The 2002 film season has come to a close and if ever a year ended with a bang, it this one…. The 2002 film season has come to a close and if ever a year ended with a bang, it this one. “Gangs of New York,” “Catch Me if You Can,” “Chicago” and “About Schmidt” were all released in the last month or so of the year with yet even more potentially wonderful films set for release in Pittsburgh during the last weeks of January, such as “The Hours,” “The Pianist,” “Narc,” “25th Hour” and “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” among others.

But the year didn’t start off very promising. Rather, moviegoers plodded through dreck including “Collateral Damage,” “Showtime” “and “The Time Machine.” The reward for audiences was the deluge of well-made, memorable films at the end of the year.

This seems to be what’s in store for 2003 as well. Traditionally, the winter and early spring months are barren, rife with see-’em-once-then-never-again films, and this year looks to be no different.

With the exception of a few films being released in the coming months, some moviegoers may have to grin and bear it as Hollywood dumps its seemingly undesirables as the winter ends. But there are signs of promise in Tinseltown’s release calendar, possibly starting another round of interesting, exciting filmmaking.

January

It’s January, a time for new beginnings such as a new semester, new classes, new homework and new stress. Still, not all new things in January are bad. There are plenty of new movies to lift your spirits.

“Just Married” opens Jan. 10, starring Brittany Murphy and Ashton Kutcher as two newly weds from totally different backgrounds. They have a honeymoon in Europe, but everything goes wrong, hilarity ensues – you get the picture.

If a movie about a married c ouple doesn’t float your boat, how about a movie about a guy who’s about to get married? “A Guy Thing,” which opens Jan. 17, features Jason Lee playing a guy who wakes up in bed with another woman the week before his wedding. Selma Blair plays his fiance; Julia Stiles is the other woman.

Getting away from the love stories, there’s plenty of action in January. “Kangaroo Jack” stars Jerry O’Connell as a New York hairstylist who ends up having to deliver $100,000 to Australia for the mob. He brings his friend, played by Anthony Anderson, along for the ride. Unfortunately, Anderson’s character puts the money in a jacket, then the jacket on the kangaroo and now he’s hopping away. How will they manage to catch this hopping mad, jacket-and-sunglasses-wearing kangaroo bandit?

Maybe Martin Lawrence can help since he plays a cop in his new movie “National Security,” opening the same weekend as “A Guy Thing” and “Kangaroo Jack.” Well, actually, Lawrence is nothing but a lowly security guard – somewhere in the same category as mall cop – so he and his partner, played by Steve Zahn, are desperately looking to move on up. They uncover a smuggling operation and, suddenly, thugs and police alike are out to get them.

“Biker Boyz” opens Jan. 31, and features a group of white-collar black men who drop the suits and mount their Harleys on the weekends, ready for drag races and danger.

January is not without its horror films. “Final Destination 2,” opening Jan. 31, has a new crop of college students meeting or thwarting their predicted deaths. “Darkness Falls,” opening Jan. 24, is a creepy flick about the dark side of the legend of the Tooth Fairy, the same one that leaves money under pillows.

Not exactly a horror film, “The Recruit,” also opening Jan. 31, stars Al Pacino as a CIA instructor who recruits Colin Farrell’s character to be a spy. However, Farrell begins to suspect that Pacino is not exactly who he claims to be.

With all these movies opening, it’ll be a while before the excuses run out for why you aren’t studying yet.

February

Usually, studios save their big budget-action-hype films for the summer, where action flicks reign supreme. But year after year, the “action season” gets earlier, and it essentially kicks off this month with “Daredevil,” the much-anticipated adaptation of the Marvel comic book starring Ben Affleck. It will be released Feb. 14. Also starring Michael Clarke Duncan, Jennifer Garner and Jon Favreau, “Daredevil” follows blind lawyer Matt Murdock, who moonlights as the every-other-sense-heightened superhero Daredevil as he squares off in what are sure to be huge action set pieces with the Kingpin and Elektra.

Along with the interesting decision to release “Daredevil” this month is the presence of two films once thought to be Oscar contenders, “The Life of David Gale” and “Gods and Generals,” both scheduled for release Feb. 21.

“The Life of David Gale” stars Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, and Laura Linney in a film about David Gale, an anti-death penalty activist sentenced to death row after he’s found guilty of the rape-murder of another activist, and the reporter who, while doing a story on Gale, eventually sets out to prove his innocence.

“Gods and Generals” is the other one-time awards candidate. This prequel to “Gettysburg” stars Jeff Daniels, Robert Duvall, Bruce Boxleitner and C. Thomas Howell and chronicles early Civil War battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. With a rumored running time of upward of four hours, the film will surely be epic in every sense of the word.

Other promising films in February, include “Dark Blue,” starring Ving Rhames and Kurt Russell in a film about the Los Angeles police circa the Rodney King era, and “Old School,” a comedy starring Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn about middle-age guys starting up their own frat. Both will be released Feb. 21.

Another interesting film this month is director William Friedkin’s latest, “The Hunted.” Starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, the film is an action-thriller in which Jones must track down Del Toro, whose character is suspected of killing hunters in a forest. Jones’ character is responsible for making Del Toro a veritable killing machine while in the military. It’s marked for a Feb. 28 release.

Finally in February, Hollywood continues to peddle its sequels and possible clunkers on the moviegoing public. Feb. 7, “Shanghai Knights,” the sequel to the enjoyable “Shanghai Noon,” starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, will be released followed the next week by another ill-conceived Disney sequel, “The Jungle Book 2.” Along with those films are the new LL Cool J film, “Deliver Us from Eva,” and the Kate Hudson romantic comedy “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” both set for release Feb. 7. The new Jet Li film “Cradle 2 the Grave” and Ashton Kutcher’s latest, “The Guest,” will both be released Feb. 28.

– Dante A. Ciampaglia

Photo courtesy Revolution Studios Bruce Willis heads to Africa in the March release, “Tears of the Sun.”

March

March 7 brings us a new Bruce Willis film, “Tears of the Sun,” in which he leads a team of Navy SEALS into the jungle on a mission to rescue one woman (Monica Bellucci), but ends up trying to save 70 refugees. It is most notable for being director Antoine Fuqua’s follow-up to his acclaimed film “Training Day.”

Then there’s “Bringing Down the House,” which will test just how big a Steve Martin fan you are – he plays a character who falls in love with a woman over the Internet only to find out she’s in prison and she’s going to break out to be with him. And she’s Queen Latifah. Could be rough.

March 14 brings “Phone Booth,” which was bumped from its November release date because of the sniper murders in Maryland and Virginia. Colin Farrell plays a man who enters a phone booth and is tormented by a lurking sniper who threatens to shoot him if he steps out of the booth. It is directed by the unreliable Joel Schumacher, but has a fun-sounding Hitchcockian premise and a script by ’70s exploitation veteran Larry Cohen.

There’s also Danny Devito’s dark comedy “Duplex,” starring Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller – let’s hope it’s more “The War of the Roses” than “Death to Smoochy.”

March 21 offers “Identity,” which – if it delivers on the promise of its trailer – will be a classy, intelligent, old-style … slasher movie! It concerns an ensemble led by John Cusack and Ray Liotta getting stranded at a motel on a dark and stormy night and getting knocked off one by one. Should be a hoot.

A week after we get a new slasher movie, we also get a promising sci-fi/horror film, “Dreamcatcher.” It’s based on a book by Stephen King, adapted by renowned screenwriter William Goldman (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men”) and directed by the sometimes-great Lawrence Kasdan. This weekend also brings “The Core,” a human-race-in-jeopardy film involving a group of scientists who must drill to the center of the earth and get its core spinning again in order to save us all. It basically looks like a diet version of “Armageddon.” Let’s hope it’s at least a guilty pleasure.

And the biggest wild card of all, which will be released sometime in March, Rob Zombie’s “House of 1,000 Corpses” should be – uh – interesting. Zombie says he’s resurrecting balls-to-the-wall horror. Well, wouldn’t that be nice.

– Chad Eberle

April

April’s first interesting offering is “Ripley’s Game,” which opens on the fourth. A sequel to the 1999 movie “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” it will feature John Malkovich as Tom Ripley, Matt Damon’s role in the previous film. Set about 20 years after the first Ripley movie, it is based on the third book in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series.

Two foreign films will also debut Feb. 4: from Japan, “Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and from Finland, “The Man Without a Past.”

“Cowboy Bebop” is the screen version of the popular Japanese anime television series of the same name that American audiences know primarily through a dubbed version that plays on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The show is notable for its breathtaking drawing, interesting characters and wonderful jazz scoring by Yoko Kanno. The film is being released dubbed into English, but TriStar is also providing theaters with a subtitled version as well.

“The Man Without a Past” was one of the best-received movies at Cannes last year, and is now Finland’s submission for Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film honors. It is the story of a man who essentially has to rebuild his life after losing his memory in a mugging. An Oscar nomination could mean a change of release date for this film.

April 11 sees the release of Adam Sandler’s latest, “Anger Management,” the story of a businessman sentenced to an anger management program for a crime he didn’t commit. It turns out that his instructor (Jack Nicholson) is a psychopath – zaniness ensues. The presence of Nicholson and a slew of other A-list stars including Heather Graham, John C. Reilly and John Turtorro along with Sandler’s recent experiences in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” suggest that maybe this film will be a notch above traditional Sandler fare.

On the same day “Shaolin Soccer,” the story of a soccer team composed entirely of Kung fu masters, opens. A big winner at the Hong Kong Academy Awards, previews show special effects wizardry and a kitschy plot that make this film worth at least a look.

Finally, maybe April’s most promising premiere, “Interstate 60” is slated to open April 25. Written and directed by Bob Gale, who wrote the “Back to the Future” series, “Interstate 60” is the tale of a young man (James Marsden) who sets off on the nonexistent titular interstate, encountering along the way various nonexistent people, searching for the – nonexistent? – answers to life’s problems.

Other releases for the month include the latest from Vin Diesel (“A Man Apart,” April 4) and Chow-Yun Fat (“Bulletproof Monk,” April 16), as well as a Michael Douglas/Kirk Douglas project called “It Runs in the Family” that was originally slated for a winter 2002 release and an Oscar campaign, but pushed back for unknown reasons to April 25.

– A. Horbal

Photo courtesy Buena Vista Pictures Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson confound audiences with their appearances in February’s “Shanghai Knights.”

In Conclusion…

There’s a lot for every type of moviegoer, from comedies to dramas, epics to clunkers. If, for some reason, nothing catches your fancy, fear not. You can catch up with or relive the past year with the best of 2002 as those films become available on DVD while waiting for the Summer season that holds the promise of “X2,” “The Matrix Reloaded,” “Bruce Almighty,” “The Hulk,” “Terminator 3,” and a handful of other big films to keep you hot with anticipation during the cold months of the post-Oscar season.