Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Release date: June 26

Director Bigelow (Point Break) wants to make one thing clear: ''There have been no Iraq-war movies.'' She means that before this portrait of an elite military bomb-defusing unit stationed in Baghdad, there hasn't been a mainstream drama set in combat in the current war. To keep things as real as possible, Bigelow plopped her actors in Jordan, in 120-degree heat, at times near the Iraqi border. ''Every day we were just trying not to pass out,'' says Renner (28 Weeks Later), who spent much of his time attempting to act heroically from inside an enormous, bulky bomb-defusing suit. ''I was trying to MapQuest my self-respect and dignity constantly.''

Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates, Rupert Friend
Directed by: Stephen Frears
Release date: June 26

The story of a retired courtesan in 1920s Paris who embarks on an affair with a 19-year-old boy (Friend), Cheri marks the first time a film with Pfeiffer in the lead has reached theaters since 2002's White Oleander. But if the actress, who's now 50, was at all worried about looking her best on the big screen, she didn't show it on set. ''There was no whispering to the cameraman or the makeup man or anything like that,'' reports Frears (The Queen). ''There was no plea for kindness.'' In fact, Pfeiffer apparently looks so ravishing that early viewers are deeming her character the original cougar — a term that's lost on the film's very British director. ''What's a cougar?'' asks Frears.

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Sofia Vassilieva
Directed by: Nick Cassavetes
Release date: June 26th

When Cassavetes received the script adaptation of Jodi Picoult's 2004 novel, about a family struggling to save a terminally ill child, the story hit him hard. Cassavetes (The Notebook) had spent his daughter Sasha's entire childhood in and out of hospitals, managing her congenital heart disease. (She's now 21 and healthy.) ''I've been down the road of the family in this story,'' he says. ''So I thought it was something I could do soberly and elegantly.'' Diaz plays Sara, a mother driven to save her cancer-stricken daughter (Vassilieva), even if it means jeopardizing the health and sanity of her younger daughter (Breslin). Diaz might seem an unorthodox choice for such heavy material, but Cassavetes thought the story demanded the actress' sunniness. ''The movie has so much going against it,'' he says. ''It's tough and occupies a moral high ground — I didn't want to cast somebody who'd make it feel like a lecture.'' Meanwhile, Picoult fans have been up in arms since word got out that Cassavetes changed the book's shocking final twist. ''I changed The Notebook's ending, too,'' he remarks. And moviegoers forgave him for that.