Summer Movies

JUNE

For his first original screenplay since 1974's The Conversation, Coppola reportedly mined his own experiences for this tale of two brothers (Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich) trying to come to terms with their complex family history. Set in contemporary Buenos Aires, Tetro was filmed in black and white, a style that Coppola last employed in 1983's Rumble Fish.

Moviegoers aren't likely to rush to the supermarket after seeing this disturbing exposé of the under-regulated, profit-mad American food industry. It's time to plant that garden.

After three years alone on the moon, a spaceman of the near future (Sam Rockwell) begins hallucinating and eventually wakes up to find that he's sharing the ship with an exact replica of ... himself. This is the first feature for Jones, whose father is David Bowie.

The Kansas City, Missouri, Public Library's annual summer Off the Wall film series gets in on the recent vampire craze by screening the mean, witty 1987 story of Oklahoma bloodsuckers. Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen, heroes in the previous summer's Aliens, star as undead creeps. (Bigelow was married to Aliens director James Cameron at the time.) Helping curate for the library this time: Onion A.V. Club film editor Scott Tobias, drawing from his popular online essay series "The New Cult Canon." The film screens, well, near dark: Be at the library (14 West 10th Street) on time for the 8:45 p.m. start, and hope for good weather — this is an outdoor series, on the roof of the building. See kclibrary.org for details.

Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Guy Pearce go to war in this intense drama about a bomb-defusing unit stationed in Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War. Look for cameos by Ralph Fiennes and David Morse.

At press time, the schedule was just about ready for this annual showcase, held again at Tivoli Cinemas. A new wrinkle this time: the juried "Out Here Now" contest, with a $250 prize for the best gay-themed short film. Bookmark kcgayfilmfest.com to stay informed.

JULY

Johnny Depp is John Dillinger, 1930s bank robber extraordinaire; Christian Bale is FBI superagent Melvin Purvis, hot on his trail, Tommy gun in hand. Director Mann (Miami Vice, Heat) knows a thing or two about showdowns and shootouts.

Sacha Baron Cohen jettisons Borat for Brüno, a gay, hot-pants-wearing Australian fashion reporter. Beyond that, words fail us.

Allen returns to Manhattan after an extended European vacation and casts Larry David as a hypochondriac physicist whose spirits are lifted when he befriends and later weds a dippy 20-year-old (Evan Rachel Wood). The film is reportedly based on a script Allen wrote 30 years ago — luckily, neuroticism is timeless.

It seemed like a fun idea at the time: Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard), lifelong buds, get high at a party where they agree, in front of witnesses, to "do it" (with each other) for a sex-tape film festival. Their girlfriends are amused, and then ... they're not.

In the days preceding Muhammad Ali and George Foreman's 1974 fight, musical giants such as James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers and Celia Cruz gathered in Zaire for a three-day concert. Oscar winner Levy-Hinte (When We Were Kings) has restored a mountain of found footage of the concert and the chaos that surrounded it for this high-energy doc.

A nerdy, but increasingly sexy, teenage boy with magical powers and an invisibility cloak learns the true history of his archenemy, whose name we dare not utter.

A Los Angeles greeting-card writer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds true love in the form of a beautiful co-worker (Zooey Deschanel) in this romantic comedy that counts the days of their up-and-down relationship.

British satirist Iannucci (BBC's The Thick of It) goes to Washington in this fictional riff on the political scrambling — British and American alike — that preceded the Iraq War. Starring Tom Hollander and featuring James Gandolfini as an American general who speaks in snappy one-liners.