Stephanie Zacharek's 5 Most Anticipated Fall Movies of 2011

The fall movie season is something of a palate cleanser, a way of switching gears after the last summer blockbuster has come and gone, and also a chance to catch a breath before the big holiday movies, with all their hype, start rolling out. Here are the five fall pictures I'm most excited about -- some of them I've already seen, so I know they're great. Others are just too... weird to ignore.

· Drive (Sept. 16)

It's strange that we're seeing more action movies than ever before, and yet it seems fewer and fewer directors know how to make them. Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn gets it: In Drive, Ryan Gosling plays a stuntman by day, wheelman by night, with the existentially descriptive name Driver. He sure does do a lot of driving, and it's thrilling to watch: The action sequences here are shot with a surgeon's clarity and precision. While so many contemporary action filmmakers seem to have fallen asleep at the wheel, Refn is wide awake and super-caffeinated.

· Killer Elite (Sept. 23)

Even though it has nothing to do with the messy, exhilarating 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, I still want to be first in line to see Robert De Niro, Jason Statham and Clive Owen in the same movie. Any movie.

· The Ides of March (Oct. 7)

George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, about legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, was an understated movie made for grown-ups. Now he tries his hand at political drama, casting himself as a corrupt Democratic politician and the ubiquitous (and on a roll) Ryan Gosling as an idealistic staffer. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti and Jeffrey Wright round out the cast. With actors like those, what's not to look forward to?

· Anonymous (Oct. 28)

Aside from the fact that it has a great cast (including mother-daughter team Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson, as well as Rhys Ifans and David Thewlis), I can't help but be curious to see what Roland Emmerich -- Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich, Roland "10,000 B.C." Emmerich -- does with a period picture about the guy who really penned Shakespeare's plays. Could be deadly; could be juicy.

· Melancholia (Nov. 11)

Lars von Trier is a complicated and often unlikable filmmaker. He probably has more detractors than fervid fans, and I used to be one of the former: Pictures like Dancer in the Dark and Dogville struck me as cruel, mannered stunts. But von Trier's horrifying and glorious 2009 Antichrist turned me around, and while the upcoming Melancholia is a very different picture (funnier, for one thing, and far less gruesome), it's still a wonder to behold. Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play sisters who are, temperamentally, like night and day -- Gainsbourg is practical and often dismissive; Dunst, though she may look like a sunlit flower, suffers from crushing depression. The actresses' performances intertwine beautifully, and Melancholia, moody and atmospheric, is gorgeous to look at -- perhaps the most visually stunning picture you'll see this autumn.