10 FLIGHT PLAN
RELEASE DATE Sept. 23
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT Jodie Foster (above) returns for her first lead role in more than three years — she could be starring in I Want to Be a Hilton: The Movie and we'd still watch.
THE PREMISE Foster plays Kyle Pratt, a recently widowed aircraft engineer whose little girl vanishes during a transatlantic flight, only to have everyone on the plane tell her she's delusional and paranoid and never brought a child on board.
SOURCE An original screenplay by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray
THE BACK STORY The screenplay was initially written for a male lead but changed for Foster's sake. She notes, ''There's a moment in the movie when Kyle doubts her sanity. It's the kind of doubt I don't think any man would ever have. Women's relationship with their children is this strange symbiotic bond… they are their children.''
BURNING QUESTION Are post-9/11 audiences finally ready for movies where horrible things happen on airplanes?
COME FOR Foster, who's now the queen of thrillers set in claustrophobic spaces, after Panic Room and Contact
STAY FOR Utility player Peter Sarsgaard (who's also in Jarhead this fall), as the one man who might be able to help Kyle find her daughter

9 Wallace & Gromit
RELEASE DATE Oct. 7
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT We love the delightful and witty Claymation of Aardman Animations (Chicken Run), especially Oscar winner Nick Park's three previous Wallace & Gromit shorts.
THE PREMISE Cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his sensible dog Gromit (above) confront a mutant bunny that's haunting the neighborhood vegetable gardens.
SOURCE The characters featured in the shorts ''A Grand Day Out'' (1989), ''The Wrong Trousers'' (1993), and ''A Close Shave'' (1996)
THE BACK STORY Why a were-rabbit? Turns out the knights of Monty Python and the Holy Grail aren't the only ones haunted by killer bunnies. ''I find rabbits a bit scary, I must say,'' says co-director Steve Box.
BURNING QUESTION Will audiences be ready for another stop-motion animation feature just two weeks after Tim Burton's Corpse Bride?
COME FOR The irreverent sight gags
STAY FOR The reverent homages to classic horror flicks

8 Walk the Line
RELEASE DATE Nov. 18
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT After seeing the trailer, we're sold on Joaquin Phoenix (right) as Johnny Cash, while Nashville-bred Reese Witherspoon (left) should be his match as June Carter Cash.
THE PREMISE Johnny rises to stardom and has a tumultuous romance with fellow country star June, who ultimately becomes his wife.
SOURCE The true story of the Man in Black
THE BACK STORY The couple's son, John Carter Cash, read the script to his father shortly before the elder Cash died in 2003. His father was worried that some of the real-life participants might feel hurt, but his son says, ''I told him, we won't hurt anybody — actually, the guy who looks the worst is you!'' He says Johnny Cash didn't mind that.
BURNING QUESTION Is this biopic the Ray of 2005?
COME FOR Phoenix the Oscar-nominated thespian
STAY FOR Phoenix the singer and guitar-picker

7 Jarhead
RELEASE DATE Nov. 4
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes re-ups for another tour of American duty with this timely look at U.S. troops fighting Iraqi forces.
THE PREMISE Marine ''Swoff'' (Jake Gyllenhaal, pictured) goes from boot camp to the front lines during the 1991 Gulf War.
SOURCE Anthony Swofford's best-selling 2003 memoir
THE BACK STORY ''I was enthralled by the mixture of machismo, comedy, surrealism, [and] observation,'' Mendes says of Swofford's tale. As for what drew Peter Sarsgaard, who plays a sniper-squad leader, he says, ''My uncle died in Vietnam. My father was in the Air Force. My relatives always served… and I think that probably informed who my character becomes.''
BURNING QUESTION Are audiences ready for a gritty, irreverent look at Americans fighting in the Middle East, even at a 14-year remove from today's headlines?
COME FOR A very buff Gyllenhaal, who should do for extreme heat what he did for ice-age cold in The Day After Tomorrow
STAY FOR Oscar winners Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper as Gyllenhaal's comrades-in-arms

6 Corpse Bride
RELEASE DATE Sept. 23
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are always a winning combination (see: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). So are Tim Burton and stop-motion animation (see: The Nightmare Before Christmas).

THE PREMISE After a ritual performed in jest, nervous bridegroom Victor (left, voiced by Depp) finds himself married to an undead bride (right, voiced by Helena Bonham Carter) instead of his fiancée (Emily Watson).

SOURCE A 19th-century Russian-Jewish folk tale

THE BACK STORY Despite the need to attract a family audience, Warner Bros. didn't balk at some of Burton's more gruesome touches, like the bride's worm buddy that wriggles out of her eye socket every now and then.
BURNING QUESTION Did Burton spread himself too thin trying to complete this movie and Charlie at the same time?
COME FOR The director's pop-gothic vision
STAY FOR Depp's light touch

5 Elizabethtown
RELEASE DATE Oct. 14
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT No one combines romantic longing, music, and wistfulness like writer-director Cameron Crowe (Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire).
THE PREMISE His professional life has fallen apart, and his father has just died, but on his way back to Kentucky for the funeral, mopey Drew (Orlando Bloom, left) meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst, right), a vivacious flight attendant.
SOURCE An original screenplay by Crowe

THE BACK STORY After Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Troy, and Kingdom of Heaven, Bloom says, ''I was psyched to get to play a contemporary character and a role without a sword, or a bow and arrow.''
BURNING QUESTION Doesn't this sound an awful lot like Garden State?
COME FOR The cute couple
STAY FOR The all-important soundtrack, featuring country-rockers My Morning Jacket, who play a prominent role on-screen as well

4 Get Rich or Die Trying
RELEASE DATE Nov. 11
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT Eminem had his 8 Mile. Now, his protégé 50 Cent (above) gets his own autobiographical, up-from-the-streets drama.
THE PREMISE Imagine a much more violent 8 Mile, in which the protagonist, here named Marcus, survives nine gunshot wounds.
SOURCE The true story of how drug dealer Curtis Jackson became rap star 50 Cent, as adapted by Sopranos scribe Terence Winter
THE BACK STORY The post-shooting scene, where a gore-spattered Marcus lies on the operating table, felt all too real to the rapper/actor. ''I had to lay there for four hours,'' he says. ''I've been there, and I don't feel like it's impossible to be there again. Everybody else was running around like it was just another scene, but to me it was something different.''
BURNING QUESTION Can director Jim Sheridan (In America, My Left Foot) bring to this story the same awards-season credibility that director Curtis Hanson brought to 8 Mile?
COME FOR The gangsta Fitty
STAY FOR The vulnerable Fitty


3 RENT
RELEASE DATE Nov. 23
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT How about — lo-o-o-ve? Er, sorry, it's hard to resist singing the score to the long-awaited adaptation of the Broadway musical, which manages to reunite almost all of the original cast.
THE PREMISE In the 1980s, New York City's then-gritty East Village brings together cutting-edge young artists, sexual free-spirits, and tragically, the AIDS virus.
SOURCE Jonathan Larson's Tony-winning 1996 musical, which in turn is an update of Puccini's opera La Boheme
THE BACK STORY Rosario Dawson is one of the cast's few newbies, but she was raised in the neighborhood. ''Having grown up in a squat, I knew what it was like. And playing someone like [Mimi] just made me want to nurture that girl I grew up around.''
BURNING QUESTION Is anodyne kiddie-film director Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) the right director for this material?
COME FOR The names you know — Dawson, Taye Diggs, Law & Order's Jesse L. Martin
STAY FOR The names you may not know, including Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, and the amazing Wilson Jermaine Heredia as the drag queen Angel

2 V is for Vendetta
RELEASE DATE Nov. 4
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT No one fights future fascism like the Wachowski brothers, but this time, they'll be doing it without the techno-shamanistic mumbo-jumbo that swamped the Matrix trilogy.
THE PREMISE A porcelain-masked revolutionary named V (Hugo Weaving, right) rescues a waif (Natalie Portman, left) and stages acts of resistance in a totalitarian London.
SOURCE The 1988 graphic novel by Alan Moore (Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and David Lloyd
THE BACK STORY V never removes his mask, which allowed the filmmakers to replace initial star James Purefoy with Matrix villain Weaving halfway through the shoot. ''In a way, he was in a guinea pig position,'' Weaving says of Purefoy.
BURNING QUESTION Will the story of a terrorist bomber in London hit a little too close to home?
COME FOR V the violent firebrand
STAY FOR V the romantic aesthete

1 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
RELEASE DATE Nov. 18
WHY WE CAN'T WAIT Even right after the release of the new book, it's impossible to get enough Harry, and we've been waiting a year and a half since the last movie.
THE PREMISE You know the drill: Hogwarts classroom high jinks, stirring hormones, a mystery for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, above) to solve, and a confrontation with Lord Voldemort (in the flesh this time, in the guise of Ralph Fiennes).
SOURCE J.K. Rowling's fourth Harry Potter novel
THE BACK STORY Thanks to the example set by Alfonso Cuarón's loose adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the filmmakers felt free to whittle Rowling's epic-length Goblet down to a manageable length. Gone are some favorite subplots, like Hermione's effort to organize the overworked house elves.
BURNING QUESTION Will Potter purists feel shortchanged by a Goblet that's not six hours long?
COME FOR Harry, Ron, and Hermione
STAY FOR Brendan Gleeson (Troy), as creepy new teacher Mad-Eye Moody

I dont want to see any of those movies.

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I only want to see Harry Potter.

Don't know how the Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong didn't make the list.

No Inglorious Bastards? That list means nothing.

The Corpse Bride will kick ass, though. I guarantee it.

i know i'll see harry and after almost famous, i feel like i have to see anything cameron crowe does.

other than those two, i could wait til my deathbed without seeing any of those other movies.

Maybe 50 Cent can do a Brandon Lee on the shoot for his movie.

I can wait to see all 10 of those.

I can't wait to see Elizabethtown, then again it was film mostly in KY (where I'm from) and I'm a fan of MMJ.

I saw the preview for corpse bride and it was really freaky lookin'

The only one there I would see is The Corpse Bride. The rest look like the same typical shit Hollywood has been putting out for the last 10 years

Is there an update that Bastards is actually being made? If so then yeah, the list is worthless.

not a bad list

I´ll check The Corpse Bride and V for Vendetta

Oh yeah, they're filming.

I want to see all these movies with the exception of maybe the 50 cent one.

Jarhead looks really great, I don't know why you wouldn't want to see it. Just the fact that it has Peter Saarsgard and is directed by Sam Mendes (cough he did American Beauty cough) makes me interested in it.