A Guide to the Season's Competitors

Woman on Top Playing a Brazilian chef who moves to San Francisco after her marriage breaks up, Penelope Cruz inspires in all nearby men the usual hot and slavish desire as she slaves over a hot stove. July 21

New Waterford Girl This year's small-town teen-disaffection pic (set in a Nova Scotia backwater in the '70s) revisits familiar themes with wit, effortless empathy, and highly specific local color. July 26

Psycho Beach Party A two-pronged parody of psycho thrillers and beach-blanket romps, with Greg from Dharma and Greg and Last Days of Disco sweetie Matt Keeslar. August

Whipped A misogynistic-bar-guys-get-their-comeuppance farce, which has been awaiting release for a year and may wait longer still. August

The Films of Jay Rosenblatt Five shorts (including The Smell of Burning Antsand Human Remains) at Film Forum. August 9

Love and Sex Magazine writer/ frustrated single Famke Janssen seeks love with Jon Favreau. Remember: NBC's Tuesday-night lineup is free. August 18

The Way of the Gun Mounting his directorial debut with a crooks-and-schemes saga, Christopher McQuarrie will surely slather on the phallic angst as he did with Usual Suspects. Would that be the way of the gun that's in your pocket, or are you just . . . ? August

Steal this Movie! Abbie Hoffman gets the bio-pic treatment, with Vincent D'Onofrio as the '60s radical and Janeane Garofalo as his wife. August 25

Global Warming

Kikujiro Revered for his diamond-cutting visual style as well as for his implacable presence and whip-cuts of sudden violence, Takeshi Kitano goes gooey in this Big Daddyscenario. The wickedly ironic filmmaking waters the syrup down a bit, and Kitano's more fun to watch than Adam Sandler, but still. May 26

Humanité Booed by Cannes critics last year, subsequently awarded three prizes by the David Cronenberg?led jury, Bruno Dumont's follow-up to Life of Jesus uses a hypnotically slow murder investigation as backdrop to its own microscopic scrutiny of mundane small-town lives. It's a film of rare, strange power—an indifferent response is out of the question. June 14

Time RegainedRaúl Ruiz adapts the final volume of Proust's bildungsroman, with a cast that includes Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Pérez, and John Malkovich. June 16

The Butterfly A new historical Spanish heart-warmer in the Miramax tradition of The Grandfather, complete with star codger Fernando Fernan Gomez, who befriends a kid during the Spanish Civil War. June 16

An Affair of Love Two strangers meet to act out an unspecified erotic fantasy and become fuck buddies. Bourgie titillation, previously titled A Pornographic Affair. June 23

Alice Et Martin One of the season's must-sees, the 1998 André Téchiné drama—cowritten with Olivier Assayas—tracks the psychological upheavals in the romance between a young provincial (Alexis Loret) and an older Parisian woman (Juliette Binoche). July

Shower Winner of the Audience Award at Rotterdam, this prodigal-son comedy from China finds a young man returning home to help run his father's Beijing bathhouse. July 7

Water Drops on Burning RocksFrançois Ozon's adaptation of an unproduced Fassbinder play. July 12

Two Women A Tehran student is terrorized first by a stalker, then by her husband, in this Iranian feminist melodrama. July 14

Criminal Lovers In his second release of the month, French provocateur François Ozon mutates the myth of the young murderous couple into an outrageously twisted psychosexual fairy tale. July 21

The Girl on the Bridge Down-and-out knife-thrower Daniel Auteuil saves suicidal waif Vanessa Paradis from jumping off a Parisian bridge in Patrice Leconte's latest film. July 28

The Wind Will Carry Us Arguably his most elliptical, enigmatic, and provocative film to date, Abbas Kiarostami's Venice prizewinner involves a man on an unspecified mission in a dusty village. July 28

The Day Silence Died After a rogue descends upon an Italian village and sets up a radio station, all of the town's secrets and resentments flow like wine. August

MadadayoMade when he was 83 and getting an American release seven years after its completion, Akira Kurosawa's final film is a meditation on mortality, limning the twilight years of an eccentric professor. August

The Personals A young Chinese woman suffers the pitfalls of want-ad romance. August

Pola X Aging enfant Leos Carax's latest confounder, an intense and, for many at Cannes, discombob-ulating version of Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities. August

Solas A Spanish drama about a miserable mother and a miserable grown daughter being miserable together in Madrid. August

The Story of O A 1998 Euro version of the beloved sadomasochistic classic. August

Aimée and Jaguar In World War II?era Berlin, two women—one a Jew, one a Gentile—fall in love. Leads Juliane Köhler and Maria Schrader shared the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival. August 11

Godzilla 2000 All-Japanese return to man-in-a-rubber-suit form—actor Tsutomu Kitagawa even gets a credit as the lumbering lizard. Lots of meticulous city models crushed underfoot. August 11

Solomon and Gaenor A Jewish Welshman develops a doomed passion for a woman from an anti-Semitic family in this Romeo and Juliet?ish tale, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars. August 11

Incredibly True Adventures

Better Living Through Circuitry Rave-culture doc featuring DJ Spooky, the Crystal Method, and Roni Size. May 26

Grass Ron Mann has assembled 50 years of archival footage in what's touted as a scathingly funny examination of the U.S. government's never-ending war on pot. Typecasting alert: Woody Harrelson narrates. May 31