I’ll also tell you what the chances are the movie is worth watching and how well it can be expected to do at the box office. Disagree? Sound off in the comments.

Thanks to Box Office Mojo for the release date and past gross information and IMP Awards for almost all the posters you see below. Both sites should be a bookmark for every fan.

May 1

Movie: X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
SYSK: The prequel origins picture will expand on Wolverine’s past, first visited in X2: X-Men United. Don’t expect Brian Singer or anyone else from the X-Men movies to show up, everyone but Hugh Jackman has been recast. The movie follows the mutant from his youth through time, which turns out to be several hundred years. He will battle Sabertooth, William Stryker, Gambit, Deadpool and some new mutants created just for the movie. The trailer a lot of specticle and not a lot of story telling.
Any good?: Well, a work print has been leaked onto the internet, so you could see for yourself if you were really interested. Hugh Jackman remains the only person who could possibly play the role, and this time Gavin Hood (Rendition) will sit behind the directors chair. However, the writing staff is a bit sketchier, combining the talents of David Bendioff (Troy) and Skip Woods (Swordfish).
Bank: There’s no reason to think that this movie won’t do the kind of business the X-Men franchise is expected to do, but repeating the $100 million opening weekend is probably out of the question after fanboys were disapointed in the third. Expected it to do about as well as X2, ending at about $85 million for the weekend.

Movie: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
SYSK: This rom-com crosses Charles Dickens with… well… Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey plays a philanderer who learns from three ghosts the truth he’s always known: Jennifer Garner is HOT the love of his life. This is counter-programing at it’s finest.
Any good?: The concept seems so simple for a high-concept rom-com that it’s amazing it hasn’t been done yet (or maybe it has). McConaughey has been hit (How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days) or miss (Fool’s Gold) of late, as has director Mark Waters. However, the supporting cast, including Michael Douglas and Emma Stone, is enough to suggest it might be, at the very least, fun.
Bank: McConaughey rom-coms tend to be good for about $20 million on opening weekend. How they do beyond that depends on the quality of the movie. However, the trailer features absolutly no shots of McConaughey shirtless, so it’s hard to tell.

Movie: Battle for Terra
SYSK: 3D animated movie with an all-star voice cast. However the movie seems way to political (humans have to take over another planet for survival) than your standard kid fare, and the designers have gone out of their way to make the humans indistingishable.
Any good?: Doubtful. Beware of animated movies where everyone is played by a name. Remember Doogal? I didn’t think so.
Bank: $10 million opening weekend would be overachieving for this film. Look for the year’s second 3D flop, following Jonas Brothers.

Who will win the weekend: Wolverine will win the weekend by leaps and bounds, doing at least three if not four times the business of the next nearest movie.

May 8

Movie: Star Trek
SYSK: A dangerous gamble by Paramount Pictures as they reimagine the Original Series using new–young–actors to play the original roles. They also hired J.J. Abrams to produce and direct, and it’s written by regular Abrams cohorts Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The bigger names (Eric Bana, Winona Ryder) are in minor roles while Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto take over the roles of Kirk and Spock, respectively.
Any good?: The buzz has been outstandingly positive, as have early reviews, and Re-imaginations are risky, but this one seems more Batman Begins or Casino Royale than Pink Panther or Superman Returns.
Bank: Star Trek movies have no exactly been box office gold, only IV (the one with the whales) broke $100 mil, and First Contact is the highest opening weekend at $30 million. However, the marketing campaign has been aimed at non-Trek fans (believing Trek fans will come anyway). Expect this one to shatter both those numbers in the first two weeks. Interest seems to be high as the HD trailer is the most downloaded of all time. $60 million opening weekend would not be a surprise.

Movie: Next Day Air
SYSK: Donald Faison (Turk from “Scrubs”) plays a delivery boy who drops off a bunch of drugs to the wrong house and gets caught between two groups fighting over the drugs. Mos Def co-stars.
Any good?: While Faison and Def seem like an awesome comedy pairing, the trailer suggests that the movie is more interested in the gunfights than the one liners, which is shame.
Bank: Say it again now: counter programming. Expect this one to do decent for maybe a week. We’re talking maybe $10 million opening weekend.

Who will win the weekend: Star Trek tops Wolverine, which will have a pretty big fall in it’s second week. Expect Next Day Air to come in fourth, at the highest.

May 15

Movie: Angels & Demons
SYSK: A sequel to The DaVinci Code, this movie reunites the writer, director and star of the previous film. However, this book is not the household name like it’s precursor.
Any good?: While the first movie was a box office hit, it wasn’t the smash that anyone expected (though it did better overseas), and many people said that the film was subpar. Perhaps they will escape the problems of miscasting and bad Tom Hanks hair that plauged the first film
Bank: Angels & Demons won’t match the $77 million put up by DaVinci. It might break $50 million and come close to 60.

Who will win the weekend: Angels & Demons leads the way as the only wide release.

May 22

Movie: Terminator: Salvation (May 21)
SYSK: The fourth Terminator movie and the second reboot of the summer. This time John Conner is Christian Bale who is leading the resistance, but it seems all those attempts in the other movies to change the past have just made things worse. Also, SkyNet are turning living people into terminators, for some reason. It will be the first Terminator movie to be rated PG-13.
Any good?: Christian Bale is the star. McG is the director. It looks to follow in the footsteps of the first two terminator movies, but it’s rated PG-13. The trailer is pretty cool. To tell you the truth, I have no idea.
Bank: With the PG-13 ranking, Terminator could easily climb to $60 million, but I expect a more modest $45 or $50.

Movie: Dance Flick
SYSK: From the Wayans Brothers, who brought you the R-rated Scary Movie movies, comes a parody of dance movies. There are jokes about how white people are different from black people, female dancers are skinny and male dancers are pretty gay.
Any good?: When was the last time a parody movie was any good? The first Austin Powers movie?
Bank:I think the release date for this movie was made with the thought that Terminator would be R-rated, forcing all the 16 year olds to go to this instead. Now that Terminator is open to all ages, this film seems more likely to be along the lines of Epic Movie than Scary Movie. $15 million would be a good opening for this film.

Movie: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
SYSK: The sequel to the surprise box office smash comes on a holiday weekend near the end of the school year. The movie maintains much of the cast of the first film (including highlights Ricky Gervais, Owen Wilson, Robin Williams and Steve Coogan) and adds Amy Adams, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Hank Azaria and co-writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon.
Any good?: It seems like this is a sequel that does what sequels originally did: made the story bigger and better. By moving the action to the Smithsonian, they add for the possibility of highjinks, and I have to admit the angry Lincoln got a snicker out of me. It seems Stiller is going all out to make these movies better by calling in favors from as many friends as he can.
Bank: The first movie only made $30 million the first weekend, but had a long shelf life, amassing over $250 million over it’s run. This movie should make more out of the gate, possibly as much as $50 million.

Who will win the weekend: Terminator has the extra day, however the lack of family movies out at this point in the month (Battle for Terra was the last one!) makes me think that Night at the Museum 2 will come out on top, though it will be the first interesting battle of the summer.

May 29

Movie: Up
SYSK: Pixar brings us the story of an old man who ties a bunch of balloons to his house and floats away to a far off land. Oh, and there’s a over-zealous Boy Scout trapped on his porch. And an evil guy in a blimp. And a talking dog!
Any good?: It’s a Pixar movie. And it has a talking dog!
Bank: While I don’t expect the $70 million that Finding Nemo and The Incredibles pulled in, I also don’t expect dip as low as the $45 million for Ratatouille. I think it’s more accessable than that film. And it has a talking dog! Somewhere around $55 million should be reasonable.

Movie: Drag Me to Hell
SYSK: Sam Raimi takes a break from counting the piles of money he made on the Spider-Man movies to direct an old(er)-school horror movie about a loan officer who is given a curse by a gypsy. And it has a talking dog! It stars Alison Lohman, Justin Long and the walking Jewish cliche David Paymer.
Any good?: It’s unclear. On one hand, Raimi obviously lost his magic touch with Spider-Man 3, but a return to his horrorish roots might be the refresher he needs. If the movie goes for the more psychological than physical, it could be a surprize summer hit.
Bank: Hard to say. On one hand, Raimi has his fan boys, on the other hand, original horror movie hits are few and far between these days. $12-$14 million might be a good weekend for this film, but word of mouth and the lack of horror in the early part of the summer could see it achieve more.

Who will win the weekend: Up. It will also be among the best reviewed movies of the year. Count on it.

Who will win the month: Wolverine may be poised to have the best opening weekend, but Star Trek could be a surprise smash hit. No matter what movie you see this month, it might be hard to find a seat in your theater, however.

That’s all for May. Look for June and July coming soon!

United 93

Their list included The Bourne Ultimatum, and, while a good film, it was not United 93. First, United 93 used the same camera work that Ultimatum used, but in a confined space. Greengrass, throwing out everything in the book about how to adapt real life events for film. Rather than make a movie that, in the hands of any other filmmaker would have turned into cheap populism (don’t believe me? watch this movie and World Trade Center) and instead made a gritty, intense thriller. He did not invent the shaky-cam, or the docudrama style of filmmaking. Hell, he didn’t even bring it to the mainstream. Peter Berg did with Friday Night Lights. However, I suspect that in the future ‘true story’ films will aspire to me more like this film, and, as such, more like reality.

The Iron Giant

As tempting as it was to put a Pixar film in this list, as far as actual storytelling The Iron Giant is the only choice. While a flop at the box office, the film was enough to convince Pixar to hire Brad Bird and reminded us all that animated films could tell complex stories to children. Without The Iron Giant, we may have never got Finding Nemo or Wall-E. While these stories may not be as successful as a Toy Story or a Shrek at the box office, they will likely be classics long after the Ice Age movies are a distant memory.

The Blair Witch Project

It seems odd that /film missed this one, as they seemed to focus on the most superficial aspects of movie making. Their justification for including The 40 Year Old Virgin and Rushmore highlight this. However, you’d think they’d note the change in the way movies, and, well, damn near everything is marketed by The Blair Witch Project. First off, the film was a story told in a way that was not usually seen (as has been copied sense– including Quarantine and Cloverfield in 2008 alone), but it also marketed itself in a way that made it a surprise hit. It is, and probably will always be the most successful cost to profit movie of all time.

Boys Don’t Cry

Over the last ten years the portrayal of gays on screen has gone from a rare and somewhat controversial exploration to something of commonplace, and this movie has to be one of the major reasons for that. While gay characters have always existed in cinema (watch The Maltese Falcon again), they were rarely main characters and almost never treated with the depth given to Brandon in this movie. Unlike In and Out and the Birdcage, this film was no joking matter, and unlike Philadelphia it didn’t have a straight character to balance out the leads. Would serious introspective looks at the gay lifestyle like Capote, Milk, Kinsey or Brokeback Mountain exist without Boys Don’t Cry?

Man on the Moon

I would be a fool to suggest Man on the Moon is the first bio-pic ever produced, and therefor it’s hard to make an absolute case that it started a trend–that began shortly after it was released–of bio-pics. You could easily go with 1998’s Gods and Monsters, 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt or even 1994’s Ed Wood as movies that allowed serious filmmakers to use modern figures as biopics. However, I suggest that Man on the Moon showed a shift from telling the story of a persons life to recreating that person onscreen. Jim Carrey went to such great lengths to convince us he was Andy Kaufman, all but transforming himself in the process. Yes, I am suggesting that Jim Carrey (along with Russell Crowe in The Insider) paved the way for Jamie Foxx in Ray and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote.

X2: X-Men United

Sure, superhero movies have been around since the late 1970s, but the second X-Men movie was probably the first superhero movie that functions better as an actual story than as a device for action set-pieces. Unlike the first movie in the series, and all the other superhero movies before it, this movie sets out to explore what makes us heroes and what makes us villains. The good guys aren’t squeaky clean and the bad guy is sympathetic. The actions of everyone in the movie are fully explained and logical, which is hard enough to do when don’t have to deal with superpowers. But this movie is at it’s best–it’s absolute best–when it is not an action movie, but when it is exploring the characters, such as Wolverine’s quest to find out his past or Bobby the “Iceman” must explain he’s a mutant to his family–or Pyro’s choice to join Magneto. In the end the film is about choices, not about shit blowing up. Without X2, it seems unlikely that we would have Batman Begins or The Dark Knight, and Iron Man would probably have been a bit cheekier.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

First off, the movie was a cultural movement back to geekdom. It is not the amazing look of the film, the return to epic film making or the revitalization of fantasy that brings this movie onto the list. Many of those have never left and some were in place before the first in the series was released. However, the first installment of the series makes the final cut for two reasons: The way it was shot and special effects. The trilogy was shot all at once, with a huge upfront investment. While not unheard of (Back to the Future II and III were shot at the same time, and Superman I and II were planned to be), it was the first film in several years to do so, a move that was eventually repeated by the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and soon the Harry Potter franchise as well. Finally, the film was the first to convincingly have a major character played by CGI, though he was hidden for most of this film. But the cinematic breakthrough that is most likely to be used again is the technology that was developed by WETA for the massive battle scenes, which simulated entire battles without specific actions needed to be programmed.

28 Days Later

It would have been easy to put Saw, for the influx of torture porn that has taken over theaters, or The Sixth Sense for the trend of twist endings we saw in the early 2000s, but neither of those will have a long term impact on film making. Partially because producers haven’t learned the lessons from Saw (that people actually do want something to think about in horror movies, sometimes) and have all but abandoned the twist ending (because you can see better ones every week on ‘24′ and ‘LOST’). 28 Days Later, with it’s dark tone and lack of hope has been something that has dominated movies since September 11th. While perhaps not the first example of this in a Post-9/11 world, it is the one I would site as starting the trend full-on.

Being John Malkovich

The /film article cited Rushmore as starting a wave of Wes Anderson like movies, but I haven’t seen any. I have, however, slowly seen a trend of Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman-esque movies coming along.The difference between Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze is mostly in style. Both are non-traditional storytellers who deal with bizarre and quirky characters. However, Anderson’s unique brand of storytelling is hard to imitate and perhaps impossible to get right. I’m not sure anyone fully understands an Anderson film except Anderson. While this is fun for some, I understand it can be a turn off. Jonze, meanwhile, focuses more on the Id than Anderson’s Ego focused movies. Jonze wants to explore what it is to be human, and combines that with stunning visuals. Also, Jonze was one of the first directors to make the leap from music videos to motion pictures, a trend which has only increased following his success.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

This is a personal one for me, and I figured there was no better way to close the list. No, it’s not on here for reintroducing the penis as a punchline. There have been plenty of other movies to do that of late. Sarah Marshall in on here for one reason and one reason alone: It saved the Muppets. Among comedy film makers today, I doubt many, if any, can honestly say that the Muppets had nothing to do with their path to Hollywood. Before this movie was made, the Muppets were close to death. The last three movies had been awful, and more importantly lacking the magic that the original movies had. Thanks to Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s puppet subplot, and a chance meeting with the heads of Jim Henson’s Workshop, talented people (Jason Segal and Nick Stoller) are behind the Muppets once again. If anyone can save the series, it’s them.

Coming up with recent movies that have had major influence is not an easy task, so maybe we should cut /film a little slack. As you’ll note, more than half the films listed came out in or around 1999. I think that a little more time making a case for some of the films might have helped. Hopefully this was a worthwhile compliment and a decent second take at the topic.

So, what did I miss? What did /film get right? Will Jason Segal and Nick Stoller save the Muppets? Sound off below.