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Movie theatres are where we go when a plane ticket is too expensive – the ultimate low-cost staycation. The notion of films as an escape from tough times isn't just a myth. Research from the National Association of Theatre Owners in Washington shows box-office numbers were up during five of the last seven economic downturns. And grumble as you like about ticket prices, movies are typically cheaper than concerts, sporting events, drinking, gambling or private therapy.

The Hollywood gamblers seem to have spread their chips around on a lot of different numbers this year – action films, family films, romances, horror, and even the kind of grownup stuff you typically expect to see at festivals. Here then, is a sneak peek at what the summer holds.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

With Hugh Jackman as the only Canadian-born superhero (sporting a pair of mutton chops possibly inspired by Father of Confederation Sir Charles Tupper). Though it includes scenes of Jackman's magnificent physique, and an exploding nuclear-power facility, this is a relatively straightforward action ride. It opened Thursday.

Star Trek

How strange it sounds without double digits after it. It's another “origins” story, created by J.J. Abrams of television's Lost . Chris Pine plays the young James T. Kirk, with Zachary Quinto as baby Spock in some sort of time-travelling loop-de-loop that also allows Leonard Nimoy to appear as Old Spock. (May 8)

Angels & Demons

Reversing novelist Dan Brown's chronology, Angels & Demons is being treated as a sequel to The Da Vinci Code (which earned three-quarters of a billion dollars in global box office). Director Ron Howard returns, as does Tom Hanks as code-cracking professor Robert Langdon, accompanied by hottie scientist Ayelet Zurer to fight a conspiracy to destroy the Vatican with anti-matter. Ewan McGregor also stars as a hip priest. (May 15)

Terminator Salvation

Set after the events of the previous Terminator movies, Terminator Salvation sees potty-mouthed star Christian Bale as the last hope for humanity – John Connor in 2018 – taking on the computer network Skynet and its army of killer robots. (May 21)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay directs with Shia Labouef and Megan Fox in the latest battle of the giant collapsible children's toys. (June 24)

Public Enemies

One of the few directors who can translate action film into art is Michael Mann, which makes this film one of the year's must-sees. Johnny Depp stars in a portrait of legendary Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger. Christian Bale plays federal agent Melvin Purvis; Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard is Dillinger's girlfriend. There will be bullets. (July 1)

All Good Things

Director Andrew Jarecki (of the riveting documentary Capturing the Friedmans ) makes his feature-film debut in this detective story starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, and based on the real-life case of a New York real-estate agent whose wife mysteriously disappears. (July 24)

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's war epic, which will be in competition at the Cannes Film Festival later this month, has been described by the director as a spaghetti western with Second World War iconography. It follows a Jewish-American army unit designed to scalp, and induce terror in, Nazis. The cast includes Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson and Mike Myers. (Aug. 21)

Land of the Lost

Will Ferrell stars in this remake of a seventies TV series about a man who goes back to dinosaur times, mixing Ferrell shtick with cut-rate Jurassic Park -like dinosaurs. With Anna Friel and Danny McBride. (June 5)

Year One

The origins trend comes to comedy in this Superbad -ish film set in caveman times, with Jack Black and Michael Cera as a couple of fur-skin-wearing hunters who set off on an adventure after being banned from their village. Harold Ramis directs. (June 19)

Brüno

Early indications are that Sacha Baron Cohen is seriously threatening to top the outrageousness of his 2006 documentary-comedy Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan in this outing as Brüno, a deeply self-involved gay man. News has already leaked out about him making moves on politician Ron Paul; and the trailer depicts a scene where he shows his adopted African baby, named “O.J.,” to an enraged talk-show audience. (July 10)

Funny People

Director Judd Apatow gets dramatic, or as much as one can in an Adam Sandler/Seth Rogen film. Sandler plays a veteran standup comic who believes he has only a year to live (though the trailer suggests otherwise) and is determined to win back his love (Leslie Mann). Rogen plays his young protégé and friend. (July 31)

The Boat That Rocked

English writer-director Richard Curtis ( Love Actually ) focuses on the phenomenon of “pirate radio” in a tale of a group of rebel mid-sixties disc jockeys at sea. With Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans and, for the first time together since their marriage ended, Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. (Aug. 8)

Spread

This dark indie comedy out of Sundance stars Ashton Kutcher as a Hollywood gigolo hooking up with an older woman (no, not that older woman) played by Anne Heche, until he falls in love with a younger woman (Margarita Levieva) who may be hustling him. (Aug. 14)

Wild Child

Emma Roberts is the Malibu princess who gets shipped off to English boarding school, where she does her best to be expelled. With Aidan Quinn as her dad, and the late Natasha Richardson as the headmistress. (Opening date TBD.)

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Stiller is back as a museum guard who watches characters come to life. This time, he travels to Washington to save Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Octavius (Steve Coogan), and meets Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams). (May 22)

Up

In Disney Pixar's latest animated film, an old man fulfills his dream to fly his house, via a bunch of helium balloons, to South America, unaware that a nine-year-old has hitched a ride on his porch. Featuring the voice of Ed Asner. (May 29)

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

In the third instalment of the prehistoric cartoon series, wooly mammoths Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) have a baby. This time, there are dinosaurs, and it's all in 3-D. (July 1)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The latest in the immensely successful Potter movie franchise sees Harry in possession of a mysterious potion book and learning more about Voldemort's past, and everybody goes through romantic difficulties. David Yates, who directed 2007's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , returns. (July 15)

G-Force

An elite guinea-pig force takes on an evil billionaire who is trying to take over the world with small household appliances. The movie uses a combination of live action (Will Arnett) and 3-D animated characters voiced by Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz and Tracy Morgan. (July 24)

Management

Steve Zahn plays a motel manager who falls so deeply for a travelling saleswoman (Jennifer Aniston) that he follows her around the country. (U.S. release date is May 15; Canadian date not yet confirmed.)

My Life in Ruins

Winnipeg native Nia Vardalos ( My Big Fat Greek Wedding ) plays a middle-aging woman who takes a job as a guide to a busload of goofy tourists in Greece, and rediscovers passion. (June 5)

The Proposal

Sandra Bullock is a Type-A Canadian executive working in the U.S. who pushes her assistant, Ryan Reynolds, into marrying her so that she can get her green card. (June 12)

The Time Traveler's Wife

Based on Audrey Niffenegger's hit debut novel, this stars Eric Bana as a librarian who involuntarily time-travels, making life with his wife (Rachel McAdams) complicated. (Aug. 14)

Bandslam

The mind-boggling news about this Disney confection isn't that it stars Vanessa Hudgens, Alyson Michalka and Gaelen Connell (as a cute band manager). It's that the adult cast includes Lisa Kudrow and – swear to God – David Bowie. (Aug. 14)

Drag Me to Hell

Sam ( Spider-man ) Raimi returns to his horror roots with this tale of a loan officer (Alison Lohman) cursed by a creepy old woman after refusing to extend her mortgage. What next? The Foreclosure Axe Murderer ? (May 29)

Orphan

An evil-child movie starring Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga, whose newly adopted daughter (Isabelle Fuhrman) comes with a lot of supernatural baggage. (July 24)

H2: Halloween 2

Rob Zombie directs his second Halloween movie, spookily indifferent to the eight previous Halloween movies and to the fact that the ghostly holiday comes in October. (Aug. 28)

Final Destination: Death Trip 3-D

Hapless teens find new statistically improbable but gruesome ways to die – in 3-D. (Aug. 28)

Adoration

Atom Egoyan's film, which debuted at Cannes last year, is something of a return to his earlier explorations of both point-of-view and media in this post-9/11 drama about cultural misunderstandings. Teenager Simon (Devon Bostick) tells a story about his terrorist father and innocent mother, and shares it on the Internet. His teacher (Arsinée Khanjian) is on a strange mission, somehow related to the boy's angry, tow-truck-driving uncle (Scott Speedman). (May 8)

The Limits of Control

Jim Jarmusch's first film in four years follows a man (Isaach De Bankolé) who arrives in Spain on a secret mission that involves switching matchboxes with a succession of strangers (including John Hurt and Tilda Swinton) at preassigned points. A picturesque cinematic exercise in thriller guise, it culminates with an appearance by Bill Murray. (May 22)

Whatever Works

A meeting of the comic titans, as Larry David ( Seinfeld , Curb Your Enthusiasm ) stars in Woody Allen's latest film, in which Allen returns to New York after shooting his last four films in Europe. Evan Rachel Wood co-stars. (June 19)

Victoria Day

Acclaimed Toronto short-story writer David Bezmozgis wrote and directed this drama, set in 1988, about a high-school hockey star (Mark Rendall) and his awakening into love, death and guilt, over the Victoria Day weekend. (June 19)

The Hurt Locker

Katherine Bigelow's nail-biting drama follows bomb-squad specialists working in contemporary Iraq, and stars Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie. (June 26)

Paper Heart

This Sundance buzz film, directed by Nicholas Jasenovec, is a hybrid of documentary and scripted comedy, and follows actress Charlyne Yi's quest to find the meaning of love. She becomes involved with actor Michael Cera. Paper Heart also includes scenes in Paris and in Cera's hometown of Brampton, Ont. (August 7)

It Might Get Loud

David Guggenheim ( An Inconvenient Truth ) risked draining the electrical power grid with this Sundance and Toronto film-festival rockumentary, which brings together guitar heroes from different eras, including Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's the Edge and Jack White of the White Stripes. (Opening date TDB)

Opening dates are subject to change.