Foster - reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters):

Get out the Oscar scorecards because next week Hollywood launches its new movie season, with a typical fall mix of adult dramas dealing with more serious topics than this past summer's popcorn flicks.

Movies like western 3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age aspire to be early front-runners in the race for Oscars, the world's top film honours, which are given out in winter by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

But lovers of adventure and comedy should not despair. Plenty of other titles also fill the bill, ranging from Jodie Foster's actioner The Brave One to Ben Stiller's comedy The Heartbreak Kid and Disney fairy tale Enchanted.

"I think people want to be entertained. I think they want to be moved. I think they want to be taken on a journey, and the last thing they want is to be preached at," actress Charlize Theron told Reuters recently.

Theron stars in one of September's more serious movies, In the Valley of Elah from writer/director Paul Haggis who brought out Oscar-winning Crash. Elah, tells the story of a former military cop (Tommy Lee Jones) investigating the murder of his son, an Army soldier home from Iraq.

Other top September tickets are The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford with Brad Pitt, and King of California starring Michael Douglas. Sean Penn directs the drama Into the Wild, and Ang Lee brings out Lust, Caution, a thriller about seduction and betrayal in 1940s China.