Fast forward: 10 movies I'm amped to see this fall

Since it's still hot as, well, August outside, what better time than now to look ahead to a time when the weather is cooler and the movies are reliably better, fall.

And just to clarify, on my movie calendar, fall starts in September and ends in November, no matter what the calender says. That said, here are 10 movies I'm definitely psyched to see this fall.

9/1: "The American": George Clooney stars as a hitman who's given one final, inevitably complicated, assignment to complete in Italy in this sure-to-be-cool thriller from director Anton Corbijn, who made the Ian Curtis biopic "Control."

9/3: "Machete": Whether or not Robert Rodriguez's revenge pic starring Danny Trejo (developed from the fake trailer of the same name that appeared in between the two halves of "Grindhouse") is any good, with a cast that also somehow includes Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Don Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal and even Lindsay Lohan, it should be anything but boring. Enjoy the latest trailer.



9:15: Never Let Me Go: Here's one case where I'm definitely glad I haven't read the book first, because Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, which has been made into a movie starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield, is about students at a boarding school with a mysterious secret, and I don't want to already know what that is going in.

9/17: Easy A: I'm surely too old for teenie adaptations of classic works, but this take on Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" just looks extremely clever, and star Emma Stone is a natural comedienne. Enjoy the trailer below.



9/17: "The Town": Ben Affleck's directing followup to "Gone Baby Gone" features a stellar cast - including Jeremy Ritter, Reel Fanatic fave Rebecca Hall and Don Draper - in a Chuck Hogan novel about bank robbers in Boston and the FBI man who's out to get them.

9/24: "It's Kind of a Funny Story": Co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who made last year's seriously satisfying baseball/immigration drama "Sugar," return this time with the story of a teenager who checks himself into a mental institution and ends up getting housed in the adult area, where he meets Zach Galifianakis and all kinds of other colorful characters. The one movie I'm most looking forward to seeing this fall. Enjoy the trailer below.



10/1: "Social Network": The creation of Facebook may not exactly sound like a riveting story of American ingenuity, but I'm betting that in the hands of director David Fincher and with a script from "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin, this flick starring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake will be a real winner.

10/1: "Freakanomics": If too many cooks don't spoil the soup, this documentary based on the best-selling book about the often bizarre rules of causality from six directors - Heidi Ewing, Alex Gibney, Seth Gordon, Rachel Grady, Eugene Jarecki and Morgan Spurlock - should be a surprise hit this fall.

11/5: "Fair Game": Spy games are always best when they're based on a true story, so even if it's clearly old news by now, you can count me in for director Doug Liman's take on the story of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), with her husband being played by Sean Penn.

11/5: "127 Hours": Director Danny Boyle kind of snuck up on Oscar voters to take the top prize with "Slumdog Millionaire," and I think he just might do it again with the story of mountain climber Aron Ralston, played by James Franco, who survived the titular 127 hours trapped under a boulder in a Utah canyon.

So there you have it. Please feel free to let me know of any I've snubbed (and remember that there will be some great ones in December, but that's not on this list) or any you're really amped to see this fall, and have a perfectly passable Tuesday. Peace out.