Given my lifelong fascination with Idi Amin, the ruthless Ugandan dictator responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen during the 1970s, no other fall movie excites me as much as The Last King of Scotland, starring Forest Whitaker as Amin and James McAvoy as his reluctant Scottish physician. But you won't find The Last King of Scotland among the following checklist of movies hitting Charlotte between now and the year-end holiday season.
That's because the film is one of the many limited releases being leaked out this fall, pictures that will open in New York and Los Angeles on set dates but then roll out to the rest of the country as their studios see fit. The Last King of Scotland opens in limited release Sept. 27. We may see it in October. Or November. Or even later.
And there are plenty more promising titles subjected to this common practice, among them the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon; Running With Scissors, starring Annette Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow in an adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' bestseller; and Babel, with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in a sprawling saga (apparently structured like director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's previous works, 21 Grams and Amores Perros) about a personal tragedy that ends up affecting people on different continents.
On the other hand, if you're only reading to find out when Jackass: Number Two opens in Charlotte, then you're in the right place. In all fairness, the mainstream offerings run the gamut from questionable to quality, so most cinematic bases should be covered. Here, then, are the 33 movies almost certain to blanket the country over the next nine weeks.
SEPTEMBER 15: The Black Dahlia, an adaptation of James Ellroy's book as well as director Brian De Palma's first movie in four years, is a based-on-fact neo-noir about two detectives (Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart) searching for the killer of an aspiring young actress (Mia Kirshner); Scarlett Johansson and two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank appear as potential femme fatales ... The late Christopher Reeve retains a directing credit on the animated yarn Everyone's Hero, in which a young boy (Jake T. Austin) learns some valuable life lessons as he embarks on a cross-country odyssey; William H. Macy, Robert Wagner and Whoopi Goldberg are among those lending vocal support ... A juvenile detention center counselor (The Rock) turns a group of troubled teens into a kick-ass football team in Gridiron Gang ... A remake of an Italian film presented by the Charlotte Film Society back in February 2003, The Last Kiss stars Zach Braff as a confused guy who, on the eve of his 30th birthday, considers cheating on his pregnant girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett) with a sexy new acquaintance (Rachel Bilson).
SEPTEMBER 22: Based on the same Robert Penn Warren novel as the 1949 Best Picture Oscar winner, All the King's Men features a high-powered cast led by Sean Penn (as Willie Stark, a brash Louisiana governor based on Huey Long), Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Anthony Hopkins ... The horror flick Feast, the latest winner on Bravo's Project Greenlight series, will only be shown theatrically on the nights of Sept. 22-23 before hitting DVD on Oct. 17; it concerns a face-off between bar dwellers and flesh-eating creatures ... Jackass: The Movie, the 2002 spin-off of the TV show in which Johnny Knoxville and friends indulged in gross-out gags, earned $64 million at the US box office (about 13 times its production costs), so of course there's now Jackass: Number Two ... The standing of the real-life Huo Yuanjia (Jet Li) as one of China's greatest martial arts masters is cemented by his appearance at a major tournament in Jet Li's Fearless, which the action superstar insists will be his final martial arts yarn.
SEPTEMBER 29: The Lafayette Escadrille, the famed flying outfit from World War I, is at the center of Flyboys, an epic adventure yarn starring James Franco as one of the American volunteers serving alongside France's flyers during the Great War ... In The Guardian, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer (Kevin Costner) plagued by a tragic past takes a job at a training school, whereupon he attempts to bring out the best in a swaggering young recruit (Ashton Kutcher) ... Ashton Kutcher -- his voice, anyway -- also turns up in Open Season, an animated tale about a deer (Kutcher) and a bear (Martin Laurence) trying to remain alive during hunting season ... A nerd (Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder) is irked to discover that the teacher (Billy Bob Thornton) of his "confidence building" class is wooing the girl of his dreams (Jacinda Barrett) in the comedy School for Scoundrels ... The Science of Sleep, the latest mindbender from writer-director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), centers on a strange guy (Y Tu Mama Tambien's Gael Garcia Bernal) who searches his dreams for the answer on how to catch the eye of his attractive neighbor (Charlotte Gainsbourg).
OCTOBER 4: Michael Bay, who produced the dismal 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, apparently can't be stopped: He's now bringing us the self-explanatory The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. (And that's not all -- look for his Friday the 13th update next year.)
OCTOBER 6: Using the highly acclaimed Hong Kong import Infernal Affairs as source material, Martin Scorsese offers The Departed, a drama about the crossed paths of a cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) posing as a mobster and a mobster (Matt Damon) posing as a cop; Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg also star ... Two competitive workers (Dane Cook and Dax Shepard) at a discount superstore vie for both job recognition and the heart of the new cashier (Jessica Simpson) in the comedy Employee of the Month ... Harry Potter's Robbie Coltrane, LOTR's Andy Serkis, Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda), Alicia Silverstone and Mickey Rourke are among those comprising the colorful supporting cast of Stormbreaker, an adventure yarn about a teenager (Alex Pettyfer) who becomes a spy kid after his secret agent uncle (Ewan McGregor) mysteriously disappears.
OCTOBER 13: The Grudge 2 finds the sister (Amber Tamblyn) of the character Sarah Michelle Gellar played in the American original (itself based on a Japanese flick) being subjected to the same supernatural occurrences involving spooky little kids ... In Man of the Year, a politically conscious talk show host (played by Robin Williams, but patterned after Jon Stewart) runs for US president as a lark but winds up proving to be formidable competition for the party leaders ... The Marine casts wrestling star John Cena as a soldier who, upon returning from Iraq, sets off after the gang that has kidnapped his wife (Kelly Carlson).
OCTOBER 20: Helming his first film since winning a pair of Oscars for Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood pays tribute to this country with the WWII drama Flags of Our Fathers, about the battle of Iwo Jima and, specifically, the six Americans immortalized for raising the US flag on that Pacific island ... Mary O'Hara's classic novel My Friend Flicka serves as the inspiration for Flicka, a family film about a rebellious teenage girl (White Oleander's Alison Lohman) who bonds with a wild mustang ... Oscar-winning writer-director Sofia Coppola (Lost In Translation) is behind the period epic Marie Antoinette, which paints the French queen (played by Kirsten Dunst) not as a cold ruler snidely suggesting the peasants "eat cake" but as a passionate teenager mishandled and misunderstood by those surrounding her ... The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D adds an extra dimension to Tim Burton's delightful 1993 hit, which employs stop-motion animation to relate the tale of Pumpkin King Jack Skellington's ill-advised plan to kidnap Santa Claus ... Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins) directs Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in The Prestige, a thriller about the rivalry between two skilled magicians; Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie costar.
OCTOBER 27: Based on fact, Catch a Fire stars Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher) as a South African soccer player who, tired of his nation's record of racism and brutality, morphs into a rebel fighter; Tim Robbins costars as a police officer who becomes involved in the unfolding drama ... Forever hopping genres, director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile, In Her Shoes) turns his attention to the world of poker with Lucky You, starring Eric Bana as a poker champ, Robert Duvall as his distant father and Drew Barrymore as a smalltime Vegas singer ... Wow, is it time already for another Saw movie? Saw III finds mass murderer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) again killing people in the most imaginative (and gruesome) ways possible.
NOVEMBER 3: Fresh from stealing scenes in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Sacha Baron Cohen (Da Ali G Show) essays the leading role in a movie with an even longer title; Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan finds Cohen bringing his reporter character to the big screen for more comedic adventures ... The studio behind the clay-animated Wallace & Gromit films now tinkers with computer imagery in Flushed Away, in which a pet mouse (Hugh Jackman) finds himself in the toilet -- literally -- and eventually in the sewers, where he meets both friend (Kate Winslet) and foe (Ian McKellen) ... The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause finds Tim Allen again donning the red suit, this time in a story that pits Santa against the wicked Jack Frost (Martin Short).
NOVEMBER 10: The Gladiator team of director Ridley Scott and star Russell Crowe reunite for A Good Year, about a self-centered businessman who stops long enough to smell the grapes after he visits the French winery left to him by his recently deceased uncle (Albert Finney) ... An IRS auditor (Will Ferrell) learns that his actions are somehow being controlled by an unsuspecting author (Emma Thompson) in the seriocomic yarn Stranger Than Fiction.
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