In the summertime, movies are guy time.

Blockbusters usually feature studly superheroes like Thor or Captain America saving the world, or little guys — like Shia LaBeouf in the "Transformers" movies or Daniel Radcliffe in the "Harry Potter" series — are doing battle with evil.

Put it this way: Did you remember Natalie Portman, last year's Best Actress Oscar winner, was in "Thor"? Didn't think so.

But a funny thing happened this summer: Women were embraced by audiences as more than some guy's arm candy.

Two of the surprise hits of this summer, "Bridesmaids" and "The Help," were dominated by female characters. And one of the top-grossing animated films, "Kung Fu Panda 2," was directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson, the first woman to fly solo leading an animated film for a major studio.

Fall is more traditionally when the gender imbalance in movies evens out a little bit — though not a lot, considering the major decisions about what movies get produced are still made mostly by men. But those Hollywood decision makers like to win Oscars, and they know one road to that statuette is to help A-list women land in the Best Actress category.

Two leading contenders for Best Actress this year are playing real-life figures. Meryl Streep channels the essence of Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" (Dec. 16), while Michelle Williams is getting good early notices for "My Week With Marilyn," in which she plays the tragic screen icon Marilyn Monroe.

Two of the most anticipated titles this season — both based on best-selling books — feature women at their center, though you wouldn't mistake one woman for the other. One is Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), still trying to pick the right boyfriend in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1" (Nov. 18), which leads up to next summer's big Team Edward/Team Jacob finale. The other is Lisbeth Salander, the anti-social Goth computer hacker (played by Rooney Mara) in David Fincher's Hollywood adaptation of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (Dec. 21).

Meanwhile, Noomi Rapace — who brilliantly played Salander in the Swedish film trilogy based on Steig Larsson's books — makes her American film debut in a very Hollywood way: As adversary/love interest for Robert Downey Jr. in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," opening on Dec. 16.

The indie world is often a better place for female roles, and three acclaimed films from this year's Sundance Film Festival tell of women wrestling with their identity and religion. "Higher Ground" (Sept. 23) centers on a woman (Vera Farmiga, who directed) seeking her path within a Christian community. "Circumstance" (Sept. 23) focuses on two teen girls in Tehran, whose deepening relationship is threatened by Islamic fundamentalism. And Elizabeth Olsen gives a stunning performance in "Martha Marcy May Marlene" (Nov. 11), as a young woman who joins and then must escape from a Manson-style cult.

On the comedy side, Hollywood still likes to see its women acting a bit manic when dealing with their lives and their men. On the single side, there's Anna Faris in "What's Your Number?" (Sept. 30), as a woman realizing she's dated all the men she'll probably ever date — so she retraces her romantic history to see of one of her ex-boyfriends is marriage material. In "I Don't Know How She Does It" (opening Friday, Sept. 16), Sarah Jessica Parker tries to juggle work, marriage (to Greg Kinnear), and her schedule-defying expectations about being the perfect mom.

If there is an atypical female role this fall, it's not in the romantic comedy, high drama or independent realms. It's in an old-fashioned nailbiter: "The Thing" (Oct. 14), a prequel of sorts to John Carpenter's 1982 horror thriller about a shape-shifting beastie, which itself was a remake of a 1951 Howard Hawks-produced classic. The person saving the world this time, though, is a sharp grad student played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead ("Scott Pilgrim vs. The World").

It's not perfect equality, but it's a start.

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