Summer Movie Preview Calendar

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THE CHANGE-UP

Starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds
Directed by David Dobkin
Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 5

Jason Bateman knows what you're thinking. Another body-swapping movie? Really? He had precisely that reaction too. ''But in the same sentence that I was told what the movie is about,'' he recalls, ''they said, 'But the guys who wrote The Hangover wrote it, and the guy who directed Wedding Crashers is directing it.' And I thought, 'Ah, I get it.' Because no one's ever done the R-rated version of that story.'' Well, they have now. Instead of family-friendly mother-daughter high jinks, the mischief involves a womanizing bachelor (Ryan Reynolds) who trades bodies with his married pal (Bateman) — and may even get it on with his pal's wife. ''They each covet the other person's life,'' says Reynolds. What's the cause of the magical swap? ''As you typically do when you switch bodies with your best buddy, we were pissing in a fountain that happened to contain mystical powers,'' he says. ''It's preposterous. It's just the stupidest thing ever, but it's all in the execution.'' For Bateman, who's made a career out of playing responsible, put-upon heroes, The Change-Up offers an opportunity to channel his rowdier side. ''I remember that guy from my 20s,'' he says. ''I just had to dust him off a little bit and away we went.'' And what was it like to essentially play Ryan Reynolds in a movie? ''Never have I felt prettier.'' —Dave Karger

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Starring James Franco, Freida Pinto, Andy Serkis
Directed by Rupert Wyatt Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 5

More than 40 years ago, Charlton Heston pounded the sands of Point Dume and bemoaned the folly of humankind, shouting, ''You maniacs! You blew it up!'' But in the 2011 prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the world ends instead with a rebellion. Coming off his controversial Oscar-hosting gig, James Franco plays a scientist whose genetically enhanced subject, Caesar (Andy Serkis, who did similar motion-capture work as King Kong in Peter Jackson's 2005 film), tires of his shabby treatment and transforms into a sort of Chimp Guevara, a revolutionary who prompts the world's apes to overthrow their human oppressors. The apes haven't fully evolved into humanoids, so the film depicts them with CGI rather than the franchise's trademark makeup. ''Because effects have gotten so good,'' says Franco of acting with a motion-capped Serkis, ''it's like working opposite an actual chimp, but with all the best instincts of an actor.''

Caesar's uprising starts off small, as he directs his captive brethren to flee the research facility. ''It becomes in many ways like an escape movie,'' says director Rupert Wyatt, who would know, having directed 2009's The Escapist. Along the way, Caesar enlists the help of Maurice, an orangutan who knows sign language, and a big bruiser of a chimp named Rocket. ''They all have very distinctive looks and qualities to them,'' says Wyatt. ''It's an A-Team of apes.'' —Keith Staskiewicz

30 MINUTES OR LESS

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 12

See if you can follow this: A dim-witted goon named Dwayne (Danny McBride) needs money to hire a hitman (Michael Peña) to knock off his dad (Fred Ward), who's about to piss away the family fortune he won in a lottery jackpot. So Dwayne straps a bomb onto Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), an unsuspecting pizza-delivery guy, and forces him to rob a bank. Still with us? According to director Ruben Fleischer, the zany, curlicue plot of 30 Minutes or Less is the key to its appeal. ''It's not the first-ever bank-heist movie, but at the same time it's not predictable,'' he says. ''Just when you think you know where it's headed, it goes in a different direction.''

Some of those directions lead Eisenberg's Everydude to finally confront his own unrealized goals, including a romance with the sister (Dilshad Vadsaria) of his best friend (Aziz Ansari). ''My character spends the first 25 years of his life being lazy, and then one day making up for it,'' says Eisenberg, who appeared in Fleischer's 2009 movie, Zombieland. ''He has this extreme experience and uses that day to correct all the mistakes he's made.''

30 Minutes also let Eisenberg realize one of his secret goals — working with comic Nick Swardson (Just Go With It), who plays McBride's partner in crime. ''I've had a head shot of Nick up in my bedroom since I was 14,'' admits Eisenberg. ''I saw him on a TV show called Make Me Laugh. I watched it over and over and memorized his stand-up comedy.'' So how did Swardson react when Eisenberg shared his fan behavior? ''Nick was very, um, flattered and very sweet. And creeped out.'' —Adam Markovitz

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK

Starring Katie Holmes
Directed by Troy Nixey
Rated R
Release Date August 12

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro was once terrified of chimneys, and the 1973 TV movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was partly to blame. In this remake, which del Toro co-wrote and produced, a young girl (Bailee Madison) moves into a Victorian mansion with her dad (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes). But nasty, goblin-like creatures dwell beneath the fireplace. Del Toro says he's since overcome his phobia, and even has a chimney in his current home. ''But it doesn't have an ash pit that goes into a cavern,'' he adds, ''so I'm okay.'' —John Young

THE HELP

Starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer
Directed by Tate Taylor
Rated PG-13
Release Date August 12

Emma Stone's mother, like many moms across America, is an enormous fan of The Help, Kathryn Stockett's beloved 2009 novel about African-American maids in early-1960s Mississippi and the white families who depend on them. So when Stone, who'd never read the book, called home last year with the news that she was going to meet the director of some movie called The Help, her mother exploded with glee. ''She screamed in my ear,'' says the young actress, ''and proceeded to tell me that 'Oh my God, this is the most unbelievable thing that's ever happened to you! Do you realize the weight of this?!'''

That evening, Stone, armed with an email from her mother summarizing the book, walked into the bar of Manhattan's Four Seasons restaurant to see director Tate Taylor. Taylor, for his part, had someone very specific in mind for the role of frazzle-haired Skeeter, the gawky college graduate who starts secretly interviewing a few brave women about their fraught experiences with their white employers. ''My prototype was loosely based on Joan Cusack at 22,'' he says. ''To me that was Skeeter.''

Within minutes of meeting Stone, Taylor knew he had found just the woman for the role. ''Emma was completely awkward and dorky, with her raspy voice,'' he says, ''and she sat down and we got a little intoxicated and had a blast, and I just thought, 'God! God! This is Skeeter.''' The next time they went out for drinks, Stockett, Taylor's best friend since kindergarten, came along and gave her blessing to the casting choice as well.

Stockett and Taylor grew up together in Jackson, Miss., and were themselves cared for and loved by black housekeepers. (Carol Lee, the woman who helped raise Taylor, has a small role in the film.) Taylor was one of the first people to read Stockett's manuscript for the book and even optioned the film rights before publication. Stockett had decided that Taylor — whose last directorial effort, 2009's Pretty Ugly People, grossed less than $7,000 at the box office — was the only person who could properly adapt a screenplay and direct a movie version. ''Then the book came out,'' remembers Taylor, ''and all the sharks of Hollywood were like, 'Oh my God, we want the rights!' But Kathryn called me and was like, 'F--- 'em all, we're doing it!'''

From that call on, the stars have literally aligned for Taylor. Joining Stone in the cast is a deep bench of talent. Viola Davis plays stoic maid Aibileen; Cicely Tyson plays Skeeter's childhood maid Constantine, now mysteriously absent; Allison Janney plays Skeeter's rigid mother; and Sissy Spacek plays the mother of Skeeter's even more uptight society friend, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). And then there's Octavia Spencer, who plays the tart-tongued maid Minny. Though the studio pushed hard for Taylor to cast a bigger name in that showy role, the director fought hard for Spencer, whom he'd met when they were both working as production assistants on 1996's A Time to Kill. (Later, the fast friends would go on to share an apartment in L.A. for four years.) In fact, the character of Minny was partly based on Spencer, whom Stockett had met through Taylor. ''She is Minny,'' Taylor says.

The director went yet another round with the studio in order to shoot The Help in his home state. ''We dumped, like, 17 million bucks into a very poor county in Mississippi,'' he says proudly. ''This movie is magical. I've already prepared myself that this whole experience is once in a lifetime.'' —Karen Valby

HIGHER GROUND

Starring Vera Farmiga, Dagmara Dominczyk, John Hawkes
Directed by Vera Farmiga
Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 12

In her directorial debut, Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air) plays Corinne, a woman wrestling with her Christian faith while living in a born-again hippie community in upstate New York. Higher Ground generated a good deal of buzz at this year's Sundance Film Festival, perhaps in part because it's the rare Hollywood film that depicts the devoutly religious in a positive light. ''Vera did an amazing job representing these people with respect and empathy,'' says Dagmara Dominczyk, who plays Corinne's best friend, a woman who loves God as deeply as she does more earthly pleasures. Oscar nominee John Hawkes (Winter's Bone) also stars, as Corinne's father. —Karen Valby

CONAN THE BARBARIAN

Starring Jason Momoa
Directed by Marcus Nispel
Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 19

How do you outdo Arnold Schwarzenegger as the sword-swinging, leather-thonged Cimmerian? For advice, director Marcus Nispel turned to John Milius, who helmed the 1982 original and suggested he start his search in Iraq. ''So we actually looked in Iraq,'' says Nispel. ''We looked in Russia. We looked everywhere. Then we found Jason [Momoa, of Stargate Atlantis] in California literally four minutes from where I live.'' Seems that big-screen barbarians are always in the last place you look. —Keith Staskiewicz

FRIGHT NIGHT

Starring Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin, Toni Collette
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 19

Colin Farrell is a nasty neighbor who doesn't care if you're on his lawn. He'd just rather put you beneath it. This 3-D update on the 1985 cult-favorite suburban-vampire thriller features the Irish actor as a centuries-old bloodsucker who moves in next door to a meddlesome teen (Anton Yelchin) who begins to suspect his secret. When the boy, his affable mom (Toni Collette), and his girlfriend (Imogen Poots) get wise, they are promptly marked for gruesome death. ''He's kinda trying to bolster his ranks a bit,'' Farrell says of his monster's goal. ''He's lonely enough that he's trying to make a tribe. He's a snacker. He's a strain of vampire who feeds, and buries the undead that he feeds from in the ground and uses them for three or four days. But he's turning them as well. Making a little family.''

Fright Night isn't just out for blood, considering it's scripted by Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum Marti Noxon. ''It is a horror film, but we have the trick of injecting some humor,'' says director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl). ''But Colin, for the most part, is a brooding, serious, ominous presence. Around him, there are some humorous things that happen, but he is a genuine threat.'' —Anthony Breznican

SPY KIDS 4: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

Starring Jessica Alba, Jeremy Piven
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 19

It's been eight years since Spy Kids 3-D, so writer-director Robert Rodriguez needed to give his franchise a reboot: This time, the action centers on Jessica Alba as a former spy and current mom brought back into duty to fight the Timekeeper (Jeremy Piven), who's bent on stopping time. Rodriguez says the idea hit him while working with Alba on Machete, when the actress came to his house and had trouble getting her uncooperative child out of the car. ''It was so funny. She's so glamorous and she's in these high heels and yet carrying this baby,'' says Rodriguez. ''I thought, 'I'd love to see her as a spy.''' —Sara Vilkomerson

OUR IDIOT BROTHER

Starring Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer
Directed by Jesse Peretz
Rated Not yet rated
Release Date August 26

In the opening scene of Our Idiot Brother, a uniformed cop talks easygoing Ned (Paul Rudd) into slipping him a baggie of weed. Poor guy gets arrested, loses his job and girlfriend, and then spends the movie couch-surfing at the homes of his three uptight New York sisters (Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, and Emily Mortimer). Despite the setup and the image of a Jesus-bearded Rudd wearing Inca-print shorts and shapeless tank tops, don't expect the typical burnout jokes. ''This is not a broad comedy at all,'' says Jesse Peretz, who also directed Rudd in 2002's The Château. ''I'd say it's more in the world of Alexander Payne or, in our dreams, early Woody Allen.'' The script, by Peretz's sister Evgenia Peretz and her husband, David Schisgall, explores the complicated and loving bonds among grown siblings — and the headache of dealing with their significant others (Steve Coogan gets his ooze on playing Mortimer's obnoxious, politically correct husband). ''Ned's like a tornado who comes in and upsets the balance of each of his sisters' lives,'' says Rudd. ''He's on a very lo-fi frequency wherever he goes.'' —Karen Valby

THE DEBT

Starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, Ciarán Hinds
Directed by John Madden
Rated R
Release Date August 31

A remake of a 2007 Israeli thriller, The Debt tells the story of a young Mossad operative named Rachel (Jessica Chastain) who teams up with two spies (Marton Csokas and Avatar's Sam Worthington) to track down a Nazi doctor hiding in East Berlin in 1966. Fast-forward 30 years, when an older Rachel (Helen Mirren) must face the legacy of her past mission — and its unnerving loose ends. ''The unusual thing about this story is that it works on different levels,'' says director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), likening The Debt to films like The Parallax View (1974) and Three Days of the Condor (1975). ''It has the visceral pleasures of a thriller along with emotional complexity.'' Casting Mirren as the haunted, mature Rachel was ''a no-brainer,'' says Madden, who worked with the star on 1995's Prime Suspect 4: The Lost Child. ''We needed a fearless actress, not a vain actress. And that's Helen.'' —Adam Markovitz

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