I’m back, FITI readers.

I’ve been away the past few weeks—in New York and London—but am now returned to Halifax and gearing up for the fall cinema season, where the bombast of the summer grows quiet, replaced by the sophistication and awards-bait pictures of the fall. A host of quality films—now showing at festivals in Telluride and Toronto—we’ll get to see in theatres in the coming three months. And there’s the Atlantic Film Festival, starting Thursday (I’ll post a preview soon). It’s a good time to be a movie-goer.

I can’t bloody wait. Back in May I looked at the summer movie slate and couldn’t muster much excitement. There wasn’t a lot to look forward to from the studios, with a few quality indies showing up here and there. It turned out pretty much as I’d predicted: Not only were most of the big Hollywood movies rife with creative rot, audiences, even those who went to see all the previous Transformer movies, stayed away in droves. Overall, North American box office was down 15%, as detailed in this Hollywood Reporter article. Of course, they’re saying that next summer’s big releases—including Avengers: Age of Ultron—are liable to be more crowd pleasing, We’ll see how that rolls out.

As I expected, it was the indies that shone: Only Lovers Left Alive, Tracks,  Under The Skin, Snowpiercer, Obvious Child, Boyhood, Locke, Frank (review to come), and The F Word/What If were the best of what I saw—disappointingly, not all these films got a release in cinemas in Halifax. Of the bigger budgeted movies, I probably enjoyed most X-Men: Days of Future Past , How To Train Your Dragon 2,  and Guardians of the Galaxy, but none of them are liable to trouble my list of the year’s best movies.

Everything else was at best a one-time cinema experience that maybe provided a bit of escape. At worst they were exercises in formula, with dull, repetitive franchising and predictable plots featuring underdeveloped characters.

So, what do we have to look forward to? Until I get back into the swing of things, you can check out Rolling Stone‘s basic fall preview.

In cinemas now are a few movies I’m curious about, including Calvary, from Irish auteur John Michael McDonagh, the follow-up to his hilarious comedy The Guard, and The Trip To Italy, Michael Winterbottom’s welcome sequel to The Trip, once again teaming comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon with platefuls of delicious-looking food.