The American
(Sept. 1) George Clooney plays a hit man on a last Italian job. The film is intriguing not just for Clooney completionists but also for its pedigree: director Anton Corbijn (primarily music video and the Ian Curtis biopic Control) adapts the story from the novel A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth, poet, publisher and sybarite (he was a translator of Chinese erotic poetry and a major expert on Alistair Crowley).
Machete
(Sept. 3) Ol’ rockface Danny Trejo stars in Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez’s satirical grindhouser, which went viral on Cinco de Mayo and is being released in time for Mexican Independence Day. Various racists and opportunistic politicians (including Robert De Niro) walk on the fightin’ side of the big man. The cameo-rich cast includes Steven Seagal, Jeff Fahey, Jessica Alba, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson and, yes, Lindsay Lohan.
Soul Kitchen
(Sept. 3) Fatih Akin’s amiable yet hard-edged portraits of the new Germany make this relatively light-hearted comedy very promising. Here, a greasy-spoon operator in Hamburg finds a new lease on life when he hires a new chef.
The Tillman Story
(Sept. 3) The documentary details how Pat Tillman—football hero and good-hearted kid from the Almaden Valley—ended up as an unwitting symbol of the Afghan war. Director Amir Bar-Lev interviews the surviving Tillmans and discovers the intelligent and free-thinking young man no one knew, particularly after the network news and the Bush administration were through with him.
A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
(Sept. 10) Zhang Yimou goes intimate after some wall-to-wall epics with a remake of the Coen brothers’ early film noir about murder and adultery, Blood Simple.
Catfish
(Sept. 17) “Not based on a true story, not inspired by real events,” this puzzling story is observed lo-fi camera–style by co-director Ariel Schulman, the brother of the subject, a photographer who strikes up an unusual friendship with a girl who wants to appropriate one of his pictures. Is it fiction or hand-held cinema verité? As in the story of fine artiste Mr. Brainwash in Exit to the Gift Shop, there’s more than an element of untrustworthiness in the narration.
Easy A
(Sept. 17) Will Gluck’s comedy is witty enough to parallel the ordeal of a modern girl (Emma Stone) surrounded by born-again Puritans in an Ojai high school with the book she’s studying: The Scarlet Letter. Plus the adults along for the ride are impressively funny: Thomas Hayden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci and Malcolm MacDowell.
Let Me In
(Oct. 1) Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) meets girl (Chloe Moretz from Kick-Ass) of a kind in this remake of the intrepid Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In. Matt Reeves of Cloverfield directs what one feels, with ever-childlike faith, a story that’s resistant to messing up.
The Social Network
(Oct. 1) Ben Mezrich’s unauthorized, semifictional, padded and prolix book The Accidental Billionaires is the source for David Fincher’s version of the fractious beginnings of Facebook. Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg, and Andrew Garfield is Eduardo Saverin. Will Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac) bring some edge to story behind the fabulously popular website?
Enter the Void
(Oct. 8) This feature may steal the thunder of Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter (Oct. 22). It is Gaspar Noë’s sex-and-violence drenched spinoff of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, with a gaijin in Tokyo who is dead but refuses to leave his bardo, a fluorescent half-world co-created by Marc Caro (of City of Lost Children). Noë’s willingness (and let’s face it, ability) to shock may be tempered here by sweeter fantasy.
The Town
(Sept. 17) Ben Affleck’s follow-up to Gone Baby Gone looks like some further Southie metaphysics. A Boston gunman (Affleck) gets involved with a bank teller (Rebecca Hall) he once stuck up. Jon Hamm of Mad Men, in what looks like a big-enough movie role at last, plays the FBI agent tracing him.
The Next Three Days
(Nov. 19) The redo of the French film Pour Elle has Paul Haggis shows off his post–Casino Royale moves. A husband (Russell Crowe) endeavoring to break his wife (Elizabeth Banks), out of prison, with the river-bound city of Pittsburgh itself as the outer perimeter of the lockup.
