By RUTHE STEIN, San Francisco Chronicle

The description "holiday movie" usually just means it comes out around Thanksgiving or Christmas. Some films, however, take that designation literally. This season there is "Four Christmases," in which Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn are forced to spend Dec. 25 with each of their divorced parents after the flight the couple had booked to Fiji is canceled.

On his first try, Sam Mendes won a Best Director Oscar for 1999's "American Beauty," which also was awarded Best Picture. He recalls thinking, "I have got that over with. Now I can go on and make movies. That is a huge gift."

Philip Seymour Hoffman is ravenous. He had flown into Toronto the day before from London, where he's directing a play. The tricky task at hand is to chat up "Synecdoche, New York," Charlie Kaufman's new movie, which is as difficult to understand as it is to pronounce.

Alfre Woodard was talking on the phone while driving herself to the NBC lot for a day of shooting "My Own Worst Enemy." She plays the head of a covert government operation in the series, which premieres Oct. 13. Looking at her resume, Woodard hasn't had a down year since she started acting more than 30 years ago.

On the bed in Ralph Fiennes' hotel room is a script for Sophocles' "Oedipus." Fiennes, who is about to star as the king of Thebes on the London stage, is learning his lines between promoting his new movie, "The Duchess," at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Most directors' first film disappears only to pop up on Netflix. Not so with Neil LaBute. His first feature, "In the Company of Men," caused quite a stir when it came out in 1997. LaBute wrote and directed this controversial film about two misogynist businessmen who play a cruel joke on a deaf woman in their office by pretending to have romantic feelings for her.

Toward the end of the Depression in 1939, movie audiences were treated to a lush drama about adultery and female friendships in which almost all of the female characters were fabulously wealthy and flaunted their riches by dressing in silk and satin. The men stayed in the background -- very far in the background.

By now almost everyone knows that the U.S. government monumentally failed the citizens of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Is there more to be said about this national catastrophe? Yes, definitely, as the engrossing documentary "Trouble the Water" shows in just about every frame.

The end is near for summer movies geared to adolescent boys and grown men in arrested development. Fall movies have adult themes.