Nearly one hundred new feature films will be released over the next four months. From Hollywood tent poles to small domestic and foreign indies. From documentaries to a sing-along version of 1978's Grease.

Planing to see them all? It would take more than an entire week to watch approximately 200 hours of summer movies consecutively without potty breaks or sleeping. Tickets would set you back over a thousand dollars. Double that if you take your significant other.

Sure, you could save time and money by skipping all the talking dog movies, unless you really, really need to see Marmaduke (June 4) and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (July 30). But it will still take you over four hours just to get through the trailers for this summer's releases.

I've looked at as many of the trailers as I could find online. The best one I saw was the original teaser for James Mangold's Knight and Day, opening June 25 with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Rather than focusing on stunts and explosions, the spot sets up the story like a pitch. It introduces two likable characters with exceptional chemistry, shows their "meet cute," and puts them in a series of predicaments -- that involve stunts and explosions.

The trailer for Phillip Noyce's Salt (July 23, headlined by Angelina Jolie), attempts to do the same, but it didn't work as well for me. The story's exposition, which sounds too much like a variation of The Bourne Identity, is described to the hero in the phoniest of Russian accents before the preview quickly devolves into montage of stunts and explosions. Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl try to beat both movies to the punch on June 4 with Killers, which looks like a dumbed-down version of Knight meets The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

The trailer for Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs (May 28) doesn't give me a clear picture of its story, but it does fill me with confidence that it will be every bit as charming as the auteur's 2001 masterpiece, Amelie. Likewise, the trailer for Christopher Nolan's Inception (July 16) wisely avoids plot spoilers. What I can tell from it is that Nolan is returning to more cerebral, psychological fare like Memento after dabbling in a couple of comic book movies. The results, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, look amazing, but I trust Nolan will deliver more than just a bunch of cool effects.

Two other trailers made me very interested in seeing their films: Fox Searchlight's Cyrus (July 9) with Jonah Hill and John C. Riley competing for the affections of Hill's mother (Marisa Tomei); and Sundance winner Winter's Bone (June 11) about a girl who has to find her bail-jumping drug dealer father to stop her home from being taken by his bondsman.

This summer brings us two comedies about children reuniting with their sperm donor fathers, but their trailers show the movies to be as different as night and day. In the PG13-rated The Switch (August 20), from Miramax, still a subsidiary of Disney, Jason Bateman sneaks his goo into gal pal Jennifer Aniston's turkey baster just before her planned fertilization, and is then surprised seven years later to learn her son looks just like him. Typical romcom hijinks ensue. I'd be surprised if they didn't end up in love by the last reel. By contrast, Julianne Moore and Annette Benning are lesbian mothers whose children set out to find donor dad Mark Ruffalo in Lisa Cholodenko's more thoughtful The Kids Are All Right (July 7) from Focus Features. Less conventional, this one is bound to also be less predictable.

Also of interest: Paul Rudd takes Steve Carrell to a Dinner for Schmucks (July 23) in what sounds to me like a "bromance" version of 1991's Dogfight (River Phoenix, Lili Taylor); and while I didn't leave 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall wishing for more of Russell Brand's character, I have to admit that the premise spinning him off in Get Him to the Greek (June 4) with Jonah Hill sounds like it will be this summer's The Hangover, but with cameos by celebrities who never bit anyone's ear off.

Fortunately, a lot of the trailers are honest enough to show me they have nothing to offer worth wasting my time and money. For instance, I can plainly see that Sex and the City 2 (May 27) was not made for me. Not going. Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables (August 13) looks completely expendable to me, even with its much ballyhooed cameos by Bruce Willis and Governor Schwarzenegger. The big screen version of The A-Team (June 11) looks exactly as appealing to me as the TV series. Pass. The Karate Kid reboot (June 11) starring Will Smith's Son and Jackie Chan? Wax off. Last weekend's bomb Furry Vengeance had Brendan Fraser blurting out the name "Miley Cyrus" in the middle of the trailer for no apparent reason. Even Hannah Montana's eleven year old fans weren't fooled by that one. And while I never saw the first two installments in the Step Up franchise, the trailer for Step Up 3D (August 6) leaves me okay with the possibility of never finding out what I'm missing. I would much prefer seeing 3D technology employed on such films as the upcoming Mt. Everest documentary The Wildest Dream (August 6), which will be released flat with narration by Liam Neeson and his late wife Natasha Richardson.

Finally, we have James Cameron to blame for the newfound popularity of 3D and for spawning 1978's Piranha into a franchise with his first feature, 1981's Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, so now we're stuck with this summer's Piranha 3D (August 27) which stars Oscar nominee Elisabeth Shue and sports a cameo from Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss. And you know what? Assuming the hilarity of the trailer is intentional, it looks like it will be a fun way to close the 2010 summer movie season.

Dan Margules is a Los Angeles based screenwriter. His award-winning short film, Begleiter, is available in a Special Edition from Amazon.com or happy-the-dog.com. He was also a music journalist and co-founded and was president of San Diego Filmmakers.