The annual shift to shorter days and colder weather also signals a regular shift in the cinematic landscape. In the summer, studios aim their biggest, loudest blockbusters at kids who are out of school and families who are looking to get out of the sun long enough to watch some explosive action. But the fall movie season starts shifting the focus toward adult movies and end-of-the-year awards.

Every fall is a mixed bag: a few superhero movies and supernatural thrillers the studios didn’t think would be competitive with the biggest shows of summer, a handful of indie movies making a quick bow in theaters before finding a home on streaming services, and a pile of new movies from Netflix, which seems to know no seasons in its rush to get more original content online.

some of the year’s most ambitious and complicated movies

But once September wraps up cinema’s transitional season where studios often dump their least-loved projects and October launches an inevitable wave of horror movies to sync up with the Halloween season, November and December traditionally roll out a wave of movies aimed directly at Oscar voters and end-of-the-year best-of lists. These are rarely the most profitable movies of the year that set studio agendas and launch big franchises, but they’re often some of the year’s most ambitious and complicated movies that are most likely to surprise and challenge audiences.

So here’s an assembly of The Verge’s fall movie coverage, including previews of upcoming projects, freshly launched trailers, reviews of the films as they come out to interviews, and behind-the-scenes looks at the people who made them. Follow along for a guidebook to the movies that matter to Verge readers: the speculative stories, science fiction adventures, groundbreaking and trendsetting projects, and some of our favorite films of the year.