LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Ready for a serious change of seasons?

As sure as the summer rode in--and out--on a Santa Ana of hot air from Hollywood, the fall promises a monsoon of drama. Gone, if not forgiven, are the lazy sequels and banal comedies of the idle months, while coming soon are dramas of nearly every denomination. There are political dramas, personal dramas, police, family, teenage, spiritual, suspense, literary and romantic dramas. They start in the 18th century and go all the way to the 21st.

Between now and early November, about two-thirds of the more than 80 movies on the current fall lineup will attempt to involve viewers’ minds, as well as those trusty organs to the south. And the 2-1 ratio holds whether you’re looking at the schedules of the major studios, their boutique divisions or the independent distributors who program for the awakening art-house crowd.

Going by past form, some of the year’s Academy Award contenders will emerge from this short, pre-holiday period, which features the latest films of such seasoned masters as Robert Altman, Costa-Gavras, Oliver Stone and Wim Wenders, and of such young turks as Ang Lee, Danny Boyle and David Fincher. And though it may not be Oscar material, Mimi Leder’s “The Peacemaker” will certainly mark a dramatic occasion in Hollywood. The political thriller’s Sept. 26 opening will formally welcome DreamWorks SKG into the fold of major studios.

“The Peacemaker,” which stars George Clooney and Nicole Kidman as reluctant allies in a search for missing nuclear weapons in Russia (“One Fine Day in Siberia”?), is one of several thrillers around to ease action junkies through the heady fall and winter (see story, Page 33). The season’s one pure thrill ride, Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi adventure “Starship Troopers,” was moved out of its original summer date to Nov. 7, where it hopes to get an early jump on holiday business.

One of the fall’s high-profile events is Stone’s “U-Turn,” about a man who gets mixed up with an off-kilter couple in a remote desert town in Arizona. It stars Sean Penn, “Selena’s” Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte, and marks something of a U-turn for Stone, who has set politics and conspiracy aside to attempt a tight, character-driven film noir.

The leading marquee events are Costa-Gavras’ “Mad City,” a hostage drama starring John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman, and Taylor Hackford’s “Devil’s Advocate,” a high-concept legal thriller about an idealistic young attorney (Keanu Reeves) who discovers that he’s gone to work for the devil (Al Pacino).

And if you listen to the buzz, the can’t-miss fall provocation is Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights,” a black comedy about the porn industry of the ‘70s.

But the best of the season’s action should come from the heart, from the hefty crop of films about family and personal relationships, and journeys of self-discovery.

Coming this month is Jocelyn Moorehouses’ “A Thousand Acres,” adapted from Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about three sisters (Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Jason Leigh) who are both reunited and set against one another by a family inheritance. Late September also brings “Intimate Relations,” Philip Goodhew’s black comedy about a married woman who subverts the family unit through an impetuous affair with a young lodger.

October brings three more family dramas, including Ang Lee’s “Ice Storm,” the Cannes prize-winner about a dysfunctional family floundering through triviality and tragedy in 1970s New England. The other two are set off by events and conversations taking place around the dinner table. In George Tillman Jr.’s “Soul Food,” a close-knit Chicago family is nonplused by illness and the arrival of an exotic cousin. And in Mark Waters’ “The House of Yes,” a Thanksgiving dinner leads to exposed family secrets in an affluent Washington, D.C., family.

Thanksgiving is also the setting for a family crisis in “The Myth of Fingerprints.” And there are shocking sexual revelations in “Different for Girls,” a romantic comedy-drama about two casual prep school friends who meet as adults and begin a new relationship as a man and a woman.

A different kind of crisis faces Kevin Kline’s sexually ambivalent drama teacher in “In & Out,” when, just days before he’s to marry, one of his former students “outs” him during the Academy Awards.

By comparison, the romantic crisis in Lee Tamahori’s “The Edge” may seem almost conventional. The wilderness drama stars Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as plane-crash survivors who, when they’re not competing for fellow survivor Elle Macpherson, are running from bears.

On another mountain, at another time, Brad Pitt is scaling the Himalayas, having escaped from an Allied prisoner camp in India in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Seven Years in Tibet.” The film is based on the true story of world-class climber and Nazi SS member Heinrich Harrer’s spiritual transformation in the village of the young Dalai Lama during and after World War II. Annaud had to make haste during post-production to insert dialogue correcting Harrer’s convenient omission of his Nazi past from his memoirs.

Suspense films tend to do well in the fall, and this season is loaded with them. It all begins Friday with David Fincher’s “The Game.” Fincher scored a big holiday hit two years ago with the darkly violent thriller “Seven,” and comes back with this brain puzzler about an emotionally constricted financial baron (Michael Douglas) who is lured into a “Westworld”-style game that could cost him his life. (“The Game” is the first release by Polygram’s new distribution arm, making Polygram the other new studio due to launch in the next two months.)

Also on Friday, MGM opens Wim Wenders’ “The End of Violence,” the story of a high-powered Hollywood producer (Bill Pullman) who happens onto an international scheme to control criminal behavior with a satellite weapons system. The cop-in-the-sky spots criminals in the act and executes them without prejudice. Before you vote no on the bond issue, think of the potential savings in skipping due process.

If such a system were operational, it would wipe out a Hollywood staple, the crime drama. And you’ll see what you could be missing when Curtis Hanson’s “L.A. Confidential” opens Sept. 19. A major hit at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “L.A. Confidential” takes us back to the days when glamour and police corruption overlapped in Hollywood, when cops moonlighted for “Dragnet”-like radio and TV shows, and call girls showed up dressed like Veronica Lake.

“L.A. Confidential,” based on James Ellroy’s bestseller, is one of several crime novel adaptations coming. Gary Fleder (“Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead”) directs “Kiss the Girls,” adapted from a James Patterson novel. And Neil Jordan attempts to bounce back from the box-office misfire of “Michael Collins” with “Butcher Boy,” adapted from Patrick McCabe’s murder mystery.

If you’re in for classic literary fare, there are two adaptations of works by Henry James. Agnieska Holland’s “Washington Square” tells the tale of an heiress who falls in love with an opportunist, and Iain Softley’s “Wings of the Dove” follows an heiress who falls in love with a lowly journalist. Joseph Conrad’s short story “Amy Foster” has also been turned into a large-scale drama titled “Swept From the Sea.”

If all this leaves you wondering how you’re going to entertain your kids this fall, well, good luck. Disney has “Rocket Man,” which sounds like a space version of “George of the Jungle”; MGM has “Napoleon,” in which the thoughts of a dog and other animals are narrated by voice actors; Gramercy has “Bean,” starring BBC comedian-mime Rowan Atkinson, and Paramount has “Fairy Tale: A True Story,” about children who set out to prove to Harry Houdini and the creator of Sherlock Holmes that fairies exist.

But don’t despair. There are only 68 more days to the re-release of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”