I’m making my preliminary list for my annual “Top Ten Films to See This Fall” column and it’s going to be awfully hard to whittle it down to ten.  It’s also going to be hard to figure out which movies are actually going to be released this year.  Films like Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and Peter Weir’s The Way Back are currently scheduled to be released sometime this year, but they are both without a firm date.  In the case of the Malick film, it’s unclear whether the film is even finished yet and it’s been on the last few of my “Top Ten Films to See” lists.  But even if one takes those two out of the running, we’re talking about filmmakers like David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, David O. Russell, James L. Brooks, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Anton Corbijn, Oliver Stone, Ben Affleck, Julian Schnabel, Robert Rodriguez, Clint Eastwood, Danny Boyle, Julie Taymor, The Coen Brothers, Mike Leigh, and many others I’m forgetting.  All of them releasing films this fall.  And that’s not counting films like Jackass 3-D, Due Date, the new Harry Potter flick, and Love and Other Drugs, which I’m looking forward to seeing as well.  Here’s hoping this is a fine fall, because we all know it’s been a miserable summer.