Out-turfed by the likes of slapstick performer Mohamed Saad, former king of comedy Mohammed Heneidy decided to ditch his favorite filmmaker, Said Hamed, and take on his friend and Film Institute colleague Wael Ihsan, whose smash hits El-Lemby and Zaky Chan turned Saad and Ahmed Helmy into real stars.

In his latest outing, Heneidy plays the half-educated, out-of-work Taha, who is kidnapped by a gang of thieves in his hometown Alexandria. Unbeknown to them, neither Taha’s mother (Lebleba) nor his girlfriend (Bushra) has a fraction of the ransom.

Wading into uncharted waters, this is the first political comedy to deal with presidential elections. Hany Ramzy returns to familiar territory — think: Gawaz Be Qarar Gomhoury (Marriage by Presidential Decree) —to play Zaza, who is married to Iman (Zeina). The couple’s dream is to move into a better apartment and, come election time, the naïve Zaza gets it into his head that if he runs — and wins — that maybe he can do something for other people with the same problem.

After suffering from production setbacks, Zaza started shooting last April, hoping to find a place in the summer marathon. The dailies became tougher and tougher for director Aly Abdel Khalek and director of photography Mohsen Nasr, who had their hands full choreographing thousands of extras for the demonstration scenes.

This is Belal Fadl’s second summer film. Fadl, who also penned Wesh Igram, here sees Karim Abdel Aziz try on the more serious role of Mahmoud, a security guard who becomes the only eyewitness to a murder during his late shift.

After the investigation, Mahmoud finds himself and family in grave danger, pursued by moguls attempting to ‘persuade’ him to change his testimony before the trial. Ahmed Nader Galal also directed Abdel Aziz in his latest hit Abou-Aly. The movie marks the return of retired actor Mahmoud El-Geindy, who plays Mahmoud’s pious father.

Strong ticket sales from Ahmed Helmy’s last outing (Zarf Tareq, released last Eid), encouraged filmmakers to push for a summer-season release of this new comedy. Helmy plays Roshdy, who finds work at a big company owned by businessman Adham (Hosny). Ghada Adel plays Adham’s weird daughter Malak, who has an unlikely obsession with the stock market.

Guess who rushes in to save the day when Malak is kidnapped by her father’s adversaries?

This is the swashbuckling sequel to the 2003 hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which grossed $653 million worldwide. Shot between Hollywood and the Bahamas — back-to-back with the third installment, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, due next year — Dead Man’s Chest took the American box office by storm with a $135.6 million opening, breaking the $114.8 million record set by the first Spider-Man adventure in 2002.

The story begins when Captain Jack Sparrow, the weird drunken pirate brought to life by Oscar nominee Depp, finds out that he owes a blood debt to the legendary Davey Jones (Bill Nighy), captain of the ghost ship Flying Dutchman. With time running out, Jack must find a way out or his soul will be doomed for eternity.

Joining him on his sea quest are Will Turner (Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Knightley), who are forced to postpone their wedding to help their friend.

The success of the first live-action Garfield film, which raked in $198 million worldwide in 2004, green-lighted this sequel that moves the action from Garfield’s couch to London, England.

Soon after arriving with his friend Jon, the clueless tomcat inadvertently trades places with royal look-alike Prince (voiced by Tim Curry), whose owner recently passed away, leaving him a castle.

Despite the popularity of Garfield’s first outing, this movie flopped in its opening weekend in America.

An American remake of the Korean romantic drama Il Mare (2000), The Lake House explores the theme of love beyond the boundaries of time, reuniting Reeves and Bullock on screen 12 years after their breakthrough hit Speed.

Bullock plays Kate, a lonely doctor who once occupied a quaint lakeside home. Forced to move elsewhere, she requests that any correspondence that arrives at the lake house be passed on to her new address. To her surprise, she receives a romantic note from Alex (Reeves), an architect who has moved into her old home except that he lived at the lake house two years before she did.

The latest installment of the fast-paced series takes the action far from Los Angeles and Miami to the streets of Tokyo, Japan. Directed by Taiwanese-born filmmaker Justin Lin (Annapolis), the film has a completely different cast headed by Lucas Black, who debuted as a child in The War (1994) with Kevin Costner and starred in the short-lived yet remarkable TV series American Gothic (1996).

Here, he plays Sean, who goes to Tokyo to live with his military-officer father, but soon discovers the underground world of drift racing. Over 100 cars were wrecked during the filming of this movie; computer-generated images were rarely used.

In 1984, director Michael Mann created the long-running TV series Miami Vice before going on to helm colorful classics including Manhunter (the earlier film version of Red Dragon), The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, Ali and Collateral.

Now, he returns to the streets of Miami for a contemporary take on drug lords and the cops chasing them. Ricardo Tubbs (Foxx) and Sonny Crockett (Farrell) are two unconventional cops who go undercover as powerboat racers piloting drug-smuggling ships for the right price. As they dig deeper into a drug lord’s inner circle, they become involved in a dangerous operation that will take them to Haiti and Cuba.

Adam Sandler tries a family-oriented role in this hilarious comedy: He plays a workaholic architect who is frustrated at work and at home. When he accidentally stumbles on a universal remote control that allows him to control the people around him, he thinks he’s found the solution to all his problems — until the device takes on a life of its own.

The director of Toy Story and A Bug’s Life turns his imagination toward the world of cars to deliver this computer-generated film, produced by Pixar Studios.

Lightning McQueen (Wilson) is a rookie race car who crashes into the town of Radiator Springs, destroying everything in his path. Though he will do anything to get away from the community service meted out as punishment, McQueen must learn to respect — and bond with — the other cars in order to get out of the town and back on the racetracks.

This is a romantic comedy that could easily return very soon to our screens as an Egyptian rip-off. They’ve broken up as a couple, but Brooke (Aniston) and Gary (Vaughn) can’t agree on who moves out of the apartment. In the process of trying to coerce each other to leave, they come to realize they might actually be fighting to get back together.

Behind the scenes, The Break-Up was a second chance for Jennifer Aniston to find romance after her real-life breakup with ex-husband Brad Pitt. She and Vince Vaughn are reportedly planning a secret wedding after he proposed to her in Paris while promoting their film. et