Fall Movies

• By JOHN WIRT
• Movie critic
• Published: Sep 26, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Looking at this fall’s movie season, a few themes surface.

Losers lurching toward redemption or that proverbial lucky break figure in the comedies Choke, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, Role Models and the new Seth Rogen film, Zack and Miri Make A Porno. 

There’s also the post-apocalyptic drama of Blindness, Quarantine, Repo! The Genetic Opera and the Viggo Mortensen-starring The Road. All four films feature devastating diseases or global catastrophe.

Road pictures are back, too, with The Lucky Ones, Soul Men (featuring Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac) and the previously noted The Road.

The season’s schedule also includes the usual mix of romance (Nights in Rodanthe and Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist), contemporary and costume drama (police tale Pride and Glory and The Duchess, with Keira Knightley) and Halloween-timed horror (Saw V).

Some of the year’s most anticipated movies will arrive, too, including the Disney musical, High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Oct. 24), the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace (Nov. 14) and the computer-animated comedy, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (Nov. 7). 

Many of the upcoming films are listed here. Opening dates may vary from city to city and some films may not play in all markets.

Sept. 26

• Choke: A historical re-enactor (Sam Rockwell) works at Colonial Williamsburg by day to keep his mentally ill mother (Angelica Huston) in a private hospital. At night he works scams on restaurant owners. 

• Eagle Eye: Billed as a race-against-time thriller, Eagle Eye stars Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan as two Americans trapped in a conspiracy. Rosario Dawson and Billy Bob Thornton co-star. 

• Fireproof: A fireman played by Kirk Cameron (TV’s Growing Pains) tries to save his floundering marriage by accepting a challenge from his father.

• Miracle at St. Anna: Based on a novel by James McBride, this World War II drama from director Spike Lee follows an all-African-American division of the U.S. Army while it’s trapped behind enemy lines in Italy. Derek Luke and Michael Ealy lead the cast.

• Nights in Rodanthe: Diane Lane plays a wounded soul whose scoundrel husband has suddenly announced he wants to return to her. Meanwhile, she’s managing an isolated inn on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. After a doctor, played by Richard Gere, shows up and becomes the inn’s only guest, he and Lane turn romantic just as a major storm approaches the coast.

• The Lucky Ones: Three soldiers bond during an impromptu drive across America. Michael Peña, Rachel McAdams and Tim Robbins play the unlikely traveling companions. 

Oct. 3

• Beverly Hills Chihuahua: This canine tale from Disney offers a twist on the classic The Incredible Journey. When the diamond-adorned Chloe, a Beverly Hills-dwelling Chihuahua, gets lost in Mexico, humble Papi comes to her rescue. The big voice talent cast includes Drew Barrymore, George Lopez, Andy Garcia and opera star Placido Domingo.

• Blindness: An epidemic of blindness strikes humans in this film based on the novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Jose Saramago. Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener, City of God) directs and Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover co-star.

• The Duchess: Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, dares to step out of her conventional 18th-century woman’s role. A real-life ancestor of the 20th century’s Princess Diana, Georgiana gambles and drinks. Furthermore, she matches wits with the powerful men that surround her and becomes a leader of the reform-minded political party, the Whigs. Keira Knightley, queen of modern-day-cinema costume dramas and comedies, stars with Ralph Fiennes.

• Flash of Genius: In this David vs. Goliath drama based on a true story, Greg Kinnear plays a college professor and inventor who battles Detroit’s auto-making giants. Lauren Graham, Dermot Mulroney and Alan Alda co-star.  

• How to Lose Friends & Alienate People: Simon Pegg stars as an insignificant and incompetent celebrity journalist from England who gets hired by a slick New York City magazine. Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Danny Huston, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges co-star.

• Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist: Michael Cera of Juno fame co-stars in another romantic comedy. This time he plays an aspiring rock musician who meets an equally musically inclined young woman (Kat Dennings) who may be his soul mate. It all happens in one crazy, marathon night in New York City.

• Religulous: Political humorist Bill Maher interviews people about God and religion as he travels the world.

Oct. 10

• The Express: Rob Brown plays college football star Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. Dennis Quaid and Charles S. Dutton co-star.

• Max Payne: In this action-thriller, Mark Wahlberg plays a cop seeking revenge upon those who killed his family and partner. Mila Kunis and Beau Bridges co-star.

• Quarantine: A television reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) and camera man (Steve Harris) cover violent events at a small Los Angeles apartment building. They learn that a woman in the building is infected with some unknown condition, but then authorities squash all the evidence — except for the news crew’s video.

Oct. 17

• The Secret Life of Bees: Grieving over the death of her mother, a 14-year-old girl played by Dakota Fanning runs away and stays with the Boatwright sisters, a family of South Carolina beekeepers. Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson and music star-actress Alicia Keys co-star. 

• W: Just months before George W. Bush leaves the White House, here’s director Oliver Stone’s biopic about the 43rd presidentof the United States. Josh Brolin stars as Bush, Richard Dreyfuss is Dick Cheney, Scott Glenn is Donald Rumsfeld and Thandie Newton plays Condoleezza Rice. 
  

Oct. 24

• Changeling: Clint Eastwood directs Angelina Jolie in this 1928-set thriller about a mother whose young son is kidnapped. The boy is returned amidst a barrage of publicity, but Jolie claims the child is not her son.

• High School Musical 3: Senior Year: The Disney channel’s popular TV movies jump to the big screen. College and the likely separation it will cause among seniors looms. Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale and other regulars are joined by a new crop of sophomore Wildcats.

• Passengers: Following a plane crash, Claire (Anne Hathaway) gets the job of counseling the flight’s five survivors. After she begins a romantic relationship with one of the survivors (Patrick Wilson), the others begin disappearing. 

• Pride and Glory: Complications arise in this multi-generational police drama set in New York City. Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight headline the cast.

• Saw V: Jigsaw’s grisly, sadistic legacy continues.

Oct. 31

• Zack and Miri Make A Porno: Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks star as friends who have no prospects of improving their lowly financial conditions. But then Rogen gets a big idea: they’ll make a porno movie. The infamous Traci Lords co-stars as Bubbles. 

Nov. 7

• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: The sequel to 2005’s animated fish-out-of-water comedy, Madagascar, reunites voice talent Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen and Cedric the Entertainer for more fun.

• Repo! The Genetic Opera: In the year 2056, following an epidemic of world-wide organ failures, a corporation called GeneCo comes to the rescue. But should the company’s clients fail to make their transplant payments, organ repo men will come calling. The cast includes Anthony Head as Nathan the Repo Man and Paris Hilton as Amber Sweet.

• Role Models: Under the influence of energy drinks, salesmen played by Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd ruin one of their company’s vehicles. The judge gives them two choices: Go to jail or do 150 hours of mentorship. But these two guys are not good role models. The cast also features Jane Lynch and Elizabeth Banks.

Nov. 14

• Quantum of Solace: Daniel Craig returns as James Bond, the spy who returned with smashing success in 2006’s Casino Royale. Bond, betrayed by Vesper, the woman who loved him, is determined to learn why she betrayed him. In classic Bond style, his search takes him to Haiti, Austria, Italy and South America. Olga Kurylenko co-stars as a new woman in Bond’s life who has a deadly agenda of her own.    

• The Road: Viggo Mortensen stars in this post-apocalyptic epic based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. A father (Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel across an empty landscape created by a cataclysmic event that obliterated most life on Earth.

• Soul Men: Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac co-star in this comedy about a famous but long-separated singing duo reunited by tragedy. Driving cross country to a tribute concert at the Apollo Theatre, they have only five days to reconcile their decades-old grudge.

Nov. 21

• The Soloist: A newspaper columnist finds a former musical prodigy on the streets of Los Angeles. Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. star.