Autumn onslaught

Post-apocalyptic worlds, quasi-pornos and
President Bush coming to a theatre near you

BAD TRIP: The Road

by MALCOLM FRASER

The fall is typically known as the season for serious filmgoing fare, mainly since it’s the time when the studios unload their voluminous Oscar bait. This autumn is stacked with releases, ranging from the intriguing to the idiotic.

Highbrow and high-profile

With those coveted awards coming up, the studios are trotting out their heavy hitters. The much-anticipated Blindness, adapted by Canada’s own Don McKellar from José Saramago’s bleak post-apocalyptic novel, is directed by City of God’s Fernando Meirelles and stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Gael García Bernal (Sept. 19). And speaking of grim post-apocalyptic novel adaptations, all eyes are on the movie version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition) and starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron (Nov. 28).

SIGHT TO SEE: Julianne Moore in Blindness

All-over-the-place director Gus Van Sant brings us his latest, Milk, a biopic of Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco city supervisor who was assassinated in 1978. Sean Penn plays Milk, with James Franco as his partner (Nov. 28). The uneven but never boring Spike Lee returns with Miracle at St. Anna, a World War II drama about African-American soldiers trapped in a Tuscan village (Sept. 26). In The Soloist, Jamie Foxx plays a homeless, schizophrenic genius musician and Robert Downey Jr. is a reporter who befriends him. Atonement’s Joe Wright directs (Nov. 21).

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling stars Angelina Jolie as a woman who uncovers a conspiracy theory after being institutionalized (Oct. 24). Ron Howard directs Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan’s adaptation of his own critically acclaimed play with Frank Langella as Nixon (Dec. 5). Epic-loving Edward Zwick brings us Defiance, another World War II drama about three Jewish brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell) who escape from Nazi-occupied Poland and organize an armed resistance (Dec. 12).

Topic Thunder

CALLING OSCAR: Sex Drive

“Iraq fatigue” and the public apathy be damned, some filmmakers just can’t stop making those issues-driven movies. In Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a journalist working for the CIA to find an al-Qaeda leader, with Russell Crowe as his hard-ass boss (Oct. 10). In the documentary Religulous, media gadfly Bill Maher mounts an investigation into religious beliefs (Oct. 3). Crossing Over is a multi-character drama about immigrating to the U.S. with Harrison Ford, Sean Penn and Ashley Judd (Oct. 24). Meanwhile, Oliver Stone continues his dubious presidential series with W., a portrait of the current White House occupant, played here by Josh Brolin (Oct. 10).

Hollywood heap

Those of us who enjoy brain candy needn’t worry; there’s plenty of stuff to turn off our mental functions and enjoy. On the comedy tip, original Office boss Ricky Gervais stars in Ghost Town, as a man who dies for seven minutes, then finds himself able to communicate with the dead (Sept. 19). Sex Drive features a plot of sublime simplicity—a young man (Josh Zuckerman) goes on a road trip with his friends to hook up with a babe he met online (Oct. 10).

ON, GOLDEN BOND:
Quantum of Solace

Kevin Smith returns to lowbrow laughs with the somewhat self-explanatory Zack and Miri Make a Porno, starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (Oct. 31). Role Models stars Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as energy drink salesmen forced to enrol in a Big Brothers program (Nov. 7).

On the action front, wildly uneven director Mark Forster helms the latest Bond flick, Quantum of Solace (Nov. 14). Guy Ritchie does his thing in RocknRolla, with 300’s Gerard Butler and The Wire’s Idris Elba (Oct. 10). Quarantine is a Blair Witch/Cloverfield “found footage”-style horror film (Oct. 10).

Or if you truly need to kill those pesky cerebral cells, consider Max Payne, a video game adaptation starring Mark Wahlberg (Oct. 10), Jason Statham vehicle Transporter 3 (Nov. 28), Saw V (Oct. 24) or Punisher: War Zone (Dec. 5).

Offspring offerings

Those of us who’ve used our reproductive organs for their original purpose will find many choices on hand for our progeny. In teen rom-com Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Kat Dennings and the always lovable Michael Cera pose as a couple, leading to inevitable complications (Oct. 3).

High School Musical 3 will undoubtedly continue Disney’s time-honoured tradition of separating parents from their money (Oct. 24), while City of Ember goes for the Harry Potter audience with a young adult sci-fi story (Oct. 10). Of course, the youth market’s major contender this fall is Twilight, the adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s teenage-goth-chick-lit phenomenon (Nov. 21).

LOWBROW LAUGHS: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Cinematic curiosities

Luckily for the heterogeneous filmgoer, original visions and oddball stories abound this fall. David Fincher directs The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with Brad Pitt as a man who ages backwards (Dec. 19). In Choke, the latest Chuck Palahniuk adaptation, Sam Rockwell plays a sex-addicted con man (Sept. 26).

Festival hit Assassination of a High School President is a high school murder mystery starring Canadian Reece Thompson (Nov. 14). Rian Johnson, who directed the original high school film noir, Brick, returns with The Brothers Bloom, about two con men brothers (Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo—easy, ladies!) who target a widow (Rachel Weisz) with the help of Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi (Dec. 19). And the always whimsical Charlie Kaufman directs Synecdoche, New York, the story of a theatre director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who tries to recreate a life-sized replica of NYC in a warehouse (Oct. 24).

Locally, the Cinémathèque québécoise is mounting a huge retrospective of Chinese cinema in September and October, and repertory fans should keep an attentive eye on the offerings of the Cinéma du Parc, Goethe Institut and the Cinema Politica series at Concordia.