Sean Penn and Diego Luna star as gay-rights icon Harvey Milk and his lover Jack Lira

Falling for Film

Cinematic offerings to liven up your autumn

With a few notable exceptions, the weather over the last month has been much more delightful than what’s been on offer at the cineplex. But as the silly season recedes into oblivion, there are many new films jockeying for position. From A-list projects to genre exercises, dozens and dozens of titles are hoping you will vote for them at the box office. Here’s a peek at some of the more promising movies heading your way.

A washed-up actor named Robert De Niro plays a washed-up movie producer in What Just Happened?, a satire of Hollywood by director Barry Levinson (Donnie Brasco); De Niro’s great co-stars include Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci and John Turturro. The always-interesting Clint Eastwood directs Changeling, a period thriller set in the ’20s that stars Angelina Jolie as a woman whose baby is kidnapped—and later suspects that the infant returned to her by the police isn’t her own. Nicole Kidman is on home turf with Australia: reunited with director Baz Lurhmann (Moulin Rouge), Kidman plays a titled land owner whose farm is threatened by English barons—until, that is, hunky Hugh Jackman decides that the perfidious Brits deserve a good thrashing. An even statelier leading lady, Keira Knightley, once more dons a corset and gown for The Duchess, a period drama featuring real-life aristo the Duchess of Devonshire. Ralph Fiennes pays court in a supporting role.

Canadian über-nerd Michael Cera (Juno) gets the starring role in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a romantic comedy about a shy guy who gets overtaken by a storm of events after agreeing to pose as a girl’s boyfriend for a face-saving five minutes. For romance with more bite, grab the garlic and check out Twilight, a vampire love story based on Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling series marketed to those teens and tweens who still read. And the lewd end of the libido is explored in Zach and Miri Make a Porno, an edgy romantic comedy written and directed by Kevin Smith (Dogma) that stars the tubby clown prince of gross-out gags, Seth Rogen.

Spike Lee really girds his loins for battle this time: his Miracle at St. Anna follows four men in an all-black division as they fight in Italy during World War Two. The warfare will be more intimate as Titanic buddies Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet star in Revolutionary Road, a tale of a dying marriage that is directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty). And expect an all-out apocalypse with The Road, based on the horrifyingly bleak end-of-the-world novel by Cormac McCarthy (author of that light-hearted date movie No Country For Old Men).

It has been a fantastic year for political junkies, and Hollywood has gotten in on the act. Oliver Stone continues his presidential portraiture with W, a sure-to-be controversial look at the first president to resemble Alfred E. Neuman. Then we jump back a few decades for Frost/Nixon, which riffs on the famous post-Watergate interviews between esteemed British journalist David Frost and a not-so-esteemed president (Frank Langella, reprising his Broadway role) whose disgraced tenure ended with his resignation. And the blandly named Milk is actually a biopic of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the first openly gay man elected to a high-profile public office (and who got murdered for his troubles). The quirky and talented Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) directs.

Political satirist Bill Maher joins forces with the director of Borat for a guaranteed-to-be-offensive (and funny) documentary named Religulous; although Maher has no argument with god, he despises the irrational “bureaucracy” that is religion, and this movie follows him from the Vatican to Salt Lake City to a religious theme park in Florida on a provocative trek for the plain truth. Although Daniel Craig’s first priority should be putting the hurt on the guy who came up with the Quantum of Solace title for the newest Bond flick, expect Britain’s brutish bit of beefcake to use all the weapons in 007’s arsenal in a quest for revenge over the death of his sweetie from Casino Royale.

Toronto’s Don McKellar is the director of the grimly allegorical Blindness, which is based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago and tells of the dire consequences after an entire city is the victim of an epidemic of blindness. The stars include A-listers Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore and Sandra Oh. There is already Oscar buzz for glam-girl-gone-grotty Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married, in which the adorable star of The Devil Wears Prada plays a junkie just out of rehab who really shakes things up when she returns home in time for her sister’s wedding. Presiding over the familial train wreck is director Jonathan Demme. Atom Egoyan, Canada’s beloved auteur of the abstruse, revisits early themes about man’s relationship with technology via Adoration, wherein a high-school cyber-geek initiates an internet prank that goes global.

Fright freaks who want to take their adrenal gland for a workout can put on the gloves and gown for Quarantine, which purports to be suppressed news footage of a ghastly, zombie-style splatterfest in an apartment building that was covered up by the authorities. Also in the spooky line is the rock musical Repo: The Genetic Opera, starring Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton, the lead singer from Skinny Puppy and Anthony Stewart Head of Buffy fame, who finally gets to put his great pipes to use after being cheated out of a song in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd.

The blade keeps getting ever more pitted and dull, but Saw V should have a few sadistic tricks up its blood-stained sleeve—and just in time for Halloween, too. And Christmas Day is when they unwrap The Spirit, which is helmed by Sin City’s Frank Miller and tells the tale of a true-blue cop who rises from the dead to take on big-city crime with serious attitude and lots of blood lust. Merry Christmas, indeed!