Speed Racer Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Heavy Hitters. It's ultimately anyone's guess what movies are going to blow the roof off the sucker and which ones die a quick, ugly death. But we'll go out a limb anyway and mention a few that sound like good bets for the coming season. What with that scary ol' recession looming, the timing could be right for the no-frills escapism of Jumper (Feb. 14), a sci-fi shoot-'em-up starring Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson as teleporting hot shots caught up in a futuristic conflict. Eyewitnesses Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whitaker and Sigourney Weaver offer multiple perspectives on a presidential assassination in the Rashomon-esque puzzle Vantage Point (Feb. 22). Edward Norton and Colin Farrell headline a stellar cast in the police corruption drama Pride and Glory (March 14). George Clooney directs and stars in Leatherheads (April 14), a long-postponed drama about the trials and tribulations of professional football players. Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman are caught up in a lurid mystery involving missing women, murder and underground sex clubs in The List (April 25). And as spring blurs into summer, watch for the comic-book spectacles Iron Man (May 2) and the Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer (May 9), after which the floodgates open in earnest with Chronicles of Narnia II, Indiana Jones and the rest of this summer's armada of evil flying monkeys.

Kings of Comedy. There's some major funny business in store during the next few months. Will Ferrell has yet another sports comedy on deck with Semi-Pro (Feb 29). SNL's former fake anchors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler reunite for Baby Mama (April 18), a yukfest about a businesswoman who hires a surrogate mother to bring her baby into the world. Booted-out Beatle Pete Best is the inspiration for The Rocker (April 18), in which an aging drummer who coulda been a contender (Rainn Wilson) gets another chance to shine, albeit several decades past his prime. And John Cho and Kal Penn are back as everybody's favorite stoners in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (April 25), a romp that takes the dangerous position that terrorism can be funny.

Festival Fever. No less than five film festivals take place around these parts during the coming months. The fun begins on Feb. 27 with the second annual Gasparilla Film Festival, a Tampa event that should be adding some interesting international films to its line-up this year thanks to a recently forged partnership with the Global Film Initiative. There's barely a chance to catch your breath by the time the 12th Annual Tampa Jewish Film Festival shows up on March 6 at Tampa Theatre and St. Pete's Muvico Baywalk, screening a selection of films from France, England, Germany, Israel and right here in the good old U.S.A. Next up is St. Pete's rapidly expanding Sunscreen Film Festival, an eclectic mix of features, shorts, animation and documentaries (with a focus on Florida films) that runs from March 19 to March 22. The area's biggest and most successful event takes place this year from April 4-13 when the Sarasota Film Festival invites movie lovers to help celebrate its 10th anniversary. SFS will mark the occasion with 10 full days of acclaimed features still burning up the festival trail, as well as numerous opportunities to party in opulent style with assorted Hollywood celebrities. And the season ends with something truly different, the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image, which takes place this year from April 16-20. A host of unusual and inspiring offerings will be featured, not the least of which is a retrospective of the works of Charles Burnett, the brilliant director of Killer of Sheep and To Sleep With Anger.

Gasparilla Film Festival, Feb. 27-March 2, 813-514-9962, gasparillafilmfestival.com.

Tampa Jewish Film Festival, March 6-9, 813-264-9000, jewishtampa.com.

St Petersburg Sunscreen Film Festival, March 19-March 22, sunscreenfilmfestival.com.

Sarasota Film Festival, April 4-13, 941-364-9514, sarasotafilmfestival.com.

Ybor Festival of the Moving Image, April 16-20, 813-935-9232, yborfilmfestival.com.

Forever Young. Summer is when the multiplexes are positively buzzing with kid-friendly fare, but those in the younger set won't find themselves completely left out over the next few months. The season's big gun for teens and tweens is sure to be The Spiderwick Chronicles (Feb. 15), based on the popular novels of the same name, in which Freddie Highmore plays twin siblings investigating strange occurrences in a mysterious old house. Meanwhile, the Dr. Seuss train keeps on rolling merrily along with Horton Hears a Who! (March 14), a brightly animated whatzit featuring the vocal talents of Jim Carrey and Steve Carell. Zillions of screaming young girls will be climbing the walls at Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert (Feb. 1), while zillions of panting young boys will be lining up for 10,000 B.C. (March 7), a 300-ish mash-up of battling prehistoric armies, kidnapped maidens and evil warlords. And what kid, big or small, could resist Jackie Chan and Jet Li teaming up for martial arts and mystical mayhem in The Forbidden Kingdom (April 18)? Not me.

People are Strange. Expect lots of ultra-quirky, deep, dark and delicious indie fare over the next few months, too. Weirdo genius Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; The Science of Sleep) returns with Be Kind Rewind (Feb. 22), a curiouser-and-curiouser comedy about a pair of video store clerks (Jack Black and Mos Def) who become celebrities when they begin recirculating their own amateur versions of all the movies they've accidentally erased. Tortured Teutonic auteur Michael Haneke (Cache, The Piano Teacher) is back with Funny Games U.S. (March 14), a Naomi Watts-starring, English-language remake of one of the director's most intense and inscrutable works. Another international auteur weighing in with his first English-language effort is Hong Kong's Wong Kar-wai (In the Mood for Love), whose My Blueberry Nights (Feb. 18) places Jude Law and Norah Jones amidst one of the filmmaker's gorgeously mournful, existential landscapes. And probably the strangest offering of them all is Mister Lonely (April 30) from idiot savant Kids creator Harmony Korine. The setting here is a Scottish commune, where Werner Herzog, magician David Blaine and Anita Pallenberg rub noses with a Michael Jackson impersonator and someone claiming to be the real Marilyn Monroe.