Film Studies: American hypocrisy is coming soon to a big screen near you

American filmgoers had not looked forward to the fall season for 2002. Two major events – Harry Potter and more of The Lord of the Rings – were not just known in advance, but entirely predictable in their impact (though Peter Jackson may be on his way to an extraordinary achievement in filming Tolkien). Still, as many Cassandras discern – with justice – the dead hand of tidy market strategies in preparing so many dead-on-arrival American movies, suddenly we have a fall of surprises, of pictures that provoke that most promising sales-line, "Why on earth did they make that?" In a word, to amaze us, to alarm us, to get beneath the crust of preconceived response.

Not that I'm promising uninterrupted delight. No one still knows whether Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York is going to work – though the careful screening of extracts has proved it has set-piece quality. But is this a whole film, a work to set beside Taxi Driver and Raging Bull? And, sad to say, Jonathan Demme's return, The Truth About Charlie, seems to me a very heavy-handed attempt to re-make Charade and to recapture the dangerous high spirits of the French New Wave.

But then ask yourself whether you are ready for a strange biopic about Bob Crane. Oh, come along – the guy who played Hogan in the TV sitcom, Hogan's Heroes. Why should he deserve a picture? Well, because Bob, while striving to be as likeable a guy as anyone had ever known, had this unstoppable itch for pornography. For watching it? Well, yes, but only after he'd made it. Not serious industrial porn, just ordinary, weekend pastime porn – in the sense that every man needs a hobby.

The result is Auto-Focus, with likeable Greg Kinnear as Bob, and Willem Dafoe as the easy-going devil figure who draws the TV star into home movies. Paul Schrader is the director, and here is the real secret: Auto-Focus, in its creepy, sinister way is very funny. Moreover – and I think this may be a sub-text to several of the films I'm looking forward to – it's a small, sly work that gets at the true nature of American hypocrisy, compromise and lying to yourself (and these things could bloom as bright as bombs on the horizon in the next few months).

I've seen Auto-Focus and I'll stand by it. There are two other films coming along, not seen yet, but so intriguing in outline and likely to get at that same queasy tone. The one is Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the story of a guy named Chuck Barris, a brilliant idiot who created American TV shows like The Dating Game and The Gong Show (models of how not to under-estimate the audience) and who may have been a CIA agent at the same time (this fits with current philosophical ironies in the US over the concept "Intelligence"). Dangerous Mind (which seems so many mindsets ahead of last year's complacent A Beautiful Mind in getting at America) is written by Charlie Kaufman (who wrote Being John Malkovich), and it is directed by that stalwart actor, George Clooney.

Can Clooney turn into Billy Wilder, or something like it? I don't know. I'd guess not. But Mr Clooney is using his starry status in very creative ways. There's not only Confessions of a Dangerous Mind this fall. Clooney also stars in a remake of Tarkovsky's Solaris (directed by Steven Soderbergh).

That's not all. Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze (the full creative team on Being John Malkovich) have reunited for Adaptation – a film that no one is able to describe, let alone assess. But it's the story of a screenwriter, named Charlie Kaufman, trying to adapt Susan Orlean's book, The Orchid Thief – which is, as they say, from life. It's a comedy. Nicolas Cage plays the writer, and the ladies are Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton and Catherine Keener. If you recall the wonder you felt at Being John Malkovich getting made (let alone thought of), then cross your fingers.

And if you'd rather end on something I've seen, then consider Far from Heaven, an uncanny mood piece, set in Hartford, Connecticut in 1957 (when the American life was better than sleep-walking). Julianne Moore is the suburban wife and mother who comes down to breakfast fully made up in an A-line dress wider than doorways. But she will discover that hubby, Dennis Quaid, is hacking his way out of the closet. And then she falls in love with her black gardener, Dennis Haysbert. No, this was not routine for Hartford in 1957. But Far from Heaven has been directed by Todd Haynes as a homage to Douglas Sirk melodramas of that era, and it may be the most unexpected, drugged dream of a rare season.

Then there's The Hours – but more on that later.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk