NEWS YOU CAN USE: If last fall marked the march of the documentaries, this year sees the return of mockumentaries like’s Borat, with Sacha Baron Cohen.

Some films do confront contemporary issues, but from the detached viewpoint of irony, æsthetic experimentation, or genre escapism. If last fall marked the march of the documentaries, this year sees the return of the mockumentaries, with at least three on the schedule. Also expect a resurgence of the arty “puzzle” movie, where figuring out the plot and admiring the structure is as important as enjoying the story or reflecting on the truth uncovered.

After an escapist summer, welcome to the more respectable escapes of the fall, a season of films ranging from the past to postmodernism, with scarcely a glance at the present.

September
The adaptation by Steven Zaillian (A Civil Action) of Robert Penn Warren’s  ALL THE KING’S MEN  (September 22) draws on the past in several ways. It’s set in the Depression, it’s a remake of the 1949 Robert Rossen film that won Oscars for Best Picture, Actor, and Actress, and it was held up from fall release last year to undergo tweaking in the editing room. Sounds a little dicy, but the cast has heft, with Sean Penn as a Huey Long–like Southern demagogue whose rise and fall is chronicled and abetted by a spin doctor played by Jude Law. Kathy Baker, Patricia Clarkson, and Anthony Hopkins also star.

For those to whom that sounds a little too reminiscent of the politics of the present day, Michel Gondry, who teamed up with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, attempts something equally weird and cerebral on his own with  THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP  (September 22). Mexican sexpot Gael García Bernal plays an animator held captive by his own dreams. French sexpot Charlotte Gainsbourg also stars. Sounds like the 2001 Brendan Fraser dud Monkeybone, but I hear it’s much better.

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Past success is no longer doing it for kung fu superstar Jet Li, who says  FEARLESS   (September 22) will be his final martial-arts film. Set at the turn of the last century, it tells the true story of a real-life champion fighter in China. Ronny Yu (Freddy vs. Jason) directs.

Set a little later in the 20th century,  FLYBOYS  (September 29) tells another true story, that of the Lafayette Espadrille, the unit of volunteer American pilots fighting for the Allies in WWI. James Franco and Jean Reno star; Tony Bill (A Home of Their Own) directs.

HEFT: Sean Penn is the Huey Long–like Southern demagogue in Steven Zaillian’s remake of All the King’s Men.

Medicine can also be a noble profession, but maybe not when your patient is an insane dictator who’s butchered a million people. Kevin Macdonald’s adaptation of the Giles Foden novel  THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND  (September 29) tells the fictitious story of a Scottish doctor taken in by Idi Amin during his reign of terror in the ’70s. If it’s true to the novel, it should be a seductive tour of the void between innocence and responsibility, charisma and madness. Forest Whitaker, James MacAvoy, and Gillian Anderson star.

Also taking place in the ’70s but closer to home are the events in the documentary  THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON  (September 29). David Leaf and John Scheinfeld (Who Is Harry Nilsson?) examine the FBI file on the former Beatle, who seems to have been investigated for his political views. All I can say is, thank goodness they don’t do things like that anymore.

October
Martin Scorsese, they say, has returned to familiar ground in  THE DEPARTED  (October 6), which though set in Boston and based on the hit Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs was shot mostly in New York, and its brutally funny sensibility sounds like a throwback to Mean Streets as a Boston cop infiltrates the Southie mob while a Southie mobster infiltrates the police. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson playing a character who seems a lot like Whitey Bulger.