At the outset of the traditionally uneven fall film season, the Buzz from media forces both big and small attached itself primarily to two films:"American Beauty" and"Magnolia," with bemused indie-film fans also intrigued by the improbable plot line of "Being John Malkovich."

Savvy Hollywood Confidential scribe Jeffrey Wells pegs "American Beauty" as "a great movie, an instant classic, a guaranteed Best Picture nominee" and a sure bet to land Kevin Spacey a Best Actor nomination come Oscar time. But even fans of the film are split on how well it will play in the multiplexes, with one Ain't It Cool News reviewer saying "American Beauty" is "remarkably brilliant" before adding, "This is one of those impossible films to market. You have a film that, if you were to boil it down to the basic plot elements, would be about a middle-age man wanting to fuck a high school cheerleader, a film that has a pot-dealing teen as a hero, a film about dissatisfaction with normalcy. A film with severe gay bashing. And sort of encourages teen runaways."

As for "Magnolia," Paul Thomas Anderson's Altmanesque, 191-minute follow-up to "Boogie Nights," it's supposed to have a killer cameo by Tom Cruise. How much has the creator of Rollergirl bitten off with this spawling L.A. story? As Anderson told Wells recently, "The day this thing comes out I’m gonna be finishing it."

For the rest of the fall film scoop, check out these reports from Newcity.com affiliates:

FALL TRIPS
Categorizing the upcoming films of autumn

FALL FILM BLOWOUT
Culture, Christians and craven images

GROSS EXPECTATIONS
Be afraid, be very afraid--the new season offers everything from scary bombs to cinematic shooting stars

AUTUMN LEAVINGS
Studios dump summer leftovers and Academy Award hopefuls on the theaters

IT'S FALLING
Autumn films to watch for

CHANGE TO SPARE
Hollywood mixes it up for a season of fresh departures and creative detours