Looking over this fall's schedule, things don't look quite so bleak. What's this? A Coen brothers movie and a Quentin Tarantino offering in October? New films by Jane Campion, Anthony Minghella and Peter Weir? Perhaps it's the earlier Oscars (moved up to February nextyear) but studios do seem to be taking the risk of releasing a few of their quality films before the season's end. Except in a few cases, these films haven't been seen and release dates are subject to change.
SEPT. 5
The Order: Directed by Brian Helgeland. Starring Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon, Mark Addy.
Ledger plays a New York priest investigating the death of the head of his order, whose body was covered in religious symbols and Aramaic writing. He heads off to Rome and discovers the murder may have been committed by a sect known as the Sin Eaters. Sossamon plays an artist whom he once helped by performing an exorcism on her, and Addy plays another priest who helps him out. Helgeland, who wrote the screenplay for L.A. Confidential, also directed A Knight's Tale.
Russell Crowe stars in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
SEPT. 10
Cold Creek Manor: Dir. Mike Figgis. Starring Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid.
Stone and Quaid play a couple that moves with their kids from the city to an idyllic farmhouse. But trouble starts fast: As they begin to renovate, the couple discovers the house has a history worthy of that famed domain in Amityville -- and then the former owner (Stephen Dorff) arrives out of jail. Figgis (Time Code, Leaving Las Vegas) is an inventive chameleon, so perhaps this won't be a completely conventional thriller.
SEPT. 12
Matchstick Men: Dir. Ridley Scott. Starring Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell.
Cage plays a neurotic con-artist who is about to achieve a major score with his partner (Rockwell).
His teenage daughter unexpectedly comes to live with him. Cage's role appears to echo his high-anxiety performance in Adaptation, Rockwell (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) can be brilliant.
SEPT. 26
The Human Stain: Dir. Robert Benton. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise.
In this adaptation of a Philip Roth novel, Hopkins plays a New England classics professor, Coleman Silk, whose upright career unravels when he is charged with being a racist. Kidman plays an illiterate janitor 30 years his junior, with whom he has an affair. She is being stalked by her Vietnam-vet husband (Ed Harris). His colleague (Sinise) reconstructs the professor's biography and the secret he has long harboured.
OCT. 3
Out of Time: Dir. Carl Franklin. Starring Denzel Washington, Eva Mendes, Dean Cain.
Washington plays a Florida police chief who must prove his innocence of a double murder while running from the law.
OCT. 8
Mystic River: Dir. Clint Eastwood. Starring Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon.
Eastwood's film, adapted from Dennis Lehane's bestseller, was a Cannes contender this year. Three childhood friends in a tough Boston neighbourhood are reunited by a murder. Sean (Bacon) is now a cop, Jimmy (Penn) is an ex-con and Boyle (Robbins), who survived a kidnapping and sexual assault as a child, is struggling to keep it together.
OCT. 10
Intolerable Cruelty. Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
In this contemporary screwball comedy, a vengeful woman (Zeta-Jones) marries a successful Hollywood divorce lawyer (Clooney) with the aim of dumping him and taking him to the cleaners. For a change, the Coen brothers did not write the script (though they reportedly did a rewrite). Billy Bob Thornton, Geoffrey Rush and Edward Hermann also star.
Kill Bill, Volume I: Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah.
Thurman plays a professional assassin known as Black Mamba who is shot by her boss (Carradine) on her wedding day. Five years later, she wakes from a coma and systematically sets out to whack all her former colleagues. The story is told in separate chapters and in two parts. The second part of the movie will be released within six months of Volume I, though a date is not yet set.
The Singing Detective: Dir. Keith Gordon. Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Mel Gibson.
The movie, which played at Sundance already, will probably disappoint devotees of Dennis Potter's original television series, but Downey's performance is excellent. He stars as novelist Dan Dark, hospitalized with a painful and disfiguring case of psoriasis, as he drifts in and out of delirium and pop songs, and reworks his published detective novel in his mind. An unrecognizable Gibson plays his psychiatrist. Katie Holmes plays his nurse, and Adrien Brody a thug who haunts his nightmares.
OCT. 22
In the Cut: Dir. by Jane Campion. Starring Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo.
Ryan's attempts to show her dark serious side (Courage Under Fire, Proof of Life) have proved unsuccessful, but this time she's going all out. Based on the best-selling novel by Susanna Moore, this erotic thriller stars Ryan as a lonely New York teacher who becomes involved with a homicide cop (Ruffalo) and enters a world of sex and violence. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays her sister.
NOV. 5
The Matrix Revolutions: Dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski. Starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne.
The second part of this summer's Matrix sequel follows the story of the machines invading the underground city of Zion, as the messianic hacker Neo (Reeves), tries to sort out the world of illusion and reality.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: Dir. Peter Weir. Starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany.
A great director and Crowe indicate Oscars, if the film can avoid the aroma of mouldy sea biscuit. This period piece stars Crowe as Lucky Jack Aubrey, a naval captain in the Napoleonic wars, who travels the high seas with his surgeon (Bettany) meeting beauties and facing dangers.
NOV. 21
Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat: Dir. Bo Welch. Starring Mike Myers.
Big-budget children's film with Myers along with kids (Spencer Breslin and Dakota Fanning). Two bored kids meet the Cat, who teaches them to have fun with their imaginations.
DEC. 5.
The Last Samurai: Dir. Edward Zwick. Starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe.
Here's another big Oscar contender. Cruise plays a Civil War veteran turned gun salesman who goes to Japan in the 1870s to help Emperor Meiji build a modern army, which will involve ending the swords-for-hire work of the samurai. Cruise's character is captured by samurai and learns to respect Japanese traditions.
DEC. 10
The Missing. Dir. Ron Howard. Starring Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett
Adapted from Thomas Eidson's novel The Last Ride, The Missing stars Jones as a father who returns after having abandoned his family years ago. Initially his daughter (Blanchett) rejects him but is forced to seek his help when her daughter is kidnapped by outlaws.
DEC. 17
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Dir. Peter Jackson. Starring Elijah Wood and Sean Astin.
In the final instalment of Peter Jackson's sumptuous adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkein's book, Frodo (Wood) and Sam (Astin) head to Mount Doom with that creepy Gollum on their heels. Their reward for facing all the dangers should be about a billion in box office and a dozen Oscars.
DEC. 25
The Alamo: Dir. John Lee Hancock. Starring Billy Bob Thornton
Based on the 1836 13-day standoff between a group of Texan men and the Mexican army. Thornton plays Davy Crockett. The film promises to show different perspectives on the event, to distinguish it from John Wayne's chauvinistic 1960 version.
Cold Mountain: Dir. Anthony Minghella. Starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger.
Law plays Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier who goes on a voyage worthy of Ulysses to return to his sweetheart Ada (Kidman) in Cold Mountain, N.C., who is busy learning farming lessons from poor girl Zellweger. Given Minghella's previous success with romance and the devastation of war in The English Patient, this is expected to be a very big Oscar deal.
Peter Pan. Dir. P. J. Hogan. Starring Jeremy Sumpter, Rachel Hurd-Wood and Jason Isaacs.
A live-action version of J. M. Barrie's classic story of the lost boys and Peter Pan (Sumpter), the boy who refuses to grow up. Wendy is played by Hurd-Wood and the merciless Captain Hook by Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). At Cannes, a reporter asked French ingénue Ludivine Sagnier (Swimming Pool) how she managed her first role in English. Very well, Sagnier said: "I play Tinkerbell, so I don't speak."
