Summer’s shining island oasis of blockbusters is far gone, and the rush of late-winter Oscar-worthy movies is a tiny dot on the horizon. In between those two points are Hollywood’s fall releases, a voyage replete with films that weren’t good enough for the summer, crafty genre flicks and a few potential surprise hits.

September promises to be quirky. While mainstream audiences will be caught up with Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” Reese Witherspoon in “Just Like Heaven” and Gwyneth Paltrow in “Proof,” the month’s releases are heavily in favor of genre fans. Horror flicks “Venom” and “Cry Wolf” arrive this month, and geek idols Tim Burton (“Corpse Bride”), Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman (“MirrorMask”), Joss Whedon (“Serenity”) and David Cronenberg (“A History of Violence”) all have major releases.
“Serenity,” a continuation of Whedon’s excellent but quickly cancelled sci-fi TV series “Firefly, and “MirrorMask,” directed, and co-written, by McKean with Gaiman, could be surprise hits, considering the built-in cult following that the two films already have. “Corpse Bride” is less certain of success, though. Despite the involvement of Burton, Johnny Depp and composer Danny Elfman, Burton’s recent offerings, like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Big Fish,” have been tepid, and the auteur signed on as co-director late in the game.

“Lord of the Rings” alumni Elijah Wood and Viggo Mortensen are getting early raves for their roles in “Everything Is Illuminated” and “A History of Violence,” respectively. Both are adaptations—“Everything” is based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel about a young Jewish American man (Wood) who travels to the Ukrane to find the woman who saved his grandfather in World War II, and “Violence” is Cronenberg’s take on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke about a man (Mortensen) whose heroic act attracts the attention of some unsavory characters from his past. Though it’s unlikely the films will make it big with mainstream audiences, they should rack up more than a few awards.

The October movie landscape is mixed. Despite the current flare of Japanese horror films and needless remakes, the month holds only two fright flicks—a retread of John Carpenter’s “The Fog” and “Saw II,” a sequel to last fall’s “Saw,” which was a surprise slasher success for Lions Gate Films. Cameron Crowe returns with another semi-autobiographical effort with “Elizabethtown,” in which a depressed shoe designer (Orlando Bloom) returns to his Kentucky hometown to carry out the last wishes of his late father. Along the way he meets a cute flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) and rediscovers his purpose in life. Nic Cage’s dark comedy “The Weather Man,” following quickly on the heels of his September thriller “Lord of War,” should find the same kind of audience as “Elizabethtown.” Cage plays a depressed Chicago meteorologist who, after being offered a job in New York, has to rediscover his purpose in life and, as seen in the film’s trailer, carry around a bow and arrow. Two figures who know their purpose in life, Wallace and Gromit, the animated, cheese-loving British duo, return in “The Curse of The Were-Rabbit.” Rounding out the month are bio-pics “Domino,” about Domino Harvey, the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey and a supermodel-turned-bounty hunter; and “Good Night, And Good Luck,” director George Clooney’s take on Edward R. Murrow’s crusade to take down Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

Compared to the rest of the fall, November is pretty quiet. Expect heaps of controversy to surround “Jarhead,” directed by Sam Mendes and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. An adaptation of former Marine Anthony Swofford’s 2003 memoir, the movie follows Swofford as he enlists in the Marines, fights in pre-Desert Storm Kuwait, and quickly becomes disillusioned with the military. Young wizard Harry Potter returns for his fourth celluloid outing in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” Director Mike Newell has promised to continue where Alfonso Cuarón, who directed the series’ previous entry, left off, making the film darker and more intense. It’s a big gamble, considering that Newell, whose previous films include “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Mona Lisa Smile,” doesn’t have the same chops as Cuarón, who scored big with 2001’s “Y Tu Mamá También.” Director Chris Columbus, who helmed the first two Harry Potter films, returns with an adaptation of the hit Broadway mainstay “Rent.” Much of the play’s original cast (including Taye Diggs and Wilson Heredia) returns, but the wisdom behind producing an adaptation almost 10 years after the stage production debuted is questionable.

The month’s breakout hit may be “Walk the Line,” the much-heralded Johnny Cash bio-pic starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Man in Black and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash. Already “Walk the Line” is drawing comparisons to “Ray,” Taylor Hackford’s 2004 ode to the late, great Ray Charles. Whether Phoenix as Cash will match Jamie Foxx’s masterful channeling of Charles remains to be seen, but early reviews claim the film is a triumph.