Film: We line up the 9 most intriguing movies for fall

Date September 1, 2011

Popcorn at the ready, we’re looking forward to a season of intriguing fare.

FALL FILMS

OUR IDIOT BROTHER
Paul Rudd as a cheerful stoner.
A grinning, bearded Paul Rudd—clad in baggy attire and Crocs—sweetly agrees to sell a little non-sanctioned herb to a despondent police officer in uniform while manning a farmer’s market stall. Promptly carted off to jail, he gets out early on good behaviour and returns to the fold of his three successful sisters—Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer and Elizabeth Banks—where family life proves to be entertainingly discordant.

I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT
In fabulous heels, SJP juggles work, marriage and kids.
This modern-day fable of the woman who must juggle work and family to “have it all” is based on Allison Pearson’s best-selling novel of 2002. Sarah Jessica Parker plays a mother of two and finance executive, whose condescending male colleagues with kids of their own pronounce her “so impressive” as she struggles to reconcile the demands of home life (intimacy, being there for milestones like a first haircut) with the ambitions of a high-powered career.

STRAW DOGS
The film that bore pretty couple Alexander Skarsgård and Kate Bosworth.
Swedish heartthrob Alexander Skarsgård takes on a role even darker than that of vampire Eric on True Blood in this remake of Sam Peckinpah’s violent, controversial 1971 psychological thriller. An L.A. screenwriter (James Marsden) moves with his wife (Kate Bosworth) to her childhood hometown in the rural south, where they soon make enemies of a group of local men hired to work on their roof, headed by lead scary contractor Skarsgård. Things build to a tense conclusion that sees the couple barricaded in their remote house, fighting tooth and nail to keep the invaders out.

WANDERLUST
Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd take hallucinogenics at a nudist colony!
Busy Manhattanites played by the equally likable Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston (reunited after all these years—remember 1998’s The Object of My Affection?) fall victim to corporate downsizing and are forced to move to Georgia to live with family. Along the way, they end up in a nudist colony, where they’re said to get naked (he wears a prosthetic penis! She goes topless!), take hallucinogenics and mingle with the colourful residents. We have high hopes for this one, brought to us as it is by producer Judd Apatow and writer and director David Wain of Role Models.

WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER?
Will this be Anna Faris’s breakout comedy?
Film-critic favourite Anna Faris has brought her comedic talents to such fluffy films as The House Bunny and Scary Movie, but everyone’s excited about this effort, which asks the question: How many notches on the bedpost is too many? Written by tv scribes Gabrielle Allan (Scrubs) and Jennifer Crittenden (Seinfeld), the story has Faris reconnecting with her 20 exes—including Andy Samberg and Joel McHale—to see if one of them might be “the one.”

CIRCUMSTANCE
Teenage love in Iran; a Sundance favourite.
This stylish first narrative feature film from Iranian-American director Maryam Keshavarz won an audience award at Sundance this year. It’s the story of two high school girls from wealthy, liberal families trying to live as normal a life as possible—hanging at the beach, going clubbing—within Tehran’s politically and religiously conservative climate, while navigating their developing feelings for each other. When the older brother of one of the girls becomes suspicious of their attachment (and jealous of her friend’s affections), their safety and freedom is threatened.

CAFÉ DE FLORE
The pride of Quebec is back, with Vanessa Paradis in tow.
Director Jean-Marc Vallée is back with his first French-language film since 2005’s Genie Award winner C.R.A.Z.Y. (he took a detour in 2009 to make The Young Victoria with Emily Blunt). French actress and singer (and mother of Johnny Depp’s children) Vanessa Paradis is Jacqueline, a single mother struggling to raise a son with Down’s syndrome in ’60s Paris, while Quebecois singer-songwriter Kevin Parent plays Antoine, a DJ and dad in present-day Montreal who leaves his wife of 15 years for another woman. Love connects these two situations in a film that looks equal parts hopeful and heartbreaking.
—Allyssia Alleyne

LIKE CRAZY
Romance in the face of an expired U.S. visa.
Called “this year’s Blue Valentine” by many a commentator at Sundance, where it caused quite a buzz, Like Crazy is an indie romance about a British student who falls for her American classmate but has to return to the U.K. when her visa runs out. Long-distance romance—with all its challenges—ensues. The lovers are a pair of promising up-and-comers: Felicity Jones, who’ll also appear in the ski-hill romp Chalet Girl and Hysteria, a comedy about the invention of the vibrator; and Anton Yelchin, who’ll be in next year’s Star Trek sequel.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
Mega-selling novel series turned Swedish film turned Hollywood blockbuster.
David Fincher (The Social Network) directs this hyper-anticipated crime thriller, starring Daniel Craig as a journalist searching for a missing woman and Rooney Mara as a pierced, fierce, damaged pi and hacker who becomes embroiled in his investigation of a family full of dark secrets. You’ll have to wait till December for this one.