Fall previews. NYT, LAT, etc. October.

Cinephiles usually spend most of October revisiting horror classics or wallowing, guilt-free, in the trashy pleasures of the Halloween season. There'll be new trash, too, this month, but plenty of promising alternatives as well.

October 3:

• Lake of Fire. Earlier: Tom Hall (iW), David Poland (MCN) and Nick Schager (Slant).

• Feel the Noise. Trailer's at the site.

• Finishing the Game. Earlier: Kimberley Chun talks with Justin Lin. (San Francisco Bay Guardian.) Trailer, clips, all sorts of things can be found at the site.

• For the Bible Tells Me So. Earlier: The Reeler's interview with director Daniel Karslake. Trailer.

• The Good Night. Jake Paltrow directs Gwyneth. Earlier: EW and reviews from Sundance. Trailer.

• Grace Is Gone. Reviews from Sundance. Trailer.

• The Heartbreak Kid. "With their smart, hilarious update of The Heartbreak Kid the Farrelly Bros make mincemeat of the (often correct) theory that good movies should never be remade," writes Lisa Nesselson (Variety). "Cleverly bending the template of the Neil Simon-penned, Elaine May-helmed 1972 original to their patented brand of profane gagdom, the Farrellys fashion a pitch-perfect riff on the consequences that ensue when getting hitched turns into something out of Hitchcock." With Ben Stiller. Jay A Fernandez (LAT) profiles the brothers. Earlier: EW. Trailer.

• Michael Clayton. Mark Olsen profiles writer-director Tony Gilroy. (LAT.) Reviews from Venice and Toronto.

• My Kid Could Paint That. Earlier: Reviews from Sundance. Trailer's at the site.

• Nina's Heavenly Delights. "I wanted to like it, but this new Glasgow-set drama really is weak, with stilted dialogue, underwater acting and some of the most timid, tepid gay kissing ever recorded on screen," writes Peter Bradshaw (Guardian). Trailer's at the site (but turn your speakers down first).

• Park. Dave Kehr (NYT): "An independent picture from Los Angeles, featuring that form's favorite structure: the criss-crossing lives and intertwining fates of Angelenos lured outside their automobiles." Trailer.

• Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure. Trailer's at National Geographic's site for the film.

• The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. Michael Ordoña has a brief preview in the LAT. Trailer's at the site.

• Shoot Down. Which "does an admirably evenhanded job examining circumstances that led to two US civilian planes being shot down by Cuban military aircraft 11 years ago," according to Dennis Harvey (Variety).

• Strange Culture. Earlier: David D'Arcy and reviews from Sundance. Trailer's at the site.

• Vantage Point. The IMDb plot outline: "With a Rashomon narrative style, the attempted assassination of the president is told from five different perspectives." Trailer's at the site.

October 10:

• Control. Reviews from Cannes. Earlier: Paul Lester talks with the surviving members of Joy Division/New Order about the three movies made about them (Guardian). Trailer's at the site. Oh, my.

• Berkeley. "Veteran TV helmer Bobby Roth's dramatization of his late-60s college days rep an awkward flashback to times that still loom large in historic memory," writes Dennis Harvey (Variety). Trailer's at the site.

• Canvas. A "beautiful little film about mental illness that has been praised by critics for its vitality and un-sappy honesty, and has picked up numerous awards at film festivals across the country," writes David Templeton (North Bay Bohemian). With Marcia Gay Harden, Joe Pantoliano and Devon Gearhart. Trailer's at the site.

• Elizabeth: The Golden Age. "In shaping the new film's look and feel, [cinematographer Remi] Adefarasin and production designer Guy Dyas focused as much on atmospherics as period detail," writes Susan King (LAT). Earlier: Steve Daly (EW). Trailer. Update, 9/10: "Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a follow-up less golden than its 1998 predecessor," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "Without the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett continue the role that launched her to stardom, there would be little to recommend this latest of many cinematic and television accounts of the celebrated monarch's life, which is melodramatic, narrowly concerned with portraying her human vulnerabilities, and, thanks to a constantly pounding musical score, bombastic."

• Khadak. "By far the best international feature I've seen here," wrote Michael Lerman from Sundance (indieWIRE, which also interviewed co-director Jessica Woodworth). Trailer.

• King Corn. "[O]ne of the handful of documentaries I've seen this year that embody so many of the qualities that I look for in social issue docs: humor, playfulness, curiosity, and the skillfulness to make accessible the complexities of political, economic and environmental ecosystems," wrote Joel Heller in April when he interviewed director Aaron Woolf.

• Laaga Chunari Mein Daag. Dave Kehr (NYT: "For Bollywood fans, the big news is the reuniting of the romantic team Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek Bachchan." The Wikipedia entry's pretty bustling, actually.

• Lars and the Real Girl. "The Half Nelson hero proves his mettle once again in the title role of an oversensitive young man who develops a peculiarly chaste yet oddly sweet relationship with a sex doll," writes Jason Anderson (Eye Weekly). Trailer.

• Out of the Blue. "Certainly the most hardened New Zealand film to emerge since Once Were Warriors, Out of the Blue is signposted by a series of innocuous coastal panoramas that belie its underlying trauma," writes Tim Wong (Lumière Reader). "At regular intervals, director Robert Sarkies reverts back to these sites of tidal calm - idyllic shorelines, undulating landscapes, blazoned sunsets on the horizon - as if to provide respite amidst the unfurling tragedy of November 13, 1990."

• Summer Love. This "first Polish spaghetti western is certainly an ambitious and eclectic project," writes Boyd van Hoeij (european-films.net). "Though unevenly paced, the film is a lot of fun to watch as it tries to both skew and at the same time re-create the typical archetypes of the genre."

• Postal. Todd Brown at Twitch: "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, stop the presses! This is why, as tempting as it may be, you do not give up on a filmmaker. Uwe Boll has made a good movie. This is not a joke." Trailer's at the site.

• Rogue. "Writer/director Greg McLean's follow-up to Wolf Creek is a creature feature about a gigantic crocodile on a chomping spree - in other words, the rising Australian scare monger makes it abundantly clear that a critically acclaimed second film is the not the highest of his priorities," writes Luke Buckmaster (In Film Australia).

• Sleuth. A bit from Susan King (LAT). Reviews from Venice and Toronto. Trailer.

• Terror's Advocate. Earlier: David D'Arcy's interview with Barbet Schroeder and reviews from Cannes.

• We Own the Night. James Gray directs Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes and Robert Duvall. Dennis Lim profiles Gray, "something of an accidental maverick: an unrepentant traditionalist in a business that prizes newness and shtick. Sober, allergic to irony, filled with grand gestures and operatic emotions, his movies are, in more than one sense, not cool." (NYT.) Reviews from Cannes. Trailer's at the site.

• Why Did I Get Married?. The latest from Tyler Perry. With Janet Jackson, even. Trailer's at the site.

October 19:

• 30 Days of Night. David Slade's vampire movie based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. Earlier: EW. Trailer's at the site.

• Fat Girls. "[T]his film could become Queer Cinema's version of Napoleon Dynamite," suggests Bilge Ebiri (Nerve). "Fat Girls may be a disappointment, but it suggests the arrival of an actor with genuine staying power." That would be Ash Christian. Trailer's at the site.

• Gone Baby Gone. Ben Affleck's directorial debut is "an involving Boston-set tale of mixed motives, selflessness and perfidy in the wake of a 4-year-old girl's disappearance," writes Lisa Nesselson (Variety). "Adapted from a novel by Mystic River author Dennis Lehane, somber pic radiates a feel for Beantown's working-class Dorchester neighborhood, in and around which two private investigators encounter a morass of motivations." Karen Durbin (NYT) praises Amy Ryan's performance: "Work this intricate is a tour de force, although, to Ms Ryan's credit, she never makes it seem like one. It's only afterward that you register the full power of her art." Earlier: EW. Trailer.

• Man From Plains. Ray Bennett (Hollywood Reporter reviews Jonathan Demme's doc, which "follows [former President Jimmy] Carter on a promotional tour in support of his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid which argues that Israel will not find peace until it withdraws from the occupied territories." Sounds explosive, but: "The one-term White House occupant, former peanut farmer and nuclear physicist, sincere Christian, and full-time humanitarian is such a reasonable individual that the film has trouble drumming up controversy."

• Mr Untouchable. "Alternately seduced and repelled by its subject, the garish and power-hungry Harlem gangster and 70s cocaine kingpin Nicky Barnes, Mr Untouchable is one seriously confused documentary," writes Robert Koehler (Variety).

• Rendition. "It's not easy to make a dull film when your central components include terrorism, torture, secret CIA operations and contempo Middle East intrigue, but Gavin Hood has done it with Rendition," writes Todd McCarthy (Variety). Susan King (LAT) profiles Omar Metwally. Earlier: Benjamin Svetkey talks with Reese Witherspoon (EW). Also, Ewen MacAskill in the Guardian on the season's post-9/11 movies.

• Reservation Road. Terry George directs Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo in an adaptation John Burnham Schwartz's novel. "George valiantly sets out to examine questions of violence and retribution in a place far away from war zones but Reservation Road is so laborious and self-important, it mostly resembles a rote revenge thriller with pretensions," writes Jason Anderson (Eye Weekly). Trailer.

• The Signal. Reviews from Sundance. Teaser's at the site.

• Wristcutters: A Love Story. "It's a bold first effort, with a distinct, swaggering sense of style and humor that's hard - even for a cynical blogger sick to death of indie 'quirk' - to resist," wrote Karina Longworth way back in January 2006 (Cinematical).

October 24:

• Lagerfeld Confidential. "[F]eels like a film that's been ghost edited by its own subject," sez Variety. At Film Forum. Trailer.

• O Jerusalem. "Yes, the film O Jerusalem - loosely based on the epic history of the birth of Israel by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins - has reached Europe (mercifully, not yet Britain) and it is everything we have come to expect of the Hollywoodisation of Europe," wrote Robert Fisk in the Independent last year. Bande annonce's at the site.

October 26:

• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Sidney Lumet directs Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei. A few of the first reviews came in just the other day. Trailer.

• The Comebacks. A football comedy. Trailer.

• Dan in Real Life. John Schwartz talks with Steve Carell. (NYT.) Susan King talks with director Peter Hedges. (LAT.) Trailer.

• Darfur Now. A doc featuring Don Cheadle.

• Martian Child. Deboarah Netburn (LAT) on John Cusack. Trailer.

• Music Within. IMDb plot outline: "The true story of Richard Pimentel, a brilliant public speaker with a troubled past, who returns from Vietnam severely hearing-impaired and finds a new purpose in his landmark efforts on the behalf of Americans with disabilities."

• Rails & Ties. "Reserved, careful and largely predictable in the way it plays out its wrenching emotional crises, Rails & Ties reps a capable but modest directorial debut by Alison Eastwood," writes Todd McCarthy (Variety). With Marcia Gay Harden and Kevin Bacon. Earlier: EW.

• Run, Fat Boy, Run. David Schwimmer directs Simon Pegg. "Despite nice performances and funny lines, there's something iffy at the heart of this London-set comedy, and try as I might I couldn't make friends with it," writes Peter Bradshaw (Guardian). Trailer's at the site.

• Saw IV. Earlier: EW.

• The Sky Turns. "Part elegy on the dying of a rural village, part exposition on mortality and obsolescence, and part exaltation of quotidian grace, Mercedes �?lvarez's El cielo gira (The Turning Sky) is a serene, contemplative, and indelible rumination on the permanence of landscape, the transitory nature of existence, the imprint of history, and the eternal cycle of natural transformation," writes acquarello.

• Slipstream. Anthony Hopkins directs. Reviews from Sundance. Earlier: EW.

• Still Life. Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice in 2006. Jia [Zhangke] is one of the leading filmmakers of our time," writes Shelly Kraicer (Cinema Scope). "Still Life offers an unusual kind of beauty, both astringent and monumental."

• Things We Lost in the Fire. Susanne Bier directs Halle Berry, David Duchovny and Benicio Del Toro. Alan Riding talks with Del Toro, who'd love to nab the romantic lead someday (NYT). Earlier: EW. Trailer.

• Weirdsville. "Director Allan Moyle has described Weirdsville as a Canadian Trainspotting, which is a bit of wishful thinking," writes Stephen Farber (Hollywood Reporter). "It's true that this picture takes a slightly fractured, surreal look at a group of stoners, but it lacks the inventiveness and biting edge of Danny Boyle's landmark movie."

See also: September, November and December.

Posted by dwhudson at September 9, 2007 4:14 PM