20 most anticipated fall film festival premieres

From P.T. Anderson to the Wachowskis, highlights from the upcoming season

By Gregory Ellwood, Guy Lodge, Kristopher Tapley Wednesday, Aug 29, 2012 3:44 AM

This year's crop of fall film festival offerings boast the talents of a slew of big-name directors, from Paul Thomas Anderson with his highly-anticipated drama "The Master" to Ang Lee and his visually-stunning adaptation of Yann Martel's acclaimed 2001 novel "Life of Pi." Even Terrence Malick - suddenly one of the more prolific auteurs on the scene - is debuting a new movie, with his romantic drama "To the Wonder" starring Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams set to debut at next week's Venice Film Festival.

All of these directors and the studios behind their works are hoping to generate enough positive buzz at one or more of the season's fall festivals - Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York - to mark themselves and their films as contenders as awards season begins.

In the gallery below, you can find a list of the 20 films premiering on this year's circuit that we're most curious about. (Of course, Telluride has not officially announced its schedule, but you can expect a number of these features to screen in front of the many Academy members who make the annual trek to the Labor Day weekend festival.)

Let us know if there are any films you think we missed in the comments.

Look for complete coverage from the Venice, Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals beginning this week on HitFix.

Most anticipated movies of the 2012 fall film festival season

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Intellectual Ninja

I'm with you guys on the new Expectations adaptation. I hope it's great.

As for Much Ado... the one thing I hope it does is blow up Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof either for films or TV work. They are the two best actors in Joss' stable not named Alan Tudyk, and it amazes me that they've not been big damn stars in Hollywood.

And Guy, as for DePalma... that guy is a POS, and yes, I remember that hateful film.

DePalma's insane left-wing hatred of the American military is pathalogical. Yeah, I don't like to make things political, but let's call it what it is: insane left-wing hatred, as insane as any right-wing hate of homosexuals, for example.

I wonder why DePalma has never made a film about the ACTUAL atrocities committed around the world by militaries and regimes he is with which he is sympathetic, such as the crimes committed on a large scale by Maoist China, or Chavez in Venezuela, or Cuba, or the horrors Che Guevara leashed upon countless people wanting no part in his revolutions.

I'm sick of POS's like DePalma. Make a film that portrays the military in a poor light, fine. I like A Few Good Men, but it doesn't make my beloved Corps look too great with Colonel Jesup on the witness stand, so I'm not talking about a demand for WWII-style pro-military films and only that. Is the US Military, or the men and women serving perfect? No. God knows I wasn't. But I don't recognize the kind of people DePalma seems to believe (with his irrational hatred) populate our Armed Forces.

No, I'm talking about the putrid, hateful, insane kind of film Redacted is, the insidious nature of the lies it tells, and people like DePalma getting away with making films like that. It isn't art. It isn't true. It is anti-American military b.s. that serves no purpose but to hurt willing to stand up and be counted to protect DePalma's right to spit on them, because God knows a piece of filth like DePalma has no understanding of that kind of willingness to make that kind of sacrifice.

Frak Brian DePalma. Frak him. And I like to be far more crude in my language right now, but that's as far as I'll go. Brian DePalma is as low as a human being can get and still be considered human. To me, he's only one or two steps removed from criminals like Manson or Sandusky. The kind of hatred and fear DePalma carries around in his heart is dangerous, and a film like Redacted is dangerous, dangerous to those in harm's way.

Frak DePalma.
August 29, 2012 at 1:20PM EST Reply to Comment
- Sean Sorry, Intellectual Ninja, but you completely lost me when you compared DePalma to Manson or Sandusky; he's not one or two steps removed, he's in a totally different ballpark.
  
  I may not like the politics of a Bill O'Reilly or an Ann Coulter, but I'm not comparing them to a cult killer and a child rapist. As much as you hate left-wing extremists like DePalma, I hate the hyperbolic vitriol that is spewed in a comment like the one you posted.
  
  Why don't you go for the hat trick and call DePalma a Nazi?
  August 29, 2012 at 4:47PM EST
- Intellectual Ninja One thing you have wrong is that I abhor ALL ideological extremism. When I see someone holding a sign saying "God hates f--s" I feel just as much anger as I do about something like this.
  
  And yeah, my comment is extreme, but I won't apologize for it.
  
  People as extreme as DePalma or the Westboro pukes are dangerous and evil. I don't quantify shades of grey when it comes to evil. There is good and bad, and there is grey. But evil is evil. Redacted was an evil, hateful film full of DePalma's misplaced, misguided rage and spite. Westboro are hate-filled pukes who have twisted a message of love and forgiveness into evil.
  
  You can disagree, but I see evil as evil.
  August 29, 2012 at 7:42PM EST
- Sean It's ironic that you purportedly loathe ideological extremism, yet you are totally unapologetic for going to the extreme when you feel like lambasting somebody; in fact, you sound like you're proud of it.
  
  "Evil," man, really? We're living in the 21st century. There are fucked up people in the world, but no one is inherently evil.
  
  Evil is something out of a fairy tale.
  August 29, 2012 at 10:12PM EST
Don Zandro

The Filipino film, "Thy Womb" could pull off the biggest surprise in the Festival with its "heartbreaking, devoutly humanist" story. Premieres at the Venezia 69 on September 6.
August 30, 2012 at 5:52AM EST Reply to Comment