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The Legend of Bagger Vance

In the Deep End

Historically, summer tends to be the dumping ground for all movies fast and loud. But more established directors are choosing the hot months to release their goods. Due to open on June 9, Peter Greenaway's 81/2 Women is an ode both to Fellini's cinematic masterpiece and the female form. The director of The Pillow Book is never one to shy away from erotic material, and this nudefest (in which both Amanda Plummer and The Sixth Sense's Toni Collette bare all) follows a father and son who set up their own Felliniesque harem. Following up his 1998 critical hit The Horse Whisperer, Robert Redford returns to the directors chair with The Legend of Bagger Vance (Aug. 4) based on the 1995 novel by Steven Pressfield. Set in the Thirties, Bagger Vance offers up Matt Damon as a pro-golfing World War I hero. Will Smith plays Damon's caddie, Bagger Vance, a maybe-ghost, maybe-god with a definite Hindu bent. On Aug. 4, Clint Eastwood soars into the stratosphere with Space Cowboys, as an aging astronaut who must venture into the great beyond to fix a damaged satellite (the film co-stars James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones). As his much-anticipated follow-up to Pecker, John Waters offers Cecil B. Demented on Aug. 11. Self-described as the closest thing to an action pic Waters will ever make, Demented chronicles the kidnapping of a mega-celebrity (Melanie Griffith) by a renegade group of B-movie filmmakers, led by SFW's Stephen Dorff.

ALSO PLAYING: Badass Samuel L. Jackson plays bad-ass private dick John Shaft in the remake of the blaxploitation classic Shaft (June 16), directed by Boyz N the Hood's John Singleton ... Japanese director Takeshi "Beat" Kitano also stars in Kikujiro (June 30), about a criminal who helps a young boy find his parents ... Billy Crudup and Oscar-nominee Samantha Morton star in an adaptation of Jesus' Son (July 7), Denis Johnson's drug-fueled misadventures, directed by Alison Maclean.