As autumn approaches Hollywood’s major studios will usher into theatres cool action thrillers, chilly horror movies and some dramatic Oscar hopefuls looking for a head start on the awards season.

Autumn is long on horror as the studios play to fears ahead of Halloween

From the new James Bond movie Skyfall to another scary Paranormal instalment and the long-awaited Paul Thomas Anderson Scientology drama, The Master, there is plenty for cinephiles to enjoy.

The pace of movies is slower than during the US summer when the studios bring out blockbusters like The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises weekly.

But don’t let the pace fool you; autumn 2012 is neither short on quality nor quantity, experts say.

The season kicks into high gear by end September, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena playing Los Angeles police battling a ruthless drug cartel in End of Watch, from writer/director David Ayer.

Guns continue to blaze when Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt play the same person – only 30 years apart – in the time-travel movie Looper about assassins killing targets sent back from the future.

Liam Neeson is back as the CIA-trained, overly protective father in Taken 2 when the kidnappers who swiped his daughter in the first Taken movie return for revenge.

The best-selling Alex Cross crime novels get a reboot with Tyler Perry taking the lead role previously inhabited by Morgan Freeman in Alex Cross. This time, the detective psychologist takes on a hitman played by Matthew Fox.

Crime takes a comedic edge in Seven Psychopaths, about a screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who gets involved in the Los Angeles underworld when his dog-snatching friend (Sam Rockwell) makes the mistake of kidnapping a Shih Tzu belonging to a crime boss (Woody Harrelson).

The season ends with a bang as the highly anticipated Skyfall comes out on November 9, amid a celebration of 50 years of Bond movies.

This time around, Daniel Craig takes his third turn as 007 with Oscar-winning film-maker Sam Mendes at the helm of the movie and Javier Bardem as the villain.

Autumn is long on horror as the studios play to fears ahead of Halloween. Jennifer Lawrence finds herself haunted in The House at the End of the Street and a ghostly entity threatens Ethan Hawke and his family in Sinister.

The hugely popular franchise Paranormal Activity, also makes a comeback.

For family frights, animated Hotel Transylvania stars Adam Sandler as a hotelier to non-humans whose world turns upside down when an overexcited human shows up.

And Tim Burton brings his usual ghoulish charm to the screen with the stop-motion animated Frankenweenie about a young boy who resurrects his late dog, Sparky. Arf!

Then there is the Oscar race. In recent years, as Academy Award organisers moved their top film honours up by a month, to February from late March, the studios have been bringing more award hopefuls to theatres in September and October.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is creating Oscar buzz prior to its release. Set in the 1950s, the film tells of a damaged alcoholic (Joaquin Phoenix) who is taken under wing by a charismatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of a spiritual movement not unlike the controversial Church of Scientology.

Also getting attention is Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck. Based on real events, the film shows a CIA specialist’s mission to free six US diplomats in 1979 Iran by posing as a film-maker and putting them among his bogus crew.

Actor John Hawkes gives a tour-de-force performance in The Sessions, playing a 38-year-old man who, having spent most of his life in an iron lung, decides to hire a therapeutic sex surrogate (Helen Hunt) to lose his virginity.

But Hawkes will see Oscar competition from Daniel Day Lewis starring as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s biopic, Lincoln.

Fans of the film-making Wachowski siblings (Lana and Andy of The Matrix movies) will try to wrap their heads around Cloud Atlas, starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry in different roles throughout six interwoven tales.

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