Screen Play

Looking ahead in 2001, clearly we get giddy as schoolgirls at an 'N Sync wardrobe fitting just thinking about biggies like ''Planet of the Apes'' and ''A.I.'' Same goes for these 10 promising movies:

•ALI Will Smith has been boning up on his trash talk and training hard to play the Greatest for director Michael Mann (''The Insider'').

•AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS This inside Hollywood satire about press junkets and star couplings (toplining Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusack, and Billy Crystal) just happens to be directed by ex– Disney chief Joe Roth.

•GANGS OF NEW YORK Late 19th century Gotham. Mobsters. DiCaprio. Diaz. Scorsese. Should amuse (not like a clown, of course).

•HANNIBAL Hmmm, what wine goes best with sautéed cerebellum?

•MONSTERS, INC. We'll follow ''Toy Story'' director John Lasseter and his Pixar team anywhere. And early footage from this CGI flick about two neurotic monsters looks scarily hilarious.

•MOULIN ROUGE Will ''William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet'' director Baz Luhrmann's newest (starring Nicole Kidman) be a visual stunner? Most likely. But it's the bizarro concept -- a love affair in turn of the century Paris set to contemporary pop songs -- that has our interest piqued.

•OCEAN'S ELEVEN That cast...Criminy! Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt are all on board for this remake of the Rat Pack caper from maybe you've read about him lately director Steven Soderbergh.

•ROCK STAR Salesman by day/ cover band singer by night Mark Wahlberg gets a gig fronting for his idols. Jennifer Aniston plays his love interest in this fictionalized take on the Judas Priest story.

•TOMB RAIDER Videogame adaptations usually give us hives, but Angelina Jolie as adventuress Lara Croft promises to make the ''Charlie's Angels'' girls look like nuns.

•UNTITLED FRANK DARABONT/ JIM CARREY PROJECT This McCarthy era drama from ''The Green Mile'''s director, about a blacklisted screenwriter with memory loss, could give star Carrey a shot at another Oscar snub.