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Fall Movie Preview

The Smart Season: First looks at fall's 31 hottest movies by Peter Travers

PETER TRAVERS

Posted Sep 04, 2008 1:18 PM

Buzz off if you think the big fall whoop is "High School Musical 3." Or Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson trying to steal scenes from a dog in Marley and Me. Or Robert De Niro and Al Pacino slumming in another paycheck movie in Righteous Kill. My admittedly selective guide to what's up in film for the rest of 2008 is all about punch and provocation. Sequels get the shaft, including Saw V (enough already), but Quantum of Solace (November 7th) earns a pass because Daniel Craig is so damn good at letting us watch James Bond in the act of inventing himself. Box-office gold, not the Oscar kind, drives Max Payne (October 17th), with Mark Wahlberg bringing the video game to life as the vengeful ex-DEA shooter, but the smokin' trailer shows Max may go the extra mile into quality. I like that in a blockbuster. I also like that Titanic co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who could have blown their pretty noses for two hours and sold tickets, waited a decade to reteam in Revolutionary Road (December 26th), from Richard Yates' knotty novel of marriage. And I'm jazzed that Twilight (December 12th), from Stephenie Meyer's bestseller about a teen (Kristen Stewart) in love with a vampire (Robert Pattinson), hired Catherine Hardwicke, a director with real bite. These movies, and the ones that follow, take risks that make it worth taking a risk on them.

Burn After Reading

Opening September 12th

Starring Brad Pitt, George Clooney

Joel and Ethan Coen follow their austere, Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men with a goofball farce about sex, politics and gross stupidity. Hey, the brothers tagged Fargo with The Big Lebowski, so who's complaining? George Clooney plays a horn-dog treasury agent out to retrieve an incriminating disc that rogue CIA agent John Malkovich left at a gym run by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt, both with blond hair and shit for brains. "It's part of my trilogy of idiots," says Clooney, referring to his work with Team Coen on O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty. Can't wait.

The Duchess

Opening September 19th

Starring Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes

I don't care if you're tired of period pieces. Keira Knightley scores a knockout as the fashionable Georgiana, and Ralph Fiennes is superb as the Duke of Devonshire, who marries her for convenience and gets a handful in return. Any Princess Diana parallels are purely intentional, and impurely delicious.

Miracle at St. Anna

Opening September 26th

Starring Derek Luke, Laz Alonso

Spike Lee takes on World War II in this fact-based tale of four African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" in the 92nd Infantry Division who get trapped in German-occupied Italy in 1944 when one tries to rescue a local boy while the Nazis massacre civilians for aiding Italian partisans. Lee criticized Clint Eastwood for not featuring black soldiers in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Eastwood told Lee to "shut his face." Lee did the right thing and made this film instead.

Rachel Getting Married

Opening October 3rd

Starring Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger

Jonathan Demme directs his best film in years. Anne Hathaway does award-caliber work as a troubled woman who leaves rehab to attend the wedding of her sister and sets off a family crisis that involves her mother (Debra Winger). Hang on.

Body of Lies

Opening October 10th

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe

This Ridley Scott spy game attracted Leonardo DiCaprio to sign on as a CIA operative chasing a terrorist in Jordan because the script, by William Monahan (The Departed), reminded him of classic 1970s paranoid thrillers such as Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View. I'm sold. A scene-stealing Russell Crowe as DiCaprio's boss adds to the allure.

City of Ember

Opening October 10th

Starring Bill Murray, Tim Robbins

Bill Murray does sci-fi. He plays the mayor of a dark city whose artificial lights are failing and . . . oh, who cares? I said Bill Murray does sci-fi. Be there.

Opening October 17th

Starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks

W is director Oliver Stone's take on George W. Bush, which is a short way of saying that audiences should expect a wild ride that borders on the surreal. Josh Brolin portrays Dubya from his early years to the war in Iraq, and Elizabeth Banks co-stars as Laura Bush. I don't have a clue how this movie is going to turn out. But I can't wait to see what devilish mischief Stone comes up with.

Changeling

Opening October 24th

Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich

Directed by Clint Eastwood, this period piece set in 1920s Los Angeles stars Angelina Jolie as the mother of a kidnapped child who believes the boy returned to her is not her own. Based on a true story, the film won raves for Jolie at Cannes. With Brad Pitt getting equal buzz for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Brangelina could become Mr. and Mrs. Oscar.

Pride and Glory

Opening October 24th

Starring Edward Norton, Colin Farrell

Director Gavin O'Connor grew up in an Irish family of New York detectives. Maybe that's why his searing police drama feels so lived-in, heartfelt and brutally honest. Edward Norton excels as Ray, the cop caught between an old-school father (Jon Voight), a brother (Noah Emmerich) who looks the other way and a brother-in-law (Colin Farrell) who's lost his moral balance. O'Connor (Tumbleweeds, Miracle), who co-wrote the story with his brother Gregory, invigorates the cop drama, makes it personal again, but for two years his dynamite film has been trapped in the limbo of studio politics and the vagaries of distribution. You now have the chance to see O'Connor's labor of love. Take it.

I've Loved You So Long

Opening October 24th

Starring Kristin Scott Thomas

Kristin Scott Thomas, playing a doctor who returns home from prison, gives one of the best performances of this or any year. In Philippe Claudel's stunning film, secrets are revealed slowly, and Scott Thomas uses every nuance in her acting arsenal to register their impact.

Zach and Miri Make a Porno

Opening October 31st

Starring Seth Rogan, Elizabeth Banks

If nothing else, this Kevin Smith comedy deserves the fall award for truth in titling. Seth Rogen plays Zach and Elizabeth Banks is his no-sex buddy Miri. To raise cash, they go the do-it-yourself porno route. Smith made cuts to escape the box-office-killing NC-17 rating (don't worry, there'll be a DVD). But the best news is having Smith back making waves.

Nobel Son

Opening November 7th

Starring Alan Rickman, Mary Steenburgen

Alan Rickman, teaming with his Bottle Shock director, Randall Miller, goes for the jugular as a scientist who receives a Nobel Prize at the same time his son is kidnapped. Miller laces his thriller with dark comedy matched by the pitch-perfect performances of Rickman and Mary Steenburgen as his wife.

Australia

Opening November 14th

Starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman

Expect a dazzler when Baz Luhrmann puts his visionary skills to work. It's been seven years since Moulin Rouge, but up now is a $130 million outback epic about his native land. Nicole Kidman stars as a Brit who gets involved with cattle driver Hugh Jackman while war rages and bombs drop. It sounds like Out of Africa on the barbie, but Luhrmann's gifts are a major draw.

Soul Men

Opening November 14th

Starring Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes

The deaths of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes on the same August weekend make this comedy, whatever else it may be, a tribute to the talents of both. Hayes plays a soul icon, in other words, himself. Mac takes the larger role of a former soul singer who is persuaded to do a reunion tour with his estranged partner (Samuel L. Jackson). Director Malcolm D. Lee (Spike's cousin) says Mac's performance could well be his best. I'm listening.

The Soloist

Opening November 21st

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx

This year's box-office Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., shoots for another kind of ore (Oscar gold) as Steve Lopez, the Los Angeles Times columnist who wrote about Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a musician who developed schizophrenia at Juilliard. Ayers wound up homeless on the streets playing violin and cello solos. Brit director Joe Wright (Atonement) is just the wunderkind to give this story a tough core of intelligence and bruising wit.

The Road

Opening November 26th

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Kodi Smit-McPhee

Adapting a novel by Cormac McCarthy did wonders for the Coen brothers last year in No Country for Old Men. Now the Aussie director John Hillcoat takes on McCarthy's The Road, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a father (Viggo Mortensen, a fine actor who just keeps getting better) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland (no computer effects; the film was shot mostly in Pennsylvania). Charlize Theron appears in flashbacks in the enlarged role of the wife and mother. Hillcoat says that "it's fine to depart from the book as long as you maintain the spirit of it." That could be a hack's excuse in the mouth of a lesser talent than Hillcoat. But his criminally underseen 2005 Western, The Proposition, is such a dynamite package of human frailty and resilience that you know McCarthy's tale is in the right hands.

Frost/Nixon

Opening December 5th

Starring Michael Sheen, Frank Langella

Frost/Nixon brings Peter Morgan's hit play to the screen, where you might not expect much cinematic flash in the sight of two white guys talking. Surprise: Director Ron Howard pulls it off in high style. Of course, one of the men is disgraced President Richard M. Nixon, and the other is British interviewer David Frost, who risked his reputation and his own money in 1977 to interrogate Tricky Dick on camera about the sins of Watergate and Cambodia. Michael Sheen is Frost to a tee. And Frank Langella gives the performance of a lifetime as Nixon — shrewd, sweaty, persecuted and, in Langella's bone-deep tour de force, a flawed man possessed of a humanity that belies his image. One of the year's best.

Milk

Opening November 26th

Starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin

Put this baby in line for all kinds of year-end awards. Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk, San Francisco's openly gay supervisor who was assassinated in 1978 by Dan White (Josh Brolin), a former city supervisor. White used the now-infamous "Twinkie defense" at his trial to win a lesser sentence. At the heart of this movie, directed by Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) and featuring James Franco as Milk's lover, Scott Smith, is Milk's fight for gay rights. In a freakish hint of his own death, Milk recorded a message that could serve as a rallying cry for gay activism: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

The Class

Opening December 12th

Starring Francois Begaudeau

Deserving of the top prize it won at Cannes, Laurent Cantet's extraordinary and no-bull film follows a year in the life of real French schoolteacher Francois Begaudeau, who grapples with students in a racially divided section of Paris. Fierce, funny and moving, The Class is truly unmissable.

Doubt

Opening December 12th

Starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis

John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play created fireworks onstage. And with Shanley directing the film, starring Meryl Streep in the Oscar-ready role of a nun in a Bronx school, circa 1964, who suspects a priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of molesting a young black student, you can expect more of the same. Add Amy Adams as a nun Streep tries to woo to her side and Tony-winning Viola Davis as the mother of the boy, and there's little doubt that Doubt will scare up moral debate in movie audiences.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Opening December 19th

Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett

No movie this fall, or this year, has more potential. The source material is a 1922 short story by the great F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man born in his 80s who ages backward. The director, David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, Zodiac), has been doing first-rate work for years and uses new FX to visualize the reverse-aging process (check out the trailer and watch your jaw drop). Brad Pitt has the most challenging role of his career as Benjamin Button, a man with a wife (Cate Blanchett) who must watch him become younger and more beautiful as their marriage progresses. Delicate business is being transacted here, enough to make 2008 go down as the year of the Bat and the Button.

[From Issue 1060 — September 4, 2008]

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