Anyone who's been reading this column since its inception knows the significance of Memorial Day weekend as a holiday that not only represents for many the real kick-off of summer--a time for family fun and parades and picnics and such--but also a three-day weekend to go to the movies to see some of the big blockbuster sequels everyone's been waiting for. This weekend, we get two big sequels to two big movies that are certainly going to split some audiences although one is going to have a clear advantage with young males, as well as African-American and Latino audiences who've proven themselves able to bring big business to the box office. We also get our first new family movie in nearly two months, and we'll just have to see if there are enough people willing and able to pay to see two or three movies this weekend. While the showing for Star Trek Into Darkness is somewhat worrying for two more sequels, this has the potential to be one of the biggest Memorial Days in a very long time.

This week's CHOSEN ONE is Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void (Sony Pictures Classics), a coming-of-age story about a young Jewish girl who has to make a tough decision. Seriously, it's more exciting than Fast & Furious 6, I promise!

So far, this summer has been doing gangbusters with the Iron Man 3 kick-off and then last week, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby doing way better than most people ever expected while breaking Warner Bros’ ongoing "2nd weekend of May bombs" rut. And this week is going to continue the box office love with the release of the sequel to the 2009 summer blockbuster that redefined Star Trek for a whole new generation and made it cool again. This is only the third weekend of the summer but theaters should be packed once again and that’s even before the release of two more big sequels over Memorial Day weekend.

The second weekend of May has now become famous for the number of movies that outright bombed and no one knows this better than Warner Bros. who have had some really disastrous releases on the weekend including Poseidon, Speed Racer and last year's Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp. The problem is that when so much focus is put on the first movie of the summer, opening just one week earlier, and you end up with such a huge opening like last weekend's Iron Man 3, there's really very little chance any movie can possibly overshadow it even in weekend 2.

Undaunted, Warner Bros. are giving it another go with The Great Gatbsy, which teams one of Australia's greatest auteurs with one of Hollywood's biggest stars for an adaptation of a classic piece of literature that's sold millions of books over the years. On the other hand, this may be a good weekend for counter-programming offered to African-American audiences, particularly women who won't have much interest in white people parties, but what Peeples has is that Tyler Perry attached his name as a presenter to help get it attention and Lionsgate would love this movie to have that kind of success with it.

The year is 2006, the month is July. It's Comic-Con in San Diego once again and Marvel Studios are there to present their first line-up of directors that plan on bringing Marvel Comics characters to the big screen. One of them is Jon Favreau, best known for directing Elf and as one half of the "Swingers” with Vince Vaughn. Then there's Louis Letterier who has been handed the reigns for The Incredible Hulk and some little guy with a funny accent, Edgar Wright? Oh, yeah, he directed Shaun of the Dead. Got it.

But let's get back to Jon Favreau who has been given the unenviable task of trying to make Iron Man cool for the masses. They've already cast Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, a move that fans of the comic books are fully behind, and yet the movie itself is two years away and no one knows what to expect.

Cut forward to May 2, 2008 and Iron Man opens to $102.2 million on its way to $318.6 million domestic and $582 million worldwide. The following Monday, Marvel shareholders are being given the gameplan for the next three movies leading up to The Avengers in May 2012. That movie sets a new domestic opening of $207.4 million, grosses $623.4 million domestically and $1.5 billion worldwide. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is officially as big as Star Wars

Now begins Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 2 with Iron Man 3.

(Plus this week's CHOSEN ONE is What Maisie Knew (Millennium Films), the new film from Scott McGehee and David Siegel.

This is it, the moment you've been waiting for!

Our annual look at the summer movie season and all of the exciting things being released by the studios between May and August. Those of you who have regularly been reading the Long Distance Box Offices probably have some idea of our thoughts on the summer already, but for those who've been waiting for the full-on overview, here's one of the most comprehensive looks at the summer you're going to read outside of Entertainment Weekly and we're focused almost solely on box office. We've separated everything into convenient categories though we haven't included every single movie because that would just be insanely ridiculous.

May is going to be an amazing month and not just because it's the launch of the summer movie season with some of the biggest blockbusters of the year, hugely anticipated sequels especially, but also there are a ton of great indies from master filmmakers that have played at film festivals going back over the past six months and we're really excited people will finally have a chance to see them even if they have to seek them out.

This week, we have two R-rated comedies, very different movies, both of them trying to make some money before the summer movie season gives the box office a much-needed kick in the ass. First off, there's Michael Bay's Pain & Gain (Paramount), starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson as Miami bodybuilders on a crime spree and the ensemble comedy The Big Wedding (Lionsgate), starring Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton, Katherine Heigl,Amanda Seyfried and Topher Grace.

I also have a very important message about something that's happened to the Weekend Warrior that might affect the timeliness and other aspects of the column, but hopefully not.

We're jumping ahead to late June as we look at the second half of the month when schools are starting to let out and more people have free time to kill by going to the movies. On June 14, Warner Bros. will be opening Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder and produced by Christopher Nolan, and while we have no doubt in our minds the movie is going to open big and do a lot of business over the course of the summer, it has a lot of movies opening on its tail.

One week later, we get the latest from Disney•Pixar and their third sequel Monsters University, the follow-up to the 2001 animated hit Monsters Inc., while Brad Pitt stars in the apocalyptic thriller World War Z, based on Max Brooks' popular series of novels. A week after that, on June 28, Roland Emmerich returns with White House Down, an invasion movie starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, which will take on the comedy pairing of Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in The Heat.

So the question is whether the month of June can handle so many big movies, particularly when you have a Pixar sequel opening a week after the first Superman movie in seven years?

We’re edging closer to the summer movie season where people actually want to go see movies and after a slower weekend with a surprise #1 that should hold up well based on strong word-of-mouth, we have a new sci-fi action thriller Oblivion (Universal Pictures), starring Tom Cruise that will try to kick the summer off early.

This week’s "CHOSEN ONE" is the documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (Kino Lorber), Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein’s look at the veteran sleight-of-hand magician and magic historian Ricky Jay

On Wednesday April 17, the 12th Annual Tribeca Film Festival kicks into high gear with the Opening Night Gala Mistaken for Strangers and over the next 11 days, New York City is going to be the film hub of the country as various theaters in Tribeca, Chelsea and the East Village are packed with dramas, comedies, thrillers, documentaries and short films, many which haven't been seen elsewhere.

We're going to focus on the movies getting their World Premieres at Tribeca, which is actually a huge number of movies. While we're not sure how many of these we'll have a chance to see, we've chosen 18 movies playing at Tribeca looking for distribution and hopefully getting enough audience support that they'll eventually be released theatrically.