The 25 Most Anticipated Movies Of Fall 2012

When we compiled our list of the summer's most anticipated movies, back in early May, there were a few predictable, common threads throughout the picks: huge budgets, expensive special effects, and famous actors sporting flashy costumes. Which is all par for the course during any summer season, the time designated for major studios to cash in with tentpoles like The Avengers and big-name comedies such as Seth MacFarlane's raunchy talking teddy bear romp Ted. But after four months of loud, often overbearing, but also largely enjoyable, films, it's definitely time to put thinking caps back on and readjust those higher brows.

That's right, we're officially entering Hollywood's always turbulent awards season, when companies both large and small unveil their most prestigious films in hopes of racking up Academy Award nominations—or, if Oscar love isn't in the cards, profitable box office numbers motivated by glowing reviews from critics and strong word-of-mouth buzz. To help you stay on top of Oscar bloggers' score cards, as well as impress your friends with knowledge of the film community's crème de la crème, we present The 25 Most Anticipated Movies Of Fall 2012.

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

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Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Stars: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, Werner Herzog, Robert Duvall, David Oyelowo, Alexia Fast, Michael Raymond-James, Jai Courtney
Release date: December 21

The enormous box office numbers pulled in by last year's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (see: $209 million domestic, $695 million worldwide) should reflect less upon Tom Cruise's name and more from the M:I brand as a whole, which, of course, is still Cruise's properly all the way through. But Ghost Protocol's success doesn't necessarily guarantee similar returns for Jack Reacher, the megastar's next (possible) action movie franchise, based on the popular book series by author Lee Childs.

Why not? For one, Jack Reacher isn't as known a brand name as Mission: Impossible, and the first pieces of footage from director Christopher McQuarrie's film show a leaner, grittier kind of adrenaline-packed thriller. Furthermore, let's not forget that before Ghost Protocol Cruise starred in the disappointing Knight and Day.

All that being said, Jack Reacher still has the potential to be especially badass, mainly due to madcap German filmmaker Werner Herzog's presence as a Russian bad guy called The Zec. That's the type of outside-the-box casting that you can't help but love. Clearly, McQuarrie, Cruise, and company aren't playing by the rules here.

Director: Tim Burton
Stars: Charlie Tahan, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Atticus Shaffer, Conchata Ferrell, Frank Welker
Release date: October 5

It's easy to insult Tim Burton these days. By giving filmgoers underwhelming movies like Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows, he's not exactly helping his own cause. But it's just as easy to forget that Burton was once Hollywood's most unconventional and wonderfully weird visionaries, a one-of-a-kind filmmaker whose imagination produced Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990). Fans of those genre classics would love nothing more than to see Burton stop adapting obvious, Gothic properties with Johnny Depp and return to that old sense of quirky wonderment.

With Frankenweenie, he just might have done that. Based on Burton's short live-action film from 1984, this stop-motion animated film re-imagines Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein as the heartwarming playfully macabre tale of kiddie scientist Victor Frankenstein, whose love for his dog Sparky motivates him to bring the pooch back to life and contend with disapproving local townsfolk as a result. The title Frankenweenie alone should endear you to what's hopefully Burton's best movie since Sleepy Hollow (1999).

Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Stars: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Holland, Marta Etura
Release date: December 21

Fingers crossed that The Impossible garners tons of critical adoration and awards season hype, because if that happens, director Juan Antonio Boyega's superlative 2007 ghost story The Orphanage may finally receive the attention it deserves. Until then, though, we'll just have to settle for The Impossible's hugely positive buzz, the level of which seems befitting to a movie about such a heavy topic.

The Spanish filmmaker's first English-language film follows one family's struggles to survive and protect one another both during and after the Boxing Day tsunami (also known as the Indian Ocean tsunami), caused by a massive earthquake, that devastated the island of Sumatra, Indonesia in December 2004. In some ways, the supernatural creepshow The Orphanage serves as the perfect precursor to the The Impossible: For the tsunami sequences, Boyega already knows how to establish tension and ratchet up dread, and The Orphanage's emotional core perfectly suits this movie's character-driven heart.

Director: Peter Jackson
Stars: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitrage, Graham McTavish, Ken Stott, Aidan Turner, Mark Hadlow, Andy Serkis, Hugo Weaving, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Evangeline Lilly, Bret McKenzie
Release date: December 14

Ready to head back to Middle Earth? One look at the official stills from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey should be all it takes to reinvigorate one's giddiness for all things J.R.R. Tolkien created. The first of three Hobbit films, Jackson's new fantastical trilogy is, for those who aren't schooled in Tolkien's literature, the prequel to The Lords of the Rings series, this time centering on Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his band of brave dwarf buddies as they venture to Lonely Mountain to retrieve a bounty and battle against a massive dragon named Smaug.

If that sounds like a bunch of nerdy hogwash to you, there's always Django Unchained in December. For the rest of us, though, The Hobbit is one of the fall movie season's biggest attractions. In one particular way, it's just as historic as James Cameron's technologically forward-thinking Avatar; Jackson filmed The Hobbit at 48 frames-per-second, meaning that, in select theaters, it'll look like your living room's HD television's screen on an excessive amount of visual-realism steroids. At least that's Jackson's hope, though many industry folks who saw 48 fps footage in April reacted negatively. Prepare for heated tech geek debates.

Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, Alexandre Tharaud
Release date: December 19

When one enters a theater to watch a Michael Haneke film, he or she (hopefully) knows enough to expect an experience that's anything but uplifting. Through magnificent yet deeply unsettling and cold pictures like Funny Games (1997), The Piano Teacher (2001), and The White Ribbon (2009), the German-born Austrian writer-director has earned a reputation as one of cinema's greatest purveyors of downbeat art. But a curious thing happened earlier this summer, when Haneke's new effort, Amour, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival: A Michael Haneke film, while also being recognized for its thematic weight, was described by critics with adjectives like "touching," "tender," and "gentle."

Come January, Amour could very well also be discussed using "Best Picture nominee" and "multiple award winner." The plot couldn't be any simpler: A happily married couple in their 80s sees their communication and relationship deteriorate after the wife suffers an attack. Predominantly taking place in their Parisian apartment, Haneke's Palme d'Or winner (the Cannes fest's top prize) watches the elderly lovers as they struggle to hold onto everything they've ever shared together; for anyone who's ever watched a loved one's life slip away, Amour will really hit close to the chest. Stock up on those Kleenex boxes, people.

Directors: Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost
Stars: Kathryn Newton, Brady Allen, Matt Shively, Katie Featherston, Sprague Grayden, Micah Sloat
Release date: October 19

Under any circumstances, the thought of a fourth entry into a horror franchise would elicit groans and fuck-outta-here disinterest, but Paranormal Activity 4 is a special case. Credit the film's pair of directors, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the young dudes who went from making the controversial, is-it-real-or-not, Internet-minded documentary Catfish to shocking cynical genre heads by turning last year's seemingly innocuous Paranormal Activity 3 into an inventive, genuinely creepy success, as well as series' best overall entry.

So the fact that Joost and Schulman felt compelled to return for another round of supernatural found-footage heebie-jeebies is encouraging, assuming they've done so with more ideas as effective as PA3's oscillating fan camera sequence and its subgenre-changing third act narrative turns. Unsurprisingly, Paranormal Activity 4 is shrouded in secrecy, though we do know that it takes place in the present day and concerns a teenage girl, her Skype device, and some strange neighbors who've moved in next door.

Hopefully Joost and Schulman haven't gone the way of, say, Saw IV, which, for lack of a more eloquent analysis, blew the big one.

Director: Leos Carax
Stars: Denis Levant, Edith Scob, Kylie Minogue, Eva Mendes
Release date: October 17

To fully enjoy French filmmaker Leos Carax's Holy Motors, one must be ready to embrace the absurd. For the reclusive writer-director's first feature since 1999's Pola X, Carax has assembled a gorgeously shot, funny, and disorienting fever dream, about a strange guy (the marvelous, chameleon-like Denis Lavant) who travels around Paris in a limousine and makes a series of pit stops, during which he plays a variety of characters. In one sequence, he's a ghoulish deviant who abducts a nearly catatonic fashion model (Eva Mendes); in another, he wears a motion-capture suit to become a horny CGI dragon; and later, he's an older, dying man reconnecting with his young daughter while stricken in bed.

Indeed, Holy Motors is as crazy as it sounds, but Carax never lets the film veer into outright silliness or forced oddness. It's essentially an anthology movie, one with the same actor inhabiting a multitude of different roles that all play upon the act of telling stories through the transformative medium of cinema. Most importantly, though, Holy Motors is an imaginative, unpredictable, and purebred original.

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Stars: Denzel Washington, Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheadle, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, James Badge Dale, Brian Geraghty, Kelly Reilly
Release date: November 2

Numbers don't lie, and the lucrative box office intakes of Denzel Washington's recent action movies, from The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) to this year's Safe House, unquestionably show that people love watching the Academy Award winner kick ass and perform death-defying stunts. Yet those same people who enthusiastically lined up to see Unstoppable in 2010 must occasionally ask themselves, "This is great and all, but when will my boy Denzel really act again?"

The time is now, lovers of Malcolm X and The Hurricane. Finally taking on another stripped-down character study, Washington looks to be back in fine form in Flight, director Robert Zemeckis' (The Polar Express, Beowulf) first live-action movie since the one-two combination of What Lies Beneath and Cast Away way back in 2000. The actor plays a commercial airline pilot whose history of alcoholism comes under fire after he heroically lands an endangered plane full of passengers. It sure will be nice to not see something along the lines of Washington hopping onto one of the plane's wings and saving the day while an overstated musical score roars in the background for a change.

Director: David O. Russell
Stars: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Chris Tucker, Shea Whigham, Jacki Weaver
Release date: November 21

Something tells us that Silver Linings Playbook is exactly the kind of film that Bradley Cooper wants people to recognize him for, not The Hangover Part II. And with super-producer Harvey Weinstein backing this A-list dramedy, there's little doubt that Cooper's performance will be seen by millions upon millions of eyes. But will it be any good?

Whether your boy Phil Wenneck can carry a prestigious movie of this nature is the central question surrounding director David O. Russell's first project in the wake of The Fighter's Oscar dominance last year. Silver Linings Playbook, based on Matthew Quick's 2008 novel, finds Cooper playing a former mental patient who's trying to adjust to life back home with parents (Robert De Niro and Animal Kingdom's Jacki Weaver) while also navigating a budding friendship with an equally troubled neighbor (Jennifer Lawrence, taking a break from her Hunger Games franchise lockdown).

With Russell back in his Flirting with Disaster/I Heart Huckabees zone, Silver Linings Playbook has the potential to be just as wryly comedic and sharply poignant. If nothing else, it will at least kick-start the comeback of Chris Tucker. As long as there's no more Rush Hour flicks in his future, that should be considered a positive development.

Director: Andrew Dominik
Stars: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, Sam Shepard, Slaine, Vincent Curatola
Release date: October 19

On the surface, Killing Them Softly seems like a more prestigious version of countless older movies about gangsters, robberies gone bad, and shotgun-packing hit men. The plot alone is fairly routine: A couple of deadbeats (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) stick up a high-stakes card game, setting off a series of misunderstandings amongst several marked-for-death mob types and a few hired guns (chiefly, Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini).

Having seen the film, though, we can attest to the fact that Killing Them Softly is the real deal. First off, it's written and directed by the same guy who made Pitt's exceptional and sorely slept-on 2007 flick The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik), so you know it's in good hands. But what truly separates Killing Them Softly from its like-minded predecessors is its unflinching cynicism, so shrewdly employed by Dominik that every line of fuck-the-man dialogue cuts deep into the script's views of have-nots hustling for dollars by any means necessary. It also doesn't hurt that the film's knockout cast is uniformly superb, namely Pitt, Gandolfini, and relative newcomer McNairy (Monsters).

It's not going to win many awards, but for a dark piece of violent, unpleasantly funny entertainment, Killing Them Softly works like gangbusters.

Director: David Chase
Stars: John Magaro, James Gandolfini, Brad Garrett, Will Brill, Bella Heathcote, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Lisa Lampanelli, Jack Huston, Christopher McDonald, Julia Garner, Adam Shapiro
Release date: December 21

The last time we heard from David Chase, it was June 2007, and the television mastermind was defending the blacked-out conclusion of the massive HBO hit series The Sopranos, which he created and often wrote and directed. Five years later, he's finally back with a new project, and, thankfully for those who still aren't able to accept the aforementioned TV show's ambiguous final scene, it's an upbeat feature film.

Inspired by Chase's own love of music, Not Fade Away centers on a father and son living in 1960s New Jersey; the dad (played by Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini) watches with envy as his teenage son (John Magaro) pursues his dreams of being a rock 'n' roll musician. David Chase writing and directing a story about a New Jersey family starring James Gandolfini? Talk about sticking to one's comfort zone, especially when you add in the presence of Bruce Springsteen bandmate Steven "Silvio Dante" Van Zandt as the film's music supervisor.

But one big question remains: Is Mr. Chase a creative stalwart or a one-trick pony?

Director: Scott Derrickson
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, James Ransone, Vincent D’Onofrio, Fred Thompson, Clare Foley
Release date: October 5

Pissed off that October's biggest horror release is yet another Paranormal Activity sequel? Fret not, scary movie fans, because we're here to tell you that Sinister, from director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose), is an early contender for the scariest mainstream horror movie of 2012; in fact, it's our early pick for the top honor.

Intensely bleak and loaded with seriously disturbing imagery, Sinister is a genre film for people who like their movies pitch-black and solely designed to unnerve. Ethan Hawke stars as a crime writer desperate to find a real-life case strong enough to give him another best-seller. His eagerness leads him and his loving family to a suburban house where a multiple homicide happened, and in the attic he finds a box of film reels.

Within those reels lives a series of what are essentially snuff films, but Sinister's clever, ruthless script (written by film blogger turned screenwriter C. Robert Cargill) finds a slick, nightmarish way to work in supernatural forces. And that's all we'll say for now, other than, "Mark your calendars, horror fanatics."

Directors: Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
Stars: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, James D’Arcy
Release date: October 26

You've got to hand it to filmmakers Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix films) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run): By voluntarily adapting writer David Mitchell's bewildering novel Cloud Atlas, they've bravely made a film that has the potential to either be an amazing visual extravaganza or a colossal clusterfuck. The jury is out on which option seems the most likely, but that kind of fearless ambition certainly warrants serious attention.

Staying true to Mitchell's text, Cloud Atlas jumps around through time and the universe, showing how the smallest of decisions and life choices can have everlasting effects through several different characters played by a committee of actors including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Hugh Grant. So, with that mind, get ready to see Berry as a white woman and Jim Sturgess (21) as an Asian guy, in addition to playing other characters who look like the actors we all know by face. And that's not including the five separate characters portrayed by Hanks.

Again, don't be surprised if Cloud Atlas is a humongous disaster, but pray for the more positive outcome.

Director: Stephen Chbosky
Stars: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Mae Whitman, Nina Dobrev, Paul Rudd, Kate Walsh, Dylan McDermott, Johnny Simmons
Release date: September 21

Who better to adapt novelist Stephen Chbosky's popular coming-of-age book The Perks of Being a Wallflower than Chbosky himself? Thirteen years after the MTV-backed book's release, the author has switched professional gears to both write and direct what, by our accounts, is the year's most pleasant surprise. At first glance, Perks gives off the impression of being just another teen comedy, albeit one with an atypically strong cast (including Harry Potter graduate Emma Watson and We Need to Talk About Kevin killer Ezra Miller), but Chbosky's film is the polar opposite.

Powered by a revelatory central performance from Logan Lerman, Perks is a wonderfully disarming and unexpectedly powerful look at a unique kind of teen angst. Lerman plays an anti-social high school student coping with the suicide of a best pal and a sudden immersion into a close-knit group of friends. With delicately fleshed-out characters, an emotionally potent disposition, and one of the best-handled on-screen teen romances in recent years (between Lerman and Watson), Chbosky's page-to-celluloid translation is a rousing triumph. One that deserves to be a mainstream smash along the lines of, yes, those crappy Twilight movies. Which, of course, it won't be. For shame.

Director: Rich Moore
Stars: John C. Reilly, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Sarah Silverman, Alan Tudyk, Dennis Haysbert, Mindy Kaling, Adam Carolla, Horatio Sanz, Ed O'Neill
Release date: November 2

Wreck-It Ralph is for all those video game junkies who tend to root for the bad guys. Instead of Mario and Luigi, they want King Koopa to walk away with Princess Peach. His very own Ms. Peach is exactly what the title characters wants in Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, the company's latest animated 3D tentpole that's aiming right at the hearts of grown-ups who once subscribed to GamePro and kids who prefer Xbox to fresh air.

John C. Reilly voices the eponymous Wreck-It Ralph, the behemoth central villain in a popular arcade game called Fix-It Felix Jr., who dreams of being the good guy. After 30 years' worth of repeating his villainous actions, Ralph steps out of the game and starts jumping into various other titles to oust each one's primary hero. It's a premise worth caring about, especially with the reports that Wreck-It Ralph will include several visual references to classic video games. Expect to feel compelled to dig up that old Nintendo Entertainment System and start blowing into its opening (pause) to make it work.

Director: Martin McDonagh
Stars: Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Olga Kurylenko, Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits, Gabourey Sidibe, Kevin Corrigan
Release date: October 12

We can't imagine there will be a film that's more batshit crazy than Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths this fall, and that's a glowing compliment. Complex caught an early screening of the In Bruges writer-director's latest dark comedy last month, and, trust us, it's unlike anything else you'll see before year's end. Put it this way: Chances are, it's the only film in which viewers will see a Vietnamese priest soul-searching with a prostitute, famous actors getting their heads blown off, and Christopher Walken, armed with two guns, rising up from a grave like Nosferatu out of his tomb.

That's not even the half of what Seven Psychopaths has to offer. Story-wise, McDonagh's film is all over the place, starting with a struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) laboring through a script about various lunatics with homicidal tendencies, and bouncing around from a sleazy guy who kidnaps dogs (Sam Rockwell), a mob boss (Woody Harrelson) desperately in love with his Shih Tzu, and a two-timing, bikini-clad dame (Olga Kurylenko), just to name a few of the movie's eccentric characters. The rest of the twisted surprises in Seven Psychopaths are best left undiscussed here.

Director: Judd Apatow
Stars: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow, John Lithgow, Robert Smigel, Megan Fox, Melissa McCarthy, Ryan Lee, Jason Segel, Charlyne Yi, Lena Dunham, Chris O’Dowd
Release date: December 21

It's the sort-of-sequel nobody knew that they wanted. Revisiting Knocked Up's troubled couple played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, writer-director Judd Apatow is continuing his thematic maturation with This Is 40, which looks and feels like a dramedy in the vein of his last film, Funny People.

Much like Knocked Up, the supporting cast is aces, with Albert Brooks on board to play Rudd's father, Chris O'Dowd (Kristen Wiig's love interest in Bridesmaids) as Rudd's buddy, and both Lena Dunham and Bridesmaids breakout Melissa McCarthy, not to mention Megan Fox in lingerie (per the trailer, at least). And considering how well he balanced hilarity with heartfelt character development in Knocked Up and its predecessor, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Apatow's examination of how the big 4-0 presents a pivotal, emotionally fragile crossroads for adults promises to bring tenderness and belly laughs in equal measure. Even if you're barely even 20.

Director: Rian Johnson
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Noah Segan, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Piper Perabo, Garret Dillahunt
Release date: September 28

Believe it or not, that's Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the photo above; actually, it's Joseph Gordon-Levitt after hours of makeup applied to make him look like a younger version of Bruce Willis. That dedication to detail is just one of the many reasons why underrated writer-director Rian Johnson's (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) first foray into full-blown genre cinema, Looper, is such a must-see.

The biggest cause for excitement, though, is the film's lofty yet highly intriguing premise. In the year 2047, Gordon-Levitt's character is a hit man working for a Kansas City Mafia crew that pays him to murder people sent back through time from the year 2077. His job takes a turn for the personal worst when one of his targets turns out to be an older version of himself (Willis). And his hesitation to kill himself, so to speak, doesn't sit too well with those mobster employers.

As clever as the film's concept is, what's really enthusing us about Looper is all of the ecstatic praise that's been slowly but surely surfacing after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last week. Could we have a new science fiction phenomenon on our hands? One that's based on an original concept, no less? We can't wait to find out.

Director: Ben Affleck
Stars: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Kyle Chandler, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Scoot McNairy, Taylor Schilling, Michael Parks, Victor Garber, Christopher Stanley, Titus Welliver, Chris Messina, Christopher Denham, Rory Cochrane
Release date: October 12

At this point in his career, it's crazy to think that, in the wake of the 2003 bomb Gigli, Ben Affleck was once a Hollywood laughing stock. Thus, he deserves all the credit in the world for reinventing his path and becoming a director, because Affleck's first two assignments behind the camera, Gone Baby Gone and The Town, were both remarkably executed and deservedly successful.

And if early reports are to be trusted, Affleck's newest picture could be the one that earns him his first Best Director nomination. Having screened at the Telluride Film Festival last weekend, Argo is already getting bestowed with heaps of critical praise and awards-season hype . Most importantly for Affleck and Warner Bros., however, it's also being pegged as a real crowd-pleaser, a humorous, tense, and expertly acted thriller ready for mass audience consumption.

In the film, which is based on real events, Affleck stars as a C.I.A. agent who teams with several folks to stage an elaborate and fake Hollywood production to free a group of American captives during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Complete with '70s porn mustaches and unbecoming hairdos, Argo is fully immersed in its period setting, and the actor-director at its helm seems to have paid equal attention to both highbrow critics and thrill-seeking popcorn-eaters. Who's laughing at Ben Affleck now?

Director: RZA
Stars: RZA, Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu, David Bautista, Jamie Chung, Cung Le, Bryon Mann, Rick Yune, Pam Grier
Release date: November 2

The Man with the Iron Fists practically sells itself to anyone who's ever bought a Wu-Tang Clan album. For his feature film debut as a director, RZA has essentially made his own expanded version of those kung-fu movie snippets that bookend some of the Clan's best songs, except here, the visual aids include excessive amounts of gore (he co-wrote the script with Cabin Fever/Hostel mastermind Eli Roth, after all), Russell Crowe hamming it up as the film's villain, and the beautiful Lucy Liu back on that Kill Bill/O-Ren Ishii tip.

Yeah, The Man with the Iron Fists is destined for a much-celebrated cult status, even if RZA proves to be more Uwe Boll than Quentin Tarantino, though something tells us Bobby Digital has what it takes to make some winning exploitation cinema. Another cool thing about Iron Fists: It's given RZA an excuse to bring back the days of eventful movie soundtracks, with an accompanying CD of original music (scheduled for an October 23rd release) featuring new cuts from various Wu-Tang members, Kanye West, Pusha T, the Black Keys, Corinne Bailey Rae, and Talib Kweli.

Director: Sam Mendes
Stars: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw
Release date: November 9

Skyfall will be the 23rd James Bond movie, but, hey, who's keeping count? Besides, for our money, there's never been a cooler, more watchable 007 than Mr. Daniel Craig, so getting another chance to see him in cutie-pulling, face-punching action is a good thing. As is the the casting of Javier Bardem as the latest Bond villain and Naomie Harris (28 Days Later) as one of two new additions to the ever-growing, always sexy roster of Bond girls (the other being French stunner Bérénice Marlohe).

What's most exciting, though, at least to us, is the man seated behind the camera: Sam Mendes, the director of such understated and devastating character pieces as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road. He's not the most obvious choice to helm a James Bond adventure, but, if the Skyfall trailer is any fair indication, Mendes will fit right into the legendary world occupied by treacherous enemies, disrobed beauties, and a humorless Daniel Craig.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, Lee Pace, Jackie Earle Haley, Bruce McGill, Walton Goggins, Gloria Reuben, Jared Harris, James Spader, John Hawkes, Hal Holbrook, Tim Blake Nelson
Release date: November 9

Casting doesn't get much more perfect than Daniel Day-Lewis playing Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's historical biopic Lincoln. From his wiry frame and chiseled facial structure, the Oscar-winning actor eerily resembles a shaved version of our country's 16th president as is, but with the makeup work that Spielberg's collaborators have practiced (seen above), Day-Lewis' portrayal of Honest Abe should be a dazzler.

That's before one takes into account the star's powerhouse acting chops, which will no doubt be front and center in Spielberg's look at Lincoln's efforts in ending the Civil War and bringing about abolition. Lincoln has been a passion project for the iconic filmmaker for over a decade, with Spielberg at one point picking Liam Neeson to headline. Now that Neeson kicks ass more than he stimulates dramatically, the presence of Day-Lewis makes plenty more sense.

And we haven't even mentioned Lincoln's ultra-fine supporting cast, which includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as the president's son), John Hawkes, Mad Men's Jared Harris (as Ulysses S. Grant), Jackie Earle Haley, and Justified's Walton Goggins. If this thing doesn't dominate next year's Academy Awards ceremony, it'll be an epic fail on Spielberg's part.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Jesse Plemons, Ambyr Childers, Madisen Beaty, Lena Endre, Joshua Close
Release date: September 14

If you've been following the early word on Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master as incessantly as we have, then you're no doubt just as restless. The latest film from one of Hollywood's most tight-lipped and singularly creative filmmakers, The Master has been at the center of months' worth of pre-release discussion, all of which focused on PTA's supposed riffing on the origins of L. Ron Hubbard's controversial religion known as Scientology; you know, the one famously and notoriously practiced by Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and many others. But once some lucky folks actually saw the film, which Anderson secretly unveiled in a series of unannounced, 70MM screenings, the chatter shifted from speculation to adulation.

Not that there's really been any doubt. Following his 2007 masterwork There Will Be Blood, Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) is back on the scene with, per steadily appearing reviews, a dreamlike look at the dangerous bromance between a charismatic cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and an alcoholic drifter (a rejuvenated Joaquin Phoenix) in a post-WWII landscape. The more people say that The Master's haunting, untraditional narrative requires multiple viewing, the more we're itching to dive into Anderson's elegantly unsettling world ourselves. For art-house types, Anderson's new one feels bigger than The Dark Knight Rises.

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Stars: Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt, Mark Strong, Jennifer Ehle, Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke, Frank Grillo, Scott Adkins, Edgar Ramirez, Harold Perrineau, Stephen Dillane
Release date: December 19

Truth be told, director Kathryn Bigelow has been killing it for years. Before she made the Oscar-owning The Hurt Locker (2008) and subsequently shot to the filmmaking A-list, Bigelow was quietly churning out ballsy, vibrant genre cinema, dating back to the brilliant vampire flick Near Dark (1987) and all the way through to the 1991 action favorite Point Break and 1995's dystopian Strange Days.

So it's with great pleasure to report that, following The Hurt Locker, any new Kathryn Bigelow film will be met with feverish anticipation and enthusiasm within the mainstream circuit. Zero Dark Thirty, however, comes with an extra bit of intrigue: It's about the Special Ops mission to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden, and for several months political conspiracy theorists were charging President Obama's administration with claims that they leaked classified informations and documents to Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal.

That's all been debunked, but that doesn't make Zero Dark Thirty any less fascinating. And with an impressive assortment of terrific character actors (bonus points for including Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler and Parks and Recreation funnyman Chris Pratt), Bigelow's surefire Academy Award contender is a no-brainer when it comes to must-see films.

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Don Johnson, M.C. Gainey, Tom Savini
Release date: December 25

Could we be on the verge of revivals for old-school filmmakers like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci? If Quentin Tarantino has his way, that's precisely what could be on the horizon, and we're not mad at that in the least bit.

Tapping into his endless pool of knowledge and fandom for the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and '70s, Tarantino is coming back three short years after the tremendous success of the excellent Inglourious Basterds with Django Unchained, and it looks like a taboo-bursting blast. Jamie Foxx plays a slave who gets freed by a dentist/bounty hunter (Inglourious Basterds star, and Oscar winner, Christoph Waltz) and embarks on a blood-soaked rescue mission to save his wife (Kerry Washington) from a sadistic plantation owner (played by, that's right, Leonardo Dicaprio). And it will be just as gory, hilarious, and subversive as you're imagining, if not more so.

Early footage screened at Comic-Con, as well as the first trailers released, hint at a darkly comedic romp in the vein of Basterds, which is exciting enough. But once you factor in the thought of Dicaprio gnawing scenery as a cold-blooded, maniacal slave owner, and realize that Tarantino cast Don Johnson to do his best Foghorn Leghorn impersonation while playing another slave owner, Django Unchained moves up quite a few notches on the anticipation scale.

You officially have less than four months left to rent such Tarantino favorites as Corbucci's Minnesota Clay (1965) and Django (1966) for preparation's sake.