Personally, looking over these next few months I’m finding very little to get me terribly excited. A remake of The Poseidon Adventure (now called Poseidon) directed by Das Boot director Wolfgang Peterson? Nah, no thanks. Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn getting jiggy with it in The Break-Up? Whatever. The Duff sisters, Hilary and Haylie, teaming up as cosmetic heiresses in Material Girls with once promising filmmaker Martha Coolidge at the helm? You have to be joking.

But this seems to be the status quo for the whole gosh darn season. Sequels we don’t want (Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), remakes we don’t need (Pulse, The Omen), CGI cartoons we don’t care about (Over the Hedge, Barnyard, The Ant Bully) and high concept comedies probably devoid of laughs (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Just My Luck, My Super Ex-Girlfriend). Some of these will break through with both critics and audiences alike, of course, and I’ll go so far as to bet one or more of these might actually even rate as being one of the best of the year. No matter what happens, one thing is still for certain: All pessimism aside, I’ll be first in line at the multiplex for all of these and more, popcorn at the ready and an ice cold Diet Coke good to go.

The following twelve films (three each month) I’m most excited about seeing. As usual, release dates are subject to change.

X-Men: The Last Stand (May 26)

This one scares me. That’s as plain as it gets. There is the high probability that Rush Hour and Red Dragon director Brett Ratner will muck up this franchise in the third outing every bit as much as Joel Schumacher did to the Caped Crusader in Batman Forever. Still, the trailers look promising, and Kelsey Grammer playing Beast might just be the best bit of eccentrically perfect casting I’ll see all year. Besides, with the rise of the Phoenix as a subplot, Ratner can’t possibly screw that up, right? Right? Right???

Cars (June 9)

Pixar’s first flick since the Disney purchase and the first one helmed by studio founder John Lasseter since Toy Story 2. Every time I have doubts that these CGI magicians can’t pull something off (both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles looked lackluster only to immerge as masterpieces) they come out looking like geniuses. Can they go seven for seven? With a movie about racecars? Talking racecars? I, especially after their last six, am not about to tell them they can’t.

The Heart of the Game (June 14)
Forgive me for a little hometown bias, bit The Heart of the Game is a based-in-Seattle story I just can't wait to see. Having spent a little time coaching at Roosevelt High School (track, 1997), this documentary about the 2003 Girl's Basketball Team is one of those films that had me in the door even before I knew a thing about it. Concerning the team's ride to the State Championship and the crisis that befalls their star player, all reports are that documentarian Ward Serrill has crafted a nonfiction tale light years betters than any fictional melodrama about the team could ever have hoped to be.

Superman Returns (June 30)

The irony here is that after Brett Ratner left this particular project (the term “creative differences” was used to explain his dismissal – go figure), X-Men auteur Bryan Singer left his mutant baby to come take over the one project he’d been dreaming of helming since becoming a filmmaker. Ratner, of course, went over to Fox and took over the reigns of Singer’s former franchise, and while that one bows first this is the one generating the most gossip, speculation and concern. Paying homage to the Richard Donner original but also trying to take the Kryptonian freedom fighter into the new millennium, I admit to being curious if skeptical. But I said the same thing when Singer took on his last project, and we all know how that comic book adaptation turned out. Keeping my fingers crossed, here’s hoping we all believe a man can fly… again.