Fall brings one thing I don’t often cover on Movie Muse and that’s the festival circuit. With the festival circuit comes awards buzz and with awards buzz comes a few fall releases that are highly acclaimed that you’ll want to check out. Sometimes there are flat-out surprises, such as “The Social Network” last October. What [...]

This fall is unusually weak as far as family-geared entertainment goes with only two animated films and three live-action offerings. Even those live-action films aren’t “mainstream” so to speak and have been under-publicized projects aiming for the heartstrings. What does all this mean? Expect a lot of money for our two animated options.

With the best action films saved for the summer, many of these films have varying degrees of drama built in, but that doesn’t make the slate any less promising. Some of these films (“Warrior,” “Drive,” “Machine Gun Preacher”) could make some noise, even if they never find awards attention or insane box-office dollars.

Comedy is in no short supply this fall and with a good variety too. It may be bookended by two Adam Sandler films, but in between are a couple rom-coms, a stoner comedy, a horror comedy, some comedy/drama and more. Fall might not be known for quality, but there should be a few humorous surprises.

Normally with only five thrillers I might combine them with horror, but these five films have earned their own category this fall. From remakes to films based on true events to a hypothetical worldwide pandemic, these thrillers have a shot at being Fall 2011′s best films. Well, next to dramas that is.

Let’s begin Fall Movie Preview 2011 with horror, a genre whose finest months come during the fall quadrant of the year. The fall opens this Friday with the first two films on this list, a couple summer holdover horror films, but then some intriguing options arrive come late September and of course October. — Apollo [...]