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No, not the latest model of minivan, but an adaptation of the swords-and-renaissance-fest bestseller by Christopher Paolini, and it comes with dragons, evil kings, lots of fancy lads.

Infamous (Oct.) tells the story of a chubby little man named Truman Capote who wears an ascot and writes a book about rough trade and evil in Kansas.

Hollywood wants to make you happy. It loves you so much it wants to ensure what you get this fall movie season reminds you of what you were comfortable with from last fall's movie season.

It's Hollywood's way of rewarding you (and by association, itself come award season) for putting up with Superman Returns and Look, He's Sad. They flubbed a bit, though; there's no obvious franchise blockbuster looming this holiday. There's a new James Bond. Another one of those Tim Allen-Santa Clause things (The Escape Clause, Nov. 3); and a sixth Rocky; and a second Grudge (Oct. 13); and a third SAW (Oct. 27); and another Texas Chainsaw Garden Party (Oct. 4).

But movie studios know as well as you do that they won't be remembered for any of those. So for posterity, they make, get this, good movies. What follows is the 25 movies released between now and New Year's Day that have us pretty excited. A few we've seen. Many we're anticipating. There were so many promising choices we didn't even include the new flick from Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain, Nov. 22); the new Pedro Almodovar (Volver, November); the new Anthony Minghella (Breaking and Entering, October, or the latest Christopher "Batman Begins" Nolan (The Prestige, Oct. 20).

25. Rocky Balboa (Dec. 22). Strengths: Who doesn't love it when an iconic pug returns to the role that made him famous? Positioned as the final Rocky (seriously this time ... no, really ... for insurance reasons), it recounts Rocky's slow climb into the ring after Adrian's death from breast cancer.

Weaknesses: Was anyone but Stallone's accountant angling to make a sixth Rocky? He's written each installment, but the last time he directed (as he does here) was 1985's campy Cold War stare-down, Rocky IV. If it scores, expect Rambo to break out the body oil and AK-47s.

24. Apocalypto (Dec. 8). Strengths: Mel Gibson regains sanity. Relatively. This invariably controversial follow-up to the uncompromising Passion of the Christ is an action epic set during the 15th-century downfall of the Mayan civilization (shades of Braveheart). Oh, and he also shot in a dead Mayan tongue.

Weaknesses: What, you only had that one year of Mayan languages in high school? On the other hand, if he could make $612 million on a film shot in Aramaic, what's a DUI arrest, and an anti-Semitic tirade, and obvious End-of-Days agenda, and a heavy hand, and lack of big names, to overcome?

23. A Good Year (Nov. 10). Strengths: Russell Crowe smiles. The man owns teeth. Stranger yet: Ridley "Blade Runner-Black Hawk Down" Scott makes a flick set in modern times in which no one dies violently.

Weaknesses: A glaring attempt to soften Crowe for wide consumption. What's sweet to Scott might be old hat coming from anyone else. Are you not entertained? Peter Mayle's book floats out of your brain even as you read it.

22. The Pursuit of Happyness (Dec. 15). Strengths: Will Smith, home for the holidays, and finally, after far too many bids at blockbusters and star vehicles, a movie he can act in. Tells the story of a homeless father who becomes a stockbroker.

21. Charlotte's Web (Dec. 20). Strengths: Finally, the original Babe noses aside that porker to the throne and digs into the pig sty, and that's the last swine joke I'll offer. Part live action, part animation.

The vocal cast is impressive: Julia Roberts (as the spider), Robert Redford, Oprah. And the material: E.B. White's beloved 1952 kiddie-lit standard. Dakota Fanning plays the farm girl. Director Gary Winick's last picture was the unjustly overlooked charmer 13 Going on 30. And apparently, it's all extremely faithful to the page.

Weaknesses: Yet another Bond movie, and familiar, contempt, yada yada. Jeffrey Wright is a wise addition to the cast. But Eva Green (Kingdom of Heaven) as a Bond gal is a step backward.

19. Catch a Fire (Oct.). Strengths: Aussie director Philip Noyce makes smart thrillers (Dead Calm) and smarter political dramas (The Quiet American); even his Showtime series, Brotherhood, refuses on a weekly basis to lighten up and score cheap points. All the more reason to expect this based-on-a-true-story South-African thriller to pull you in with the promise of uplift and leave you challenged instead.

Derek Luke, in a breakthrough role, plays an ordinary man imprisoned under apartheid who turns freedom fighter - and one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. Tim Robbins co-stars (of course he does).

Weaknesses: Is this topic getting overly familiar? As with The Quiet American, Noyce trusts an audience to find its own contemporary relevance. And even the art house will prefer the sledgehammer approach.

18. Jackass: Number Two (Sept. 22). Strengths: If you didn't laugh at the first one, you didn't see it or you're a big liar. Without question, the only sure thing of the season - you know what you're getting. A happy-go-lucky snuff film. Johnny Knoxville is back in the slime pit after insisting he'd never return.

17. For Your Consideration (Nov.) Strengths: Christopher Guest and his improvisational troupe return to one of the most beloved comedy runs (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman) in decades.

The cast is a dream: Catherine O' Hara, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, Parker Posey. Ricky Gervais (from the BBC version of The Office) is the newest addition. And the target is Guest's most deserving yet: Oscar season.

Weaknesses: To paraphrase another mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, it's a fine line between clever and smug. The folk-music put-down A Mighty Wind suggested Guest's pin-point jabs are growing dull.

16. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (Nov. 10). Strengths: Finally. Steve Shainberg follows-up his perverse indie Secretary - with a perverse portrait of photographer Diane Arbus, herself a champion of the freakish and unusual. And Arbus? That would be ever-fascinating Nicole Kidman, without the prosthetic attachments this time, befriending a man covered in fur. He would be Robert Downey, Jr.

Weaknesses: Don't we prefer our movies about artists full of drinking and suicide, not inspiration and provocation? (Arbus killed herself in 1971; it's not even mentioned in the film.) Kidman's great (you wouldn't expect less). But a tricky (and mostly fictional) picture about an artist moderately known to Americans will be a tough sell.

15. Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (Nov. 17). Strengths: Can you think of another actor today better suited to musicals than Jack Black? And can you think of another actor harder to insert into just anything? Smartly, Black is back on familiar ground as JB, one half the folk-metal duo Tenacious D - an act he and partner Kyle Gass (as KG, 'natch) have internalized so profoundly, they occasionally tour as Tenacious D.

Weaknesses: This thing gestated for ages for a reason - how arch is too arch? Are there any jokes that This is Spinal Tap hasn't already ruined? And will it work beyond Tenaciousheads?

14. Pan's Labyrinth (December). Strengths: If he wanted, Guillermo del Toro could lead a hack's long life, turning out horror movie after action film of no discernible personality. Instead, he possesses one of our most inventive, obsessed visions in fantasy.

His follow-up to the delightful Hellboy (seriously) is his best yet, a fairy tale about a lonely girl in 1940s Spain who finds grotesque catacombs beneath the family home.

13. All the King's Men (Sept. 22). Strengths: It doesn't get more front-loaded than this. A once-in-a-lifetime cast (Kate Winslet, Jude Law, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo). A source novel (Robert Penn Warren's formidable Pulitzer Prize-winner) that's proven Oscar material (the 1949 movie took top honors). And a heap of irony you can't miss: Sean Penn plays Willie Stark, populist candidate for the governorship of Louisiana who wins by any means necessary.

Weaknesses: Didn't we talk about this last year? We did; I had it at No. 11 on this list and it was set to open at Christmas. Zaillian has a habit of making Oscar bait (A Civil Action, Searching for Bobby Fischer) that wiggles away at the last minute. As for that delay and too-early opening - could either be a sign, or (more likely) Columbia taking a cue from the savvy Oscar campaign for Crash.

12. The Good Shepherd (Dec. 22). Strengths: The holiday season's one sprawling historical epic, and it's a doozy. The history of the CIA and American spy programs - or rather the first 20 years or so - as seen through the eyes of an operative (played by Matt Damon).

Weaknesses: Is director Robert DeNiro tested enough for a picture this enormous, this glamorous - this impossible to wrangle? (It's said Martin Scorsese lent a hand in the editing room.) At its worst, an ambitious misfire.

11. The Good German (Dec.). Strengths: You know it's going to be a good season when the latest Stephen Soderbergh doesn't even make the top 10. And it stars George Clooney and Cate Blanchett the way God intended these two coulda-been-'40s-matinee-idols to be seen: In a velvety black-and-white thriller set in post-World War II Berlin, throwing off major hints of The Third Man. Tobey Maguire has the role he was meant to play: an innocent-appearing creep.

Weaknesses: Aside from us forgetting what Clooney looks like in color? Soderbergh is so obsessed with not repeating himself sometimes you forget what he's interested in to begin with.

10. Babel (Nov.). Strengths: Someday, perhaps already, the cross-stitched, fractured melodramas of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros) will be considered the directorial embodiment of these fractured times. At the moment, it's a merely engrossing style: Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett play tourists in Morocco. She's hit by a stray bullet. Never one to play linear, Inarritu then widens the story across three continents and four languages and a dozen characters. A contemporary master going back to his signature well once again.

9. Children of Men (Dec. 25). Strengths: A provocative premise that grabs you immediately - it's 2027 and no woman has given birth in 18 years. Extinction looms. Chaos resigns. Alfonso Cuaron approaches apocalyptic sci-fi the way he approached small sex comedies (Y Tu Mama Tambien) and huge fantasy epics (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) - intimately. The cast includes Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine. Cuaron is developing into one of the first great filmmaking voices of the 21st century.

Weaknesses: The trailer is selling an action film - this is not an action film. Could be too thoughtful for the multiplex, not quiet enough for more "thoughtful audiences."

8. Stranger Than Fiction (Nov. 10). Strengths: You will believe Will Ferrell can cry, and mean it. A sweet, clever comedy with an inspired cast (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson) that plays like magical realism smushed on the ethereal windshield of a Charlie Kaufman script (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

Ferrell plays an IRS agent who suddenly hears the narrator (Thompson) on the movie's soundtrack talking about him and wonders what it means. It's strange, and yet sunny enough to play a multiplex comfortably.

Weaknesses: If Will Ferrell doesn't take his pants off in a film and no is around to see him, does he make a sound? More to the point - does Oscar notice?

7. Borat (Nov. 3). Strengths: Like Jack Black, Sacha Baron Cohen finds himself in a tricky situation. How does a very knowing comic make a feature film about a one-note character without succumbing to SNL-asphyxia (a disease commonly found when Saturday Night Live characters make their way into theaters)? Answer: He doesn't blink.

Weaknesses: At what point does a joke about misinformed immigrants turn into a one-dimensional minstrel performance? Director Larry Charles' last picture was the torturous Bob Dylan-led fiasco Masked and Anonymous.

6. Fast Food Nation (November) Strengths: You can't stop him. Just months after his animated Scanner Darkly, restless director Richard Linklater returns to Earth. Some people are bold by nature: this adaptation of Eric Schlosser's McDonald's expose is as rangy as the book. And even more daring.

Weaknesses: No one filmmaker is all things to all people. Linklater tries, bless him. But fans of the book will wish for a documentary. Fans of drama will want more payoff. And cage rattlers will want a finer point on the knife. Linklater's too innately emphatic to reach for the throat.

5. Flags of Our Fathers (Oct. 20). Strengths: The one picture this season no one's likely to hate. You want substance? How about the story of the six soldiers who famously raised a U.S. flag over Iwo Jima? Sounds corny, does it? The director is Clint Eastwood, whose instincts (after Mystic River and Million-Dollar Baby) have never been tougher; the screenwriter is Paul Haggis. The last time this pair worked together they had Oscar-winning Baby.

4. Dreamgirls (Dec. 21). Strengths: Forget the 1981 Tony-award winning stage show. Never mind acclaimed director Bill Condon. The draw here is a rousing musical that's perfectly cast: Beyonce is the Diana Ross-like singer thrust into a star position; American Idol's Jennifer Hudson as a hungry singer; Jamie Foxx as the manager; and Eddie Murphy, on buzz alone, is a lock for a supporting-actor nod.

Weaknesses: Condon is acclaimed for Kinsey and Gods and Monsters, and nothing about those chilly flicks suggests the big-hearted exuberance of a showman. No matter how good it is, you could get so sick of this before you even see it that you're own refrain could become: "And I'm telling you I'm not going."

3. Little Children (October). Strengths: For grown-ups. By grown-ups. Not to mention, an ideal melding of material and talent. Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly star as suburbanites on Long Island; there are stay-at-home fathers, affairs, and on one block, a sex offender. The screenplay is adapted from Tom Perrotta's novel, and like Perrotta's Election, the book offers enough give for a smart director to make it better. That director is Todd Field, whose previous picture was the harrowing Oscar nominee In the Bedroom.

2. Marie Antoinette (Oct. 20). Strengths: Remember when audiences couldn't wait to see the next film from a young director who was alive to the world? If you do, you're old, dude.

Sofia Coppola rekindles a dormant movie-love curiosity with her third film, a gliding, pop-accented account of how a Viennese Paris Hilton (Kirsten Dunst) became Queen of France - or rather, how she enjoyed the job. Her first film since Lost in Translation is like a party where slowly the partygoers realize they're not the center of the world.

Weaknesses: French royalty dancing to New Order? Marie wearing Converse? Bold attempt at reinventing the period piece or indulgence celebrating indulgence? Its mixed reception at Cannes puts it in a defensive crotch - then again, has any film ever received unanimously positive reaction at that festival?

1. The Departed (Oct. 6). Strengths: Where to begin? There's that cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Ray Winstone, Mark Wahlberg.

There's that filmmaker: Martin Scorsese, after The Aviator and Gangs of New York, returning to a genre no one knows better, the modern-day crime epic.

There's the material, Infernal Affairs, a superlative 2002 Hong Kong thriller about moles (DiCaprio and Damon in Scorsese's version) on opposites sides of the law. And there's the part of the kingpin - played by Jack Nicholson, in his first Scorsese film, and quite the pudgy scene chewer. The trailer is a knock-out and if you're brave, you're thinking "Goodfellas."

Weaknesses: Is Marty comfortable around the Boston Irish? Screenwriter William Monahan is unproven. Wait. Oh! Eh! What are you, a jerk - "weaknesses"? Here's a weakness. How 'bout you let Jack take a whack and show ya weakness?

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