• Invictus – Scheduled to be released in December, this Nelson Mandela biopic directed by the iconic Clint Eastwood has succeeded in capturing the attention of millions around the world. With Eastwood’s growing reputation over the past decades as a thoughtful and intense director, the film is already being discussed as a potential forerunner in the Oscar race. With Morgan Freeman playing the role of Mandela one can always expect certain sparks that was previously evident in the Freeman-Eastwood ventures like Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.

• Shutter Island – Talking about Oscar race and actor-director partnership, the only thing that can offer stiff competition to the aforementioned is the legendary Martin Scorsese and his highly productive and creative partnership with Leonardo DiCaprio. This thriller cited by many as being in same vein as Cape Fear, is among the most anticipated films to hit the theatres in February 2010. With a strong supporting cast of Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow, Shutter Island will certainly carry forward the success story of Gangs of New York, Aviator and The Departed.

• Avatar – One doesn’t have to waste words regarding the anticipation of a film which comes from a director after a gap of 12 years along with the fact that his last outing with a fiction film earned him 11 Academy Awards. Movie goers around the world are eagerly waiting for James Cameron’s comeback vehicle to be released mid-December. An unprecedented application of motion capture technology that has been in the R&D for the last decade has been the primary reason for the air of expectancy surrounding Avatar’s release.

• The Lovely Bones – The film has already been tagged as the Trial by Fire for director Peter Jackson whose unquestionable reputation for silver screen spectacles faces a stiff challenge with the question about his capabilities for treating for sensitive issues of a human nature. Yet another mid-December release, the film starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon deals with the rape and murder of a young girl and the plight of her parents and loved ones following this event.

• Nine – One of the biggest Christmas releases in recent years, this Rob Marshall film is a musical retelling of Federico Fellini’s celebrated 8½. While Marshall’s flair for musicals is already established and recognized after the critical and commercial success of Chicago, the primary thing to watch out for would be the orchestration of the various characters in the narrative played by a dream star cast of Daniel day Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Judi Dench and the legendary Sophia Loren.

On the plot level, the film revolves around the real life story of Mark Whitacre who made headlines as the most renowned whistleblower in the American corporate world being a top level executive himself. An employee of the Illinois based conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) who is in the process of steadily climbing up the ladder of success, suffers from a case of bipolar disorder and succumbing to the pressure of his wife decides to turn over to the FBI a whole assortment of evidence in form of written documents and audio and video tapes that charge his company with price fixing in the wake of stiff market competition. An apparent stressful period of three years followed where he worked for the FBI organizing surveillances and gathering evidences to build up the case against ADM, in between which Mark’s own struggle with his psychic disorder gets worse. Finally at the end of it, during the case against ADM, it suddenly gets revealed that Mark Whitacre has been involved in fraud and embezzlement worth $9 million from his own organization resulting in a prison sentence for Mark which is thrice that of his corrupt colleagues.

While Matt Damon’s performance as Mark Whitacre has been generally praised by the critics, it must be said that Damon is not seen doing anything with the character that he hasn’t done in his previous outings. In fact, one can easily detect the shadows of his previous performances in Syriana and the Bourne franchise lurking somewhere behind Damon’s portrayal of Mark. However, the real or rather the essential problem of the film lies with the script. One must admit that it’s a real weak one coming from the man who could go as intense as Lies and Videotapes, Traffic or as tongue-in-the-cheek as the Ocean’s series. “The Informant!” lacks the very fluidity of the narrative expected from a director like Soderbergh and every five or ten minutes duration, the narrative seems to fall flat owing to problems with the pacing and structuring of the film, the weak and feeble attempts at inducing a notion of black humor in certain dialogues, an unsuitable film score and finally what looked like a desperate attempt from the makers at trying their hands on a satirical comedy with a script that demanded a certain different tonality of treatment altogether. It must be said that despite the best efforts from the director to put things into perspective as logically as possible, a lot remains unanswered that gradually takes the attention away from the screen.