Cheadle with Kasi Lemmons);

and Hairspray, which originally sounded like a disaster but now appears more likely to do its enjoyable forerunners (on film and stage) proud.

But honestly I even want to see Michael Bay's Transformers (oh the inevitable pain...but I can't resist) and there's something intriguing about that trailer for the Fantastic Four sequel (which could be one of two sequels I see without bothering to check out the original, since I'll almost certainly be seeing Evan Almighty).

Oh summer.