Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz
Release Date: November 15
Festival Speculation: none
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Why: Now 75 years old, three-time nominee Ridley Scott is the kind of veteran you sense the Academy would now like to reward if the right film comes along. But there's an even more senior, and even more
prestigious, off-screen name attached to this one that arouses our curiosity: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy (“No Country for Old Men,” “The Road”), who has written his first-ever original
screenplay here. An all-star thriller about a lawyer (Michael Fassbender, surely due for his first Oscar nod by now) subsumed into the world of drug trafficking, it's one of the name-iest attractions of the fall release calendar, but Scott's similarly attractive “American Gangster” and “Body of Lies,” released in the same season, didn't pan out. Will McCarthy make the difference?

- Guy Lodge