’ Lust, Caution, ’ 9/28 : Once Ang Lee became the first nonwhite filmmaker to win an Oscar for best director, the sensible career move would’ve been to sell out and do a “Harry Potter” movie. Instead, his “Brokeback Mountain” follow-up is this period spy thriller filmed entirely in Chinese and featuring an all-Asian cast. Lee pulled off this trick before with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Then again, that movie had kung fu. “Lust, Caution” is a World War II melodrama about a young woman who volunteers to seduce, and kill, a dissident Shanghai politician, played by Tony Leung (“Hero”). Consider us excited, nervous.
’ There Will Be Blood, ’ 12/26 : Five years after his last film, Paul Thomas Anderson abandons the San Fernando Valley, the setting of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia,” for the oilfields of California in the early 20th century. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as an ambitious prospector who runs roughshod over everyone in his rise as an oil baron. Partly based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!,” it’s a change of pace for the director, but as usual he’s tackling big issues: oil, religion, family, capitalism. And, apparently, spilling plenty of blood.
’ The Golden Compass, ’ 12/7 : If you’re not familiar with author Philip Pullman’s mesmerizing young-adult trilogy “His Dark Materials,” this adaptation of the first book might seem like a bid to recapture some “Lord of the Rings” box-office magic. But this isn’t some two-bit knockoff. Literary critics around the world consider Pullman to be a modern-day Tolkien, and “His Dark Materials,” the tale of an irascible girl named Lyra who investigates why children are disappearing all over England, is Pullman’s masterpiece. Written and directed by Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”), the film stars Nicole Kidman as Lyra’s mother, the villainous Miss Coulter, and Daniel Craig as her globe-trotting father.
’ Margot At The Wedding, ’ 11/16 : If you liked “The Squid and the Whale,” you won’t want to miss Noah Baumbach’s latest seriocomedy about smart, neurotic people messing with each other’s heads. This one stars Nicole Kidman (again) as the title character, a high-strung New York novelist off to the wedding of her estranged sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh, the director’s wife). Kidman doesn’t approve of the prospective groom (über-slacker Jack Black), and she isn’t shy about saying so. Family relations go from gnarly to gnarlier. Baumbach’s movie has been selected for the New York Film Festival, and those folks are picky.
’ The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, ’ 12/19 : Artist Julian Schnabel’s “Before Night Falls” showed he was as formidable with a camera as a canvas. To judge from its reception at the Cannes film festival, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is another out-of-the-ordinary experience. The superb French actor Mathieu Almaric stars as the womanizing editor of Elle magazine who suffers a stroke that paralyzes his entire body. But he can communicate by blinking his one good eye, and with that eye he wrote the acclaimed memoir that’s the basis for this movie. If that sounds grim—well, at least the cast is filled with beautiful women.
’ Lions For Lambs, ’ 11/9 : The Iraq War began in 2003. By 2004, it was a mess. Given that movies take about three years to make, start to finish, we should expect Hollywood to begin delivering Iraq War movies by the bushel right about … now. And here they come. ‘Rendition,‘10/19, starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal; ‘The Kingdom,‘9/28, with Jamie Foxx, and Paul Haggis’s ‘In The Valley of Elah,‘9/14, are all scheduled to arrive in theaters before “Lions for Lambs,” but only “Lions” can boast this triple threat: Tom Cruise. Meryl Streep. Robert Redford. Cruise plays a U.S. senator who wants Streep’s TV journalist to air a pro-war piece. Redford, who also directed the film, plays a college professor worried about two former students who enlisted in the military and are now missing in Afghanistan.
’ Charlie Wilson ’ s War, ’ 12/25 : You’d think a story as remarkable as this one might attract some real A-list talent. Instead, this adaptation of “60 Minutes” producer George Crile’s best seller about a rogue U.S. congressman who organized and financed a secret war in Afghanistan in the early 1980s had to settle for legendary director Mike Nichols, “West Wing” writer Aaron Sorkin and a cast led by Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, in her first onscreen role since 2004.
’ Atonement, ’ 12/7 : Coming from the “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” school of directing, Joe Wright follows “Pride and Prejudice” with another period literary flick starring Keira Knightley. In this adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel, she plays Cecilia Tallis, a girl whose life in 1930s Britain is ruined after her boyfriend (James McAvoy) is falsely accused of raping her. After “Pirates,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “King Arthur,” it’s nice to see Knightley inching her way back toward modernity.
’ Sweeney Todd, ’ 12/21 :If you thought that Johnny Depp was a weird pirate, wait until you see him as a barber in “Sweeney Todd.” Sweeney wants revenge for having been unfairly imprisoned by a judge (Alan Rickman), so he sets about killing anyone who gets in his way, slitting their throats in his barber chair. Even worse, he teams up with a down-on-her-luck baker (Helena Bonham Carter) to turn the corpses into filling for her meat pies. The film is based on Stephen Sondheim’s celebrated 1979 Broadway musical, and you can’t help but wonder if Depp has the vocal chops for it. On the plus side, he and director Tim Burton (“Edward Scissorhands”) can certainly get creative with sharp objects.
’ American Gangster. ’ 11/2 : No movie this season has more testosterone. It stars Hollywood prince Denzel Washington as a real-life Harlem kingpin in the 1970s who imports heroin in the caskets of Vietnam War victims, and bad boy Russell Crowe as a valiant but troubled narcotics detective who brings him to justice. But you don’t need our synopsis. “Gangster” is directed by Ridley Scott, a man who obviously likes titles—“Gladiator,” “Alien,” “Black Hawk Down”—that tell you the whole story.
’ I Am Legend, ’ 12/14 : Richard Matheson’s sci-fi novel “I am Legend” has mutated almost as many times as the zombies that drive its plot. In this third big-screen iteration since 1954, scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith) is again the only survivor of a man-made plague that has wiped out humanity by turning everyone else into vampires. Can Smith save the world? Doesn’t he always?
’ National Treasure: Book of Secrets, ’ 12/21: Is there anything more pitiful than a “Da Vinci Code” knockoff? Actually, yes: the sequel to a “Da Vinci Code” knockoff. Look, we understand the fiscal realities of Hollywood, even the guilty pleasure of watching Nicolas Cage carve, season and serve up his finest ham. What we don’t understand is what in the wide world of sports Oscar winner Helen Mirren—sorry, Dame Helen Mirren—is doing in this family-baiting scavenger hunt. (And while we’re at it, shame on you, too, Ed Harris. And you three, Harvey Keitel.) Wanna know what’s in that book of secrets? Paychecks. Very big paychecks.
