THE RETURN OF INTELLIGENT MOVIES; WITH AUTUMN COMES STUFF FOR THE REST OF US.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

The year-end movie season is fast upon us, and all any serious moviegoer can say is: What took it so long?

After what felt like an endless summer of sophomoronic cinematic drivel, and well past the midpoint of a year that has failed to serve up anything resembling a great American movie, hope of ever again seeing a grown-up film was fading like May flowers.

The good news is that, as has traditionally been the case with autumn, a large number of intelligent-sounding projects are scheduled for the final months of the millennium.

``It's very simple, really,'' notes director Neil Jordan, whose upcoming adaptation of Graham Greene's ``The End of the Affair'' stars Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore and Stephen Rea. ``If you have a story that has, in any way, an adult theme to it, you can't release it during the summer unless it's very cleverly counter-programmed.''

``I desperately wait until September so I can see some good films,'' adds two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster, who this season stars in a lavish adaptation of ``Anna and the King.''

The not-as-good news, though, is that a lot of what you'll be seeing for the rest of 1999 will seem awfully similar to what you watched earlier in the year. That's not out-and-out bad news, however, since most of the trends spilling over into fall have already brought us many of the year's few decent movies.

Following is a breakdown of some major themes movies will be addressing this fall. And while many of these entries may prove dramatically or intellectually dubious, at least we can be confident that sex acts with baked goods will be few and far between.

The art of horror

With ``The Sixth Sense'' still leading the box office and the ultra-profitable screams of independent outlaw ``The Blair Witch Project'' echoing through studio accounting departments, intelligent horror is clearly the movie phenomenon of the moment. And with ``Stigmata'' and ``Stir of Echoes'' opening today, it's obviously not abating anytime soon.

`` `Scream' launched a series of these things a few years ago, and although that style of teen horror film has faded away a little bit, a more sophisticated one has come up lately,'' observes Dan Cracchiolo, who promises that the upscale remake of ``House on Haunted Hill'' he executive produced will have a smart balance of fun and frights.

``I think this is a classier horror cycle we're in now, although I really have discovered that there's a huge, latent audience for this kind of material if it is good, fresh, original and fun,'' adds ``Scream''-maker Wes Craven, who against his own advice is unleashing a third film in the hit series this December.

And Peter Hyams, who directed the Arnold-Schwarzenegger-fights-Satan thriller ``End of Days,'' reckons that the millennium has something to do with the scary movie resurgence. ``It certainly triggers anxieties and fantasies in people,'' Hyams says. ``There are also biblical predictions; it ties into all our fears of the apocalypse.''

Other titles hoping to frighten us into the next century include two Johnny Depp vehicles - Tim Burton's ``Sleepy Hollow'' and Roman Polanski's ``The Ninth Gate'' - and a nature-goes-nuts chiller called, self-explanatorily, ``Bats.''

And if you think that's scary ...

As Julia Roberts' summer hits ``Notting Hill'' and ``Runaway Bride'' proved, there's something entertaining about absurdly complicated romance. But doing it right can be tricky.

``You can't do a really first-class love story without a first-class obstacle,'' says Sydney Pollack, who's directed several (``The Way We Were,'' ``Out of Africa''), and in his new film, ``Random Hearts,'' confronts Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas with a doozy: The two discover that their dead spouses were having an affair. ``The problem is, obstacles have gotten more and more difficult to find as societal taboos have broken down. It's a question of how do you find a real difficult one that works in 1999.''

Evidently, this fall's filmmakers didn't have all that much trouble. Lolita syndromes run rampant through ``American Beauty'' and ``Guinevere,'' familiarity breeds contempt in the Michelle Pfeiffer/Bruce Willis marriage study ``The Story of Us'' and the Melissa Joan Hart high school comedy ``Drive Me Crazy,'' and just knowing that Carmen Electra's starring in something called ``The Mating Habits of Earthbound Humans'' is enough to indicate that romantic dysfunction is alive and thriving.

Which might be a good thing. As Malcolm Lee, who makes his feature directing debut with the wedding comedy ``The Best Man'' (produced by his brother Spike), notes, ``There's more to life, and to character, than just boy meets girl.''

No biz like show biz

With the rest of society pointing blaming fingers at Hollywood like never before, it's not surprising that 1999 would see the movie colony metaphorically circling the wagons with a number of films about show business.

Although set in the New York theater world of the late 1930s, Tim Robbins' ``Cradle Will Rock,'' about Orson Welles' struggle to stage a radical play against government interference, reflects today's struggles with censorship and commercial compromise, according to co-star Susan Sarandon.

``It's about freedom of expression and freedom to be your own person,'' she says. ``We've gone through shameful periods of our history when nobody defended those things, when there was a blacklist, and this is about the beginnings of that.''

Then again, maybe the uptick in show biz-themed movies is just a reflection of our era's obsession with celebrities.

``You know, show-biz people tend to lead more interesting lives than others,'' director Milos Forman matter-of-factly observes, and he should know; his ``Man on the Moon'' stars Jim Carrey as the bizarre comic genius Andy Kaufman.

The season's other show-biz genre titles include the surreal ``Being John Malkovich,'' the satirical ``Galaxy Quest'' and ``The Insider,'' which turns the cameras back on CBS' ``60 Minutes'' and how it handled a tricky tobacco-industry expose.

Is it the year of the woman?

The perennial complaint that good women's roles and stories are hard to find gets a bit of a rebuttal as the decade wanes, what with such female-focused features as the mental hospital memoir ``Girl, Interrupted,'' Pedro Almodovar's ``All About My Mother,'' and the independent mother-daughter odyssey ``Tumbleweeds'' headed our way.

``It is better,'' affirms Diane Keaton, who directs and co-stars with Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow in ``Hanging Up,'' the story of three sisters coping with their father's impending death. ``There are more women in executive positions, more women directors, better parts for women - and that's all part of the fact that the past has had an impact on women in film. And it's good!''

Especially if the new cycle gives actresses more options, as the cinematically sanctified Sarandon (``Dead Man Walking,'' ``Stepmom'') happily notes.

``I love the fact that this woman I play in `Anywhere but Here' was as bad a mom as my other characters have been good moms,'' Sarandon says of her irresponsible anti-heroine in the adaptation of Mona Simpson's novel. ``And I got to wear all of these wacky clothes and eyeliner constantly; it's always a nice thing to make sure that you can still do it.''

And something for the boys

Just so men don't feel slighted - you know how sensitive they can get - there is also a rash of sports movies coming this fall, including Oliver Stone's football opus ``Any Given Sunday,'' the quirky hockey fantasy ``Mystery, Alaska'' and Ron Shelton's boxing comedy ``Play It to the Bone.''

But don't expect a bunch of simplistic rah rah from this batch; like horror, the sports genre is going through a smart phase.

``Movies about sports have to offer more than just overcoming the odds or winning the big match,'' according to Sam Raimi, who directed Kevin Costner's latest baseball epic ``For Love of the Game.'' ``When you watch an actual sporting event, you know it's real. Any game in a movie is not real, so any victory can only be so moving - unless the audience gets to know the characters and achieves this victory or defeat with them on a very personal level.''

Eccentrics, heretics and cartoon characters

Other trends this season include off-kilter looks at small-town types (Lawrence Kasdan's ``Mumford,'' ``Happy, Texas,'' David Lynch's ``The Straight Story,'' Billy Bob Thornton's ``Daddy and Them''), religious provocations (Kevin Smith's controversial critique of Catholicism in ``Dogma,'' Jane Campion's ``Holy Smoke'') and more animation (Japan's acclaimed ``Princess Mononoke,'' that same country's ubiquitous ``Pokemon: The First Movie,'' a

``Toy Story'' sequel).

And the winner ... can't be everyone

Of course, the dominant theme of this or any other year-end movie season is Gimme a Nomination. This is when every movie that could conceivably cadge an Oscar gets solemnly presented.

Not that movies are made with that in mind. Oh no.

``I never know about Oscars; I didn't think anybody was going to come to see `In the Heat of the Night,' '' Norman Jewison says of the best-picture winner he directed, by way of not making predictions about ``The Hurricane,'' his new film in which Denzel Washington plays wrongly convicted boxer Ruben Carter.

``Don't think we make movies on this subject to sell tickets or get awards,'' cautions Peter Kassovitz, whose Holocaust-themed Robin Williams starrer ``Jakob the Liar'' is already being compared to recent Oscar darling ``Life Is Beautiful.'' ``You must ask the question why, after 50 years, we've finally started to talk about it.''

``Of course you care about awards,'' admits two-time best-picture director Forman, ``but you know how foolish it is to try to manipulate this stuff. It's absolutely outside of my ethics.''

Foster, another double Oscar winner, more or less agrees.

``It's always gonna be like that big bingo thing for me,'' she says, ``just because I've always loved movies and remember sitting in my mom's bedroom with all my brothers and sisters watching the Oscars. So you still think about it, you still hope for it. But obviously, you can't keep that stuff in mind when you're shooting, or you'll make terrible movies.''

With titles such as Martin Scorsese's ``Bringing Out the Dead,'' ``Flawless'' with Robert De Niro, the Gulf War comedy of morals ``Three Kings,'' Paul Thomas Anderson's ``Magnolia,'' and star-studded adaptations of ``Angela's Ashes,'' ``The Talented Mr. Ripley,'' ``The Green Mile'' and ``The Cider House Rules'' all in the mix, maybe the smart thing to do is forget about competition and just enjoy the show.

``Clearly, it's that time of year when people want to put on overcoats and go see something a little more substantial,'' says Scott Hicks, who directed the surprise Oscar contender ``Shine'' and has a film version of the acclaimed novel ``Snow Falling on Cedars'' scheduled for the holidays. ``Nominations and awards are wonderful things, but the most crucial thing is how audiences respond to the movie.''

CAPTION(S):

9 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) `Fight Club'

(2--Cover--Color) `Man on the Moon'

(3--Cover--Color) `Hang Up'

(4--Cover--Color) `The World Is Not Enough'

(5--Cover--Color) `Anna and the King'

(6) Man on the Moon: Jim Carrey stars as the late comedian Andy Kaufman in Milos Foreman's biopic. (Dec. 25)

(7) For Love of the Game: Kevin Costner plays an aging Detroit Tigers pitcher who must re-examine his life, from director Sam Raimi. (Sept. 17)

(8) Fight Club: Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in David Fincher's tale of a shadowy pugilistic underworld. (Oct. 15)

(9) Anywhere but Here: Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman play a Midwestern mother and daughter who deal with the craziness of Beverly Hills. Directed by Wayne Wang. (Oct. 22)