Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) has been attached to direct since last September.

The original was produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg. Two sequels were produced.

Combining the very best of the postwar sci-fi movies with their trenchant political undertones and pulse-pounding dynamism and contemporary movie technology that can blend aliens seamlessly into a realistic human world of urban and moral decay, “District 9″ flirts with greatness. This science fiction film from South African-born Canadian Neill Blomkamp, a protege of Peter Jackson, who produced the film, stumbles in a few crucial areas but even so it’s a helluva movie. No true fan of science fiction — or, for that matter, cinema — can help but thrill to the action, high stakes and suspense built around a very original chase movie.

Having scored a direct hit with audiences last week at Comic-Con, “District 9″ is primed for solid business in all markets when it rolls out domestically in August and globally from August through October.

By choosing to film in the city of his youth, Johannesburg, Blomkamp situates his story in a very real place off the beaten path for science fiction. The accents, townships, barbed-wire enclosures and harsh, dusty environment all give “District 9″ a gritty sense of place. Why shouldn’t an alien spaceship land some place other than the U.S.?

In fact, the film’s alien ship arrived over the sky of Jo’burg 20 years before the movie begins. Instead of Spielberg aliens, these are exhausted refugees whose ship literally ran out of gas. The stalled mother ship still hovers over the cityscape, its bedraggled occupants long ago removed from its foul compartments into makeshift camps separated from the human population.

These creatures are deliberately made to appear disgusting: Located somewhere between insects and crustaceans on the evolutionary scale, the aliens have hard shell areas, extremely thin waists, sinewy joints and surprising strength. Humans, in their disgust, call them “prawns” because they are bottom-feeding scavengers who root around for food, especially cat food!

(Make what you will of a humanoid species segregated into refugee camps in South Africa, a place still coping with the after-effects of the apartheid system. The film makes no comment, nor does it need to.)

What the aliens apparently lack is a dark liquid that powers not only their ship but sophisticated weaponry. The humans would love to control those weapons, but activation requires alien DNA. That doesn’t prevent a Nigerian underworld boss, Obesandjo (Eugene Khumbanyiwa), from buying up the illegal alien weapons with cat food.

Multinational United (MNU), a private company contracted to control the growing alien population, decides to relocate them from their homes in District 9 to a rural concentration camp. Through nepotism, the task of this mass removal is handed to MNU field operative Wikus (Sharlto Copley), a by-the-book wimp in a vast bureaucracy.

While delivering eviction notices, he discovers and tries to clear an illegal lab run by alien Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope). (You’ve got to like the idea that condescending Earthlings have given human names to this subjugated species.) In doing so, Wikus unwittingly gets infected with the alien virus that rapidly changes his DNA. Within hours, he becomes violently ill and grows an alien claw for a hand.

You guessed it. His claw can now operate alien weaponry. Instantly, he is “the most valuable business artifact on Earth.” Somehow this means MNU scientists want to harvest his organs. Wilkus escapes, and the chase is on. Hot on his heels is MNU’s chief enforcer and the movie’s chief villain, Koobus (David James).

The fugitive hides in the only place no one will look: District 9. There he is forced into an uneasy alliance with Christopher and his young son. Seems that virus he came in contact with is the liquid Johnson has been distilling for the past two decades to power the mother ship back home.

The story, written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, comes at you via different media components: Some is raw black-and-white surveillance footage; an MNU corporate video delivers interviews with staffers and other participants, including Wikus; real footage from news agencies provides crowd scenes; finally, cinematographer Trent Opaloch’s use of everything from handheld to mini-cameras to shoot much of the action as if it were happening beyond his control, a thing caught on the run.

What the film runs away from though is well-rounded characters. Wikus stands alone as the only fully developed character, a human who has little choice but to become a traitor to his own species. Everyone else leaves a fleeting impression, and the film’s villains are too cartoonish. When the decision is made to harvest Wikus’ organs — by his own father-in-law, no less — there isn’t even a hint of a moral dilemma.

Then too the whole point of the chase is vaguely defined. The Nigerian gangster wants to cut off Wikus’ arm to eat it! The MNU scientists want to kill Wikus. This makes little sense: Shouldn’t Wikus — the only being who can operate alien weapons — be of greater value alive than dead? What do the scientists believe they can extract from his organs?

Maybe no one thinks straight in the blur of events. Most of the action takes place over 74 hours. Blomkamp catches its frantic activity with all the raw authenticity of a documentary, egged on by the rhythmic drive of Clinton Shorter’s magnificent score.

“District 9″ is smart, savvy filmmaking of the highest order.

Though book to screen adaptations more often than not present problematic situations, with The Time Traveler’s Wife a greater dilemma may be adapting to characters in repeated transitions leaping between the past, present and future. And also counting on a heaping suspension of disbelief, for audiences hopefully willing to just go along for the ride. Additionally up for grabs when it comes to flight risk here, is the unconventional transplant of the time travel genre from its roots in sci-fi to a gothic romance.

Based on Audrey Niffenegger’s popular novel of the same name, penned by screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) and helmed by German director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan), The Time Traveler’s Wife comes up with perhaps the most creative explanation ever concocted by a butt naked disappeared husband caught by his spouse with his pants down. But I wouldn’t recommend trying that lame excuse on for size at home.

Eric Bana is Henry in The Time Traveler’s Wife, a Chicago librarian and more than occasional MIA serial boyfriend of devoted beyond the call of duty Clare (Rachel McAdams). Eric has been diagnosed as afflicted with the genetic disorder Chrono-Impairment. Which means that he moves involuntarily back and forth through time, while assuming multiple incarnations of himself at various ages. This is in no way to be confused with wanderlust, though Henry does get a thrill now and then out of his unusual superpower, as when he arranges a big lottery win while loitering in his past life.

And though opposites indeed do attract here, stay at home Clare’s attempts at constant damage control concerning their on-and-off-again relationship, are relentlessly strained. Which grounds this flighty tale as a hard core weepie, but not without periodic excursions into what may be characterized as comic timing. Including occasions when a chrono-impaired traveler stops by to hang with their childhood persona, which conveys a brand new notion to the concept of playing with yourself. Or, Henry’s unavoidable dilemma of always showing up from another decade in the buff, a kind of wardrobe malfunction devoid of wardrobes. Though that habitual flasher streaking back in time to meet up as a grown man with Clare’s smitten child, while mooning the audience, comes off as just a tad creepy.

With a dash of Ben Button and Back To The Future, this existential sci-fi surreal travelogue with supersized erotic separation anxiety issues, seems to intimate that time travel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And for viewers not in the mood for long distance love and lacking a taste for such fare, you may simply be left with a case of lingering jet lag for the duration.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff, overseeing the singer’s will, said he had approved several business deals, including a 60 million dollar agreement with Columbia Pictures to make a movie from video of the King of Pop’s final rehearsals for a series of concerts that had been set to take place in London this past July.

Columbia Pictures announced the movie, which is dubbed “This Is It” by Jackson, will have performances and behind-the-scenes video of Jackson preparing for the concerts.

The movie is due to be in theaters on Oct. 30, with all the people dressing up as Michael Jackson and standing in movie theater lines a whole week before Halloween. Some of it will be shown in movie theaters in 3-D.

It is reported that Columbia Pictures paid 60 million dollar for rights to the film, and the contract states Jackson’s estate is slated to receive 90 percent of its profits.

Beckloff had until Monday to approve the film and allowed Jackson’s mother, Katherine, to review the contracts and raise any objections.

Her attorneys have raised questions about other agreements concerning AEG Live and merchandiser Bravado. The estate wants to enter into agreements with the two companies for merchandising and the judge is considering appointing an attorney to represent Jackson’s children’s interests in the deals.

Jackson died on June 25, days before he was set to embark to England for his comeback shows.

But you wouldn’t know it from the way Paramount Pictures launched its nearly $180 million big-screen adaptation of the classic military action figures, comic books and TV cartoon series.

Sure, there was a pricey Super Bowl ad and other promotional reminders that typically accompany big event pictures. But there was no glitzy Hollywood premiere, no major media junket at a luxury hotel and no dog-and-pony show at the Comic-Con International expo held last month in San Diego.

Paramount’s strategy to eschew such marketing conventions for Friday’s release illustrates how, at a time when word of mouth can make or break a high-profile movie, studios will go to great lengths to avoid potential bad buzz and directly court the audiences most likely to embrace their film.

Paramount concluded, based on research, that national media, affluent urban audiences and genre fans are unlikely to support “G.I. Joe.” A studio representative said there were no screenings for mainstream movie critics, making “G.I. Joe” the first big-budget movie this year to be kept under wraps.

Instead, the studio is aggressively pursuing blue-collar moviegoers in smaller markets, especially those with military backgrounds.

“Our starting point for this movie is not Hollywood and Manhattan but rather mid-America,” Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said. “There are a group of people we think are going to respond to the movie who are normally not the first priority, but we’re making them a priority.”

The movie’s de facto U.S. premiere was July 31 at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where hundreds of soldiers and their families joined director Stephen Sommers, stars Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller and Marlon Wayans, and Paramount executives on the red carpet.

The studio took its marketing campaign to some unconventional venues: a 30-second spot on video screens at Kid Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s summer multicity concert tour; a 90-second clip during the Country Music Television Awards in June; a spot on video screens at the Mall of America in Minneapolis; and extensive outdoor advertising in smaller markets. The studio also bought ads in numerous local and national military newspapers and Web sites.

Based on the pre-release audience polling, the PG-13 rated “G.I. Joe” is appealing to male moviegoers and has a good shot at an opening of more than $40 million.

“G.I. Joe” is Paramount’s third recent attempt to revive a time-honored entertainment brand with an event-size movie. This summer, it has had back-to-back successes with a reboot of its tired “Star Trek” franchise and a sequel to 2007 blockbuster “Transformers,” which, like “G.I. Joe,” began life as a Hasbro toy line.

But the media launch of “G.I. Joe” has been far less traditional than either of those films. For one thing, it has largely avoided what would seem like a natural starting point: devoted fans of the toys, comics and ’80s cartoon.

“Rise of Cobra” had no presence at Comic-Con, even though there were panels focused on both the toys and comic books.

“You can never win with those guys,” Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of the “Transformers” films and “G.I. Joe,” said of the convention. “They feel they’re the keepers of the fan-boys flag and have a deep childhood association with many of these properties. And, we know the hard-core fans are already coming to see the movie.”

That attitude has left some of the most devoted G.I. Joe fans, the type who typically turn out for midnight shows, a bit wary of how Paramount has updated their beloved characters.

Fred Meyer, owner of the Web site JoeBattleLines.com, said he was one of several fan community leaders invited to a meeting by Paramount and Hasbro representatives at a G.I. Joe fan convention two years ago to discuss what they wanted to see in the film.

“That was the last time we had any involvement,” he noted. “They’re not taking advantage of the fact that they have this free army of PR people out there.”

A couple on honeymoon are brutally murdered in Honolulu. Days later, newlyweds Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich) arrive, and as they hike along the trail facts of the murders start to come out – the killers were themselves a couple, the identies of the victims unknown because of mutilation. Isolated and uncertain, they start to become concerned, and then the twists really start to kick in.

Hitchhikers Kale and Cleo are the first to arouse suspicion, Chris Hemsworth (Kirk’s dad in Abrams’ Trek) and Marley Shelton (Dr Dakota Block in Grindhouse) are straggly folks, tagging along behind, and then there’s Nick and Gina – he claims to be a Special Forces type, she’s his off and on girlfriend, and again the stories don’t quite add up. Olyphant’s genial as movie fan Nick, a man who claims to have survived all manner of catastrophes more or less intact, and he’s got the action movie chops to back it up. Kiele Sanchez (the covetous Mrs Goodman from Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium) is convincing as his suffering partner.

It’s Jovovich and Zahn who really make the film, though, ably carrying the picture and producing a genuine sense of tension as events unfold. Despite her monolithic turn in Ultraviolet Jovovich can, and does, really act, and Zahn shows the same abilities that kept focus on him in Herzog and Bale’s Rescue Dawn. In fairness, they’re helped by David Twohy’s script, and as with his other writer/director projects A Perfect Getaway plays with genre expectations with genuine glee. This is a fun film, genuinely exciting, twisty like the mountain trails, with uncertain footing throughout.

There’s plenty of “red snappers”, as it’s put, cunning signposts scattered here and there, and as the film builds to its denouement there are all manner of reversals. Shot in Hawaii, Jamaica and Puerto Rico, it’s visually stunning, the HD wedding video of Cliff and Cydney neatly cut into the opening of the film, the score featuring the Prague Philharmonic and no small measure of island sounds keeping pace as it segues from gentle romance into suspense and beyond.

Cinematographer Mark Plummer and editor Tracy Adams deserve to be mentioned for their work too, the cuts between flashbacks and the glimpses of activity in the forest, the sudden introduction of split-screens and freeze-frames not only feel right, they brilliantly support the mood and action. There is a descent into shaky-cam territory and the wonders of obscure-o-scope in some of the action sequences, but no worse than what’s in the trailer, and the measure of confusion it produces in the audience is clearly deliberate – the identities of the killers is a mystery, and we, too, are kept guessing.

This is a return to the island for Twohy, whose last visit was as half of the script team for the disastrous Waterworld. It’s pretty safe to say that’s over the horizon now though, and this is his island picture. It’s witty, fun, the three couples are made of six great performances that give the sense of real people, real feelings, and the plot thickens with the jungle as the trail winds ever deeper into it. This is a romantic thriller, possibly even genuinely a Romantic thriller: a moment of beauty, recalled at leisure; affected and shaped by the party recollecting in an ephemeral, intriguing way; all that poetry and heart-stopping too. This is a treat, a captivating delight – A Perfect Getaway itself.

The back and forth between the lives and contrasting generations of these two women does come off as a kind of contrived conceit and imposed artificial ingredient into the often lively mix. And while Child enrolls in cooking school into middle age as an idle socialite in France where her husband is a US embassy attache, Powell, played by Amy Adams, decades later, and stuck in a dead end job, starts a wildly popular blog where she vows to cook all 524 recipes in Child’s encyclopedic, ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,’ in the course of a single year.

And as such we hear much less than we’d like to about who exactly the rather skimmed over Julia Child was as a fascinating and far more complex personality beyond the kitchen stove. And also the impact of a dark time in US history, the McCarthy period, traditionally mislabeled as America’s age of innocence, and present but diluted in this movie. So what we’re served up, essentially, despite Streep’s vivacious performance, is Julia Child a la carte.

As for Nora Ephron, the trajectory of her own screen legacy includes the 1983 political classic Silkwood, about anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood, also starring Meryl Streep. Ephron’s outing of Watergate’s Deep Throat, then FBI Assistant Director W. Mark Felt, in connection with her ex-husband, Watergate investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, whose expose brought down the Nixon Administration, is also unfortunately a kind of scrutiny not in evidence with this movie.

What we do learn in Julie & Julia, is that her enormously supportive and devoted husband Paul, played by Stanley Tucci, was summoned back from Paris in 1955 to be interrogated by agents on orders from FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. And to answer questions about his patriotism, his liberal friends, the books he reads, suspected associations with communists, and whether or not he was a homosexual.

What might have given this incident more context and clarity in the movie, was Julia’s conservative Republican roots. And her other absentee career in this film, her work for the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, beginning in WW II, and where she met her future husband Paul who also worked there. Her assignment was in the Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section in D.C., where she was a file clerk and also assisted in the development of a shark repellent to prevent sharks from exploding ordnance targeting German U-boats. And Paul worked as a mapmaker there.

That this far from insignificant part of Julia Child’s life would have made this a richer and more meaningful glimpse into her life, not only reveals someone who was much more than just a bored, frivolous-bordering-on-silly and leisure class woman who turned to cooking. But also that the legacy of McCarthyism still apparently rears its head in Hollywood, whether or not rooted in self-censorship.

“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” opens Friday, but Paramount Pictures isn’t screening the blockbuster for critics beforehand. Only a select few writers from blogs and movie Web sites have seen it for review — such as Harry Knowles, the self-professed “Head Geek” from Ain’t It Cool News — and their opinions have been mostly positive.

Instead, the studio says it’s intentionally aiming the movie at the heartland, at cities and audiences outside the entertainment vortexes of New York and Los Angeles. Paramount held a screening Friday for 1,000 military service members and their families at Andrews Air Force Base; it’s also focusing marketing efforts in places like Kansas City, Charlotte, N.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

While appealing to a sense of patriotism nationwide, the plan also is inspired by the disparity that existed between the critical trashing “Transformers: Rise of the Fallen” received and the massive crowds it drew at the box office.

“`G.I. Joe’ is a big, fun, summer event movie — one that we’ve seen audiences enjoy everywhere from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Phoenix, Ariz.,” said Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures. “After the chasm we experienced with `Transformers 2′ between the response of audiences and critics, we chose to forgo opening-day print and broadcast reviews as a strategy to promote `G.I. Joe.’ We want audiences to define this film.”

With a reported production budget of $175 million and a cast that includes Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, Marlon Wayans and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, “G.I. Joe” follows the adventures of an elite team using high-tech spy and military equipment to take down a corrupt arms dealer. It comes from director Stephen Sommers, whose previous films include “The Mummy” and “Van Helsing.”

Long before anyone saw the completed product, though, “G.I. Joe” drew mixed buzz at best for its trailer, which premiered during the Super Bowl. Now it’s the final action picture of the summer — and it has a lot in common with the highest-grossing film so far this year, the “Transformers” sequel. Both are effects-laden spectacles based on Hasbro toys and both are Paramount releases from producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

“Transformers” has gone on to gross more than $388 million in the United States alone since its opening six weeks ago, despite receiving just 20 percent positive reviews on the Web site Rotten Tomatoes, a critical aggregator. The withholding of “G.I. Joe” from mainstream critics suggests that the studios believe they can succeed at the box office without them.

It’s a tactic normally reserved for horror movies or other genre pictures with built-in fans who don’t necessarily care about reviews — ones based on video games, for example — not summer blockbusters. Still, “G.I. Joe” has been tracking well because it represents the last big bang of the season, said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com.

“They don’t need (to screen) it and there’s no upside to negative reviews. The film is going to open well no matter what,” Dergarabedian said. “They’re being very strategic in who they show the movie to. If they can win over their core audience from these reviews, that’s good for the movie.”

Devin Faraci from the film Web site CHUD.com is one of the few writers who have seen it for review purposes, and not just for junket interviews. He’s among the critics who’ve contributed to the movie’s 88-percent positive rating as tabulated by Rotten Tomatoes, saying: “If I was 10 years old, `G.I. Joe’ would be one of the best movies I had ever seen.”

Faraci said he was in Toronto recently when he received a phone call at 8:30 a.m. Los Angeles time, asking if he could come to the Paramount lot that day for a “G.I. Joe” screening. He flew back, got off the plane and headed right over.

“It’s silly. It’s a film that plays on its own terms,” he said. “I don’t think reviews will kill it but I think it’ll get a more positive response than they expect. It’s a big, silly, pulpy, cartoony action film and it makes no apologies for being that way.”

The Final Destination

Halloween II

Saw VI & Saw VII

The Twilight Saga: New Moon and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs Evil

Iron Man 2

Shrek Forever After

Sex and the City 2

Toy Story 3

Ghostbusters III

Men In Black III

Untitled Bourne sequel

Hairspray 2

Step Up 3D

Resident Evil: Afterlife

A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I and Part II

Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom

Terminator 5

Pirates of the Caribbean 4

Mission Impossible IV

Untitled Star Trek sequel

Beverly Hills Cop 4

Some will be great, some will be average and some will be awful. Which ones are you excited about? Let us know.