Super-colossal year-end movie predictions

All-inclusive? I don’t think so. But with Autumn officially arriving Thursday, it’s time to look ahead to the end of the year and read some tea leaves. So you'd better pull up a chair for this one. Let’s chew the fat over upcoming movie releases between now and 2012. There’s a lot I’m ignoring by choice. Fireflies in the Garden? Sorry, Julia Roberts. No soup for you. A remake of Footloose? Uh, I have to go change a diaper. But here’s a look at films I think do have some promise – or at least promise to raise an eyebrow. Some have loftier aspirations than others, so I’ve tried to sort accordingly.
OSCAR FRONT-RUNNERS

THE IDES OF MARCH – George Clooney directs himself as a presidential candidate with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei and Paul Giamatti. Gotta be an Oscar in there somewhere.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN – Tilda Swinton tries to understand why her son has become a mass murderer. What a novel (says my wife)!

A DANGEROUS METHOD – DAVID CRONENBERG!!! Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) dukes it out with Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) – by all accounts Keira Knightly snags a nomination.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY – Gary Oldman in a John le Carre’ spy saga with Colin Firth and Tom Hardy. Drooling over here.

CARNAGE – How’s this for a cast? Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Walz and John C. Reilly? Directed by Roman Polanski, this could reach Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf heights.

IRON LADY – Meryl Streep is Margaret Thatcher. Oscar soils himself. Jim Broadbent tags along.

THE DESCENDANTS – Here it is, my pick for the front-runner. Alexander Payne’s first film since Sideways. By all accounts, George Clooney wins the Oscar for this performance. Can’t wait.

WAR HORSE – Steven Spielberg. From the much beloved play, horses pressed into service in World War I. Benedict Cumberbatch alert!!! Nominate him!

BOX OFFICE SMASHES
MONEYBALL – Brad Pitt in a movie about baseball, released just before October? Ought to be a slam dunk – I mean, a home run.

REAL STEEL – Old fashioned rock-‘em-sock-‘em fun with Hugh Jackman in a season unusually bereft of sci-fi fare. Should be a crowd-pleaser.

ABDUCTION – Special Award: the movie you couldn’t pay me to see. Celestial luminaries orbiting a black hole. Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs…AND TAYLOR LAUTNER as doe-eyed Jason Bourne Junior. Help me put the fillings back in my teeth.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS – Should be a big hit. The first one was dynamite, but now we have the spectacular Jared Harris as Professor Moriarty. Noomi Rapace and Stephen Fry. Baskerville Hounds couldn’t keep me away.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL – Killer trailer and jaw-dropping stunts from The Incredibles director Brad Bird. Jeremy Renner and Michael Nyqvist. Can we accept Tom Cruise again?

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO – I am normally rabidly against remaking a foreign film simply because “Subtitles is too hard to read.” So this remake of the superb Swedish film will have English speaking actors who speak English but with Swedish accents. I was so set to hate with a capital H. Then David Fincher released that trailer. Objections overruled. Looks spellbinding and should be a colossal hit.

TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 1 – Bella and Edward travel to the exotic land of Gymboree.

RUM DIARY – Johnny Depp back in Hunter S. Thompson territory. This one just looks intriguing enough to be cool. Hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

THE MUPPETS – I’ll talk like Elmo for a solid week if this isn’t one of the biggest hits of the year.

ATTENTION GETTERS

BLACKTHORN – Sam Shepard as an aging Butch Cassidy returning home from exile in Bolivia? Cool idea!

THE SKIN I LIVE IN – Almodovar and Antonio Banderas sneak into Human Centipede territory? A plastic surgeon imprisons a woman as he tries creating a new kind of human flesh.

TEXAS KILLING FIELDS – Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan hunt a serial killer in a small Texas town.

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THE THING – Ought to be hating this, but I’m intrigued as hell. A “prequel” that feels like a remake with a trailer that looks great. Seems like some John Carpenter reverence here and an aversion to CGI. Please don’t blow it.

BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY – This festival hit follows a Baltimore teenager realizing his dream of performing with Jim Henson’s muppets. Required viewing in this house.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE – John Hawkes as a charismatic cult leader? Can’t ignore that!

RED STATE – Long-awaited horror from Kevin Smith. Fundamentalist Christians kidnap and punish sinful teenagers. It won’t be boring – but it could sink like a brick.

DREAM HOUSE – Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz rehearsed A LOT for this horror film, so it should be terrific!

TAKE SHELTER – the phenomenal Michael Shannon (soon to be General Zod) as a man haunted by apocalyptic dreams, building an impregnable storm shelter for his family.

DISAPPOINTMENTS OR BAD TRAILERS?


THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: SECRET OF THE UNICORN – Again with the Spielberg, as he and Peter Jackson go all Zemeckis with the motion-capture. Would like to be hopeful, but the trailer just looks bad. Hoping to be proved very wrong.

THE DARKEST HOUR – Not the greatest trailer. But the screenplay by John Spaihts is so legendary, it got him the gig writing Ridley’s Alien prequel. Unusual take on an alien invasion.

HUGO – A transporting, magical book and Scorsese. I want to love this. But that trailer. Looks ham-fisted and oafish. What happened?