Last year the word "fall" took on a dour double meaning. The events of September 11 didn't put a dent in the box office; the studios simply relocated such potentially offensive films as Big Trouble (nuclear bomb smuggled aboard a commercial airliner -- a comedy) and Collateral Damage (Arnold as a firefighter seeking revenge when a terrorist bombing of an office building kills his family -- an unintentional comedy). And by the following spring, fans would line up to watch Baltimore get vaporized by a terrorist nuke in The Sum of All Fears and thrill to a vision of John Ashcroft's post-Bill of Rights America in Minority Report. If anything, over the past year the cinema has provided more candid glimpses into what's been bothering the American people than the other media -- for real escapism, tune into the so-called news.

So what can we expect this fall given that most of the films to be released were in production when the War on Terrorism began? Autumn is traditionally the time when the serious Oscar contenders appear (Oscar voters are thought to have short memories). So for 2002, will filmmakers emboldened by American's willingness to watch more-challenging fare rise to the occasion and produce a body of work that will usher in a cinematic renaissance?

To quote that consummate fall movie Tango and Cash: dream on, Bullwinkle. Nonetheless, the season's line-up does offer reason for optimism. An impressive array of proven auteurs ranging from veteran Martin Scorsese to upstart Spike Jonze unveil their latest work. And many of the other releases, not just independent films but genre blockbusters, entertain issues that are not exactly escapist fare in these volatile times. The elusiveness of identity, the deceptiveness of appearances, the lure of extreme experience, the oppressiveness of gender roles, and that old standby, the voyeurism at the heart of cinema itself, are just some of the topics to while away the time in movie theaters while the US invades Iraq and the world erupts into Armageddon.

Auteur limits
The good news is that this is one of the biggest fall turnouts of directorial heavy hitters in years. The bad news is that three of these filmmakers are turning in remakes, one is making a movie about his inability to make a movie, another has unlimbered a big-budgeted, much-delayed clash-of-the-egos epic that could undo any hope of a Hollywood auteur revival, and another is dead.

Heaven (October 4; all release dates are subject to change) might well be where the late Krzysztof Kie'slowski will be watching the fate of his posthumous script (with Krzysztof Piesiewicz) directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). He would probably be amused to see that once again events have overtaken his inventions and delayed the release of this fable about a young woman (Cate Blanchett) who resorts to terrorist bombing to avenge the death of her husband.

Another deceased Slavic genius has his work redone as Steven Soderbergh takes on Andrei Tarkovsky's dense, 1972 sci-fi allegory Solaris (November 29), which was based on the 1961 novel by Czech writer Stanislaw Lem. George Clooney plays an astronaut/psychologist sent to a space station orbiting the mystery planet of the title to find out what's playing games with the heads of the crew. Then he starts seeing . . . dead people. The reflection of a grieving nation or a throwback to The Sixth Sense? After the beating he took for Full Frontal, Soderbergh might be hoping it's a little of both.

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn might also be doing some rolling when they see The Truth About Charlie (October 25), as Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton play the parts Cary and Audrey immortalized in Stanley Donen's spritzy Charade (1963). Maybe it's off-again, on-again genius Jonathan Demme's reward to Newton for putting up with the godawful Beloved (1998), since here she plays a sexy widow stalked by shady characters in search of her late hubby's ill-gotten gain.

Lina Wertmüller is still alive, so one assumes she approved of British hot-shot Guy (Snatch) Ritchie's remake of her 1975 Swept Away (October 11), which stars Ritchie's new bride, Madonna, as a society girl stranded on an island with a macho player (Adriano Giannini, son of Giancarlo, who played the role in the original). Describing perhaps his marriage rather than the movie, Ritchie is quoted in Entertainment Weekly as saying, "It's an angry love story . . . [about] a diva bitch's transformation into a sensitive woman who recognizes the error of her ways."

Just when you thought filmmakers couldn't come up with any new ideas, along comes Punch-Drunk Love (October 18). If nothing else, this one should score points for the unlikely pairing of arty writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia) with lowbrow clown Adam Sandler. The latter plays a salesman obsessed with pudding and tormented by his seven sisters; he finds the title sentiment with a harmonium-playing Emily Watson. Laugh if you like, but the buzz has Sandler looking at an Oscar nod.

If so, he'll probably be up against Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt (December 25), Alexander Payne's post-Election effort based very loosely on the Louis Begley novel. Nicholson plays a retiree whose bout with futility and meaninglessness can only be compounded by the folly of his family and an extended Kathy Bates nude scene.

Although Payne merged his adaptation of Begley's novel with an old script of his own, at least he got the job done. The same isn't true of puckish director Spike Jonze and his anarchic scenarist Charlie Kaufman, who were previously paired on Being John Malkovich. Their Adaptation (December 6) was supposed to be just that, a rendition of Susan Orlean's nonfiction bestseller The Orchid Thief. Instead it's a movie about making the movie, as Nicolas Cage's Kaufman struggles with the text Meryl Streep's Orlean has written. Perhaps they need a portal to escape further self-referentiality

There's probably a making-of-the-movie movie to be had from Gangs of New York (December 25); the production woes and wars behind Martin Scorsese's epic of pre-Mafia 19th-century Manhattan street crime sound like the history of Apocalypse Now, if not Heaven's Gate. Let's just hope it's not a fusion of Mean Streets and The Age of Innocence. Based on Herbert Asbury's 1927 picaresque history, Scorsese's film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day Lewis, and Cameron Diaz as gangsters in love and at war.

Mum's the word
Fatherhood dominated the summer with the likes of Road to Perdition. The fall, however, belongs to mother.

Not necessarily to model moms, either. In The Banger Sisters (September 20), Goldie Hawn with amplified breasts is a former '60s rock groupie (shades of daughter Kate Hudson in Almost Famous) who reunites with former pal Susan Sarandon, now a staid housewife with a daughter (played by Sarandon's real-life daughter Eva Amurri) of her own. Geoffrey Rush is a dissipated writer along for the ride as this latter-day Thelma and Louise hit the road again.

Rock and motherhood are also paired in 8 Mile (November 8), as rap-scallion Eminem plays a character much like himself: he's an aspiring rapper growing up in Detroit with Kim Basinger as his much-maligned mom and Brittany Murphy as his muse. Curtis Hanson, in whose L.A. Confidential Basinger won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1997, directs.

Whatever Eminem put up with from his mom couldn't come close to the grief suffered in White Oleander (October 11), Peter (Wuthering Heights) Kosminsky's adaptation of Janet Fitch's 1999 Oprah Club bestseller. Michelle Pfeiffer is an imprisoned mom-from-hell whose 14-year-old daughter (newcomer Alison Lohman) descends into a life of prostitution, suicide attempts, and foster homes headed by Renée Zellweger and Robin Wright Penn.

Imprisoned in a different sense is Charlize Theron's beleaguered mom in Luis (Message in a Bottle) Mandoki's Trapped (September 20). Her daughter has been kidnapped, and she's been isolated from husband Stuart Townsend by the plot's mastermind, Kevin Bacon. Sure, this movie's got Courtney Love in the cast, but how will it compete with the tragic real-life abductions covered by Connie Chung?

A room of their own
The traditional cultural image notwithstanding, not every woman wants to be a wife and mother. Some want to be artists, like Frida (October 25). Salma Hayek works on her eyebrows and her brushstrokes as the fiery Mexican painter and feminist icon Frida Kahlo. Alfred Molina plays her mentor and lover, Diego Rivera; Geoffrey Rush takes time off from The Banger Sisters to put in an appearance as Leon Trotsky; and Edward Norton, who also co-wrote the script, is none other than Nelson Rockefeller. If that doesn't sound wacky enough, consider that Julie Taymor, who was responsible for the surreal grandeur of Titus (1999), directs.

If not a painter, then why not a writer? Nicole Kidman takes on a troubled persona and puts on a prosthetic nose as Virginia Woolf in The Hours (December 27), whose writing of the novel Mrs. Dalloway unites her with two other women in disparate places and times. Based on Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulitzer-winning novel, it also stars Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Allison Janney, and Ed Harris. David Hare wrote the screenplay; Stephen Daldry, no stranger to artistic aspiration after Billy Elliot (2000), directs.

Or a poet, which is the ambition of the troubled high-school student in Blue Car (November 8) who seeks relief from her chaotic home life through the attentions of her English teacher. Written and directed by first-timer Karen Moncrieff, it stars Agnes Bruckner, David Strathairn, Margaret Colin, and Frances Fisher.

How about a chambermaid? Jennifer Lopez hopes that wielding a mop might turn her recent thespian fortunes around as she plays the title char in Maid in Manhattan (December 13), a latter-day Cinderella tale with Ralph Fiennes as the Prince, the scion of a political dynasty who spots J. Lo behind an apron in a swank New York hotel and decides she'll be Julia Roberts to his Richard Gere. Director Wayne Wang takes on another female profession after his controversial look at lap dancers in The Center of the World.

Search and enjoy
Speaking of the center of the world: things are getting hot in The Core (November 1), where Jon (Entrapment) Amiel's latter-day Journey to the Center of the Earth takes a crew of scientists -- Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo -- to the molten ball of the title to figure out why it's stopped rotating. But as all shrewd viewers will note, what this story really concerns is our anxiety about the truth behind the appearance of things and our need to probe until we discover it, regardless of the consequences. In the movies, at any rate.

As in Red Dragon (October 4), in which former Nelson Rockefeller Edward Norton plays an FBI profiler who must pick the evil brain of Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter (though not the way Lecter picked Ray Liotta's brain in Hannibal) to track down a serial killer played by former scion of a political dynasty Ralph Fiennes. Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) directs the second adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel; the first, Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986), some consider the finest in the series.

More dire secrets lurk behind closed doors in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (November 15), Chris Columbus's second entry in the J.K. Rowling children's series, in which the fabulously popular apprentice sorcerer (Daniel Radcliffe) must find out what's making the residents of Hogwarts so terrified. And where's that disembodied voice coming from? Perhaps he should team up with George Clooney from Solaris as well as the actual supporting cast of Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh, and Maggie Smith.

Another sequel is all too timely. There
was pressure on Peter Jackson to change the title of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (December 18) after the destruction of the World Trade Center, but he stuck to the title J.R.R. Tolkien gave the second volume of his series half a century ago. This middle part of the trilogy finds Hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) trudging on to toss the evil Ring of Power into its fiery source in Mount Doom while the genetically altered Orcs of Mordor are kicking their pals' asses back at the Battle
of Helm's Deep. With characters like Treebeard, Saruman, and Gollum, it's a happy hunting ground of contemporary issues and paranoia.

I lie
Paranoia, of course, means secret agents and international conspiracy, and the spy genre that thrived in the summer continues through the rest of the year unabated, reflecting not only fear of evil powers at work behind the scenes but also anxiety about the nature of identity.

In addition to the inevitable James Bond feature -- Die Another Day (November 22), with the game and natty Pierce Brosnan as 007, Lee Tamahori (Along Came a Spider, The Edge) directing, and Oscar winner Halle Berry slumming as a Bond girl -- there's a big-screen version of the hip '60s TV show I Spy (November 1). Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson try to recapture the laid-back chemistry of originals Bill Cosby and Robert Culp as they play undercover agents out to foil bad guy Malcolm McDowell's theft of a Stealth bomber.

Surfaces prove more liberating than deceiving when Owen Wilson's previous partner in crime, Jackie Chan (Shanghai Noon), dons the title garb of The Tuxedo (September 27) and finds that the clothes make the man, its gadgetry rendering him as formidable a fighting machine as, well, Jackie Chan. Kevin Donovan directs for the first time; Jennifer Love Hewitt tries to keep up.

Sometimes it's necessary to trade down in changing identities, as is the case with disgraced British officer Heath Ledger in the umpteenth adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's adventure classic The Four Feathers (September 20). After his buddies and his fiancée send him the title plumes to mark his perceived cowardice, Ledger disguises himself as a lowly Arab to save their hash incognito when the bin Laden-like Mahdi rebels in North Africa in 1898. Wes Bentley and Kate Hudson star; director Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) should give the hoary tale new visual flair and topical political edge.

Sometimes one secret identity is not enough; it wasn't for real-life con man Frank Abagnale Jr., on whose 1980 autobiography Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (December 25) is based. Leonardo DiCaprio flashes ahead a century from Gangs of New York to play the teenage criminal mastermind and master of disguise hunted down by Road to Perdition's hit-man-now-turned-FBI-agent, Tom Hanks.

An identity can't get much more unreliable than one described in an "unauthorized autobiography," so former Gong Show host Chuck Barris's claims of being a part-time CIA hit man might be considered about as credible as a Charlie Kaufman script. Which it is in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (December 27), where Sam Rockwell is the mind in question. Julia Roberts and George Clooney are together again in the cast, and the latter seems engaged in an identity crisis of his own as he makes his directorial debut.

Issue Date: September 20 - 26, 2002