Fall Movie Preview: 24 Oscar Hopefuls

It’s finally here… the season when blockbuster movies finally give way to thoughtful, intelligent, emotional, dramatic films vying for critical acclaim and Oscar glory. Yes, the fall movie season is famous for being the time of year when Hollywood stuffs the multiplex with art house movies with serious themes and thoughtful comedies that tug your heartstrings. And it’s also the time of year when Dracula UntoldThe Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies are coming out as well, but screw those movies. You already know they’re coming anyway, and you’ve probably already bought your tickets somehow. The internet is cool like that.

But the ambitious artistic films are going to overstuff the multiplexes this fall just as badly as the blockbusters did this summer, and a lot of them are destined to fall through the cracks. We here at CraveOnline are going to do our best to help you keep these movies straight and keep an eye out for the ones that you might actually want to see, since the marketing budgets for these suckers are going to be much lower than the ones for Transformers and Guardians of the Galaxy and you may not even know they’re in theaters if we don’t say something right now.

Related: Fall Blu-ray Preview: 13 Must-Own Discs

Not all of these Oscar hopefuls are going to be instant classics, and by the law of averages most of them are probably destined to be mediocre or outright awful, but they’re still the films Hollywood is banking on to win over audiences and Academy members and become major players when awards season rolls around this winter. So let’s take a look at their plots and pedigrees, mark our calendars appropriately, and see what the fall movie season brings us over the next three months. CraveOnline will be here to review them all, so keep an eye on our Film Reviews section to find out which ones really are worth your time.

(Don’t forget: release dates are subject to change, and a few festival favorites may sneak onto the schedule with last-minute distribution deals before the year is through.)

Slideshow: Fall Movie Preview – 24 Oscar Hopefuls


William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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