Of course, it's too soon to be talking about Christmas movies when you're still flossing the Halloween candies out of your teeth. It was really much too soon when the Christmas rush started last month: A movie called Surviving Christmas, about a post- Gigli Ben Affleck trying to buy a family for the holidays, opened Oct. 22 and vanished quickly. With this week's release of Polar Express, the sleigh has definitely left the pole and for the next six weeks, you'll see a steady stream of big-budget, excessively advertised and often good movies forming the busiest - and usually the best - stretch of the movie year.
This annual blizzard of ahs and blahs is known familiarly as Christmas releases. And in Hollywood, they call it the "award season," since most Oscar contenders are crowded into the last two months of the year so as not to strain the short-term memory of Academy voters.
On the Oscar front, the most fascinating competition is the seriously overcrowded Best Actor category. Apart from Al Pacino as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and Paul Giamatti as a likable schlub in Sideways, there is a surfeit of what Variety calls biopics.
These are roles in which actors ennoble themselves by playing famous historical figures: Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland as the author of Peter Pan; Liam Neeson in Kinsey as the famous sex researcher; Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great in Alexander; Javier Bardem as a Spanish writer and quadriplegic in The Sea Within, not to be confused with Beyond the Sea, in which Kevin Spacey portrays Bobby Darin.
Leonardo DiCaprio assays the role of Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. Don Cheadle plays a hotel manager who saved almost 1,000 lives in Hotel Rwanda. They'll be fighting for an Academy Award slot with earlier-in-the-year releases such as Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray, and Jim Caviezel as Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.
This is also the time for family-friendly entertainment aimed at an age group that only knows Oscar as the grouch in a garbage can. SpongeBob SquarePants and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events are just around the corner, while The Incredibles is set to run on a profitable tear through to the end of the season.
Here then, is a list of what look like the shiniest packages under the tree for Christmas, 2004. It is, after all, the season of hope.
Nov. 19 Kinsey. A terrific cast, led by Liam Neeson in one of his best-ever performances as Dr. Alfred Kinsey and Laura Linney as his wife, star in an intriguing character study of the pioneering sex researcher who shook up post-Second World War America with his startling revelations about what ordinary people do behind closed doors. Kinsey is directed by Bill Condon. Think of it as A Beautiful Dirty Mind.
Finding Neverland. Johnny Depp stars as J. M. Barrie in this story about the creator of Peter Pan. Kate Winslet plays Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the young mother of four fatherless sons who inspires Barrie to tell the tale of the boys who never grow up. Marc Forster ( Monster's Ball) directs and Depp, turning from rock-star pirate to mild-mannered introvert, has another Oscar shot here.
National Treasure. From producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of Con Air and Armageddon and all those CSI shows comes - guess what? - an absurdly high-concept thriller. A map on the back of the Declaration of Independence leads to treasure buried by the founding fathers. Patriotic treasure-hunter Nicolas Cage competes with Sean Bean in the race for life, liberty and the pursuit of filthy lucre.
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. This is the extended theatrical version of the Nickelodeon cartoon character SpongeBob, and the denizens of Bikini Bottom and the local fast-food diner. Not only kids, but an extensive adult cult audience, will soak it up.
Alexander. Oliver Stone directs, with Angelina Jolie, Jared Leto, Val Kilmer and Anthony Hopkins. Legend has it that the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great, wept when he realized he had no new worlds to conquer. How will bad-boy Irish actor Colin Farrell recreate that emotion? By pretending the bar has run out of Guinness?
Christmas with the Kranks. Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis play a couple who decide to drop out of Christmas, then have to change their minds in a hurry when their daughter decides to come home from the Peace Corps. The story is based on John Grisham's Skipping Christmas - which, for a change, isn't about obscenely wealthy young lawyers uncovering conspiracies and sticking it to the Man.
Nov. 26 A Very Long Engagement. The star and director of Amélie, Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, reunite for this story of a woman's effort to discover what has happened to her fiancé, presumably killed in the First World War. Advance reviews are very positive.
Dec. 3 Closer. After his successes of the television adaptations of Wit and Angels in America, Mike Nichols's star stands very high. He directs this adaptation of English dramatist Patrick Marber's scabrous hit play about a quartet of smug adulterers.
House of Flying Daggers. In ninth-century China, a revolutionary group is battling the corrupt Tang government. Andy Lau plays a local army captain and Takeshi Kaneshiro his playboy assistant Jin. They are under pressure to shut the troublemakers down, even if it means getting involved with beautiful blind dancer Mei (Zhang Ziyi). If you were blown away by Hero, here's more of the same from director Zhang Yimou.
Dec. 8 Blade: Trinity. Part three of the gore-galore saga of the man-vampire called Blade (Wesley Snipes), with new blood to the franchise supplied by Canadian Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel as a pair of helpful slayers. Otherwise, cult writer David Goyer assumes the director's chair in what, logically, should be the series' last stab.
Dec. 10 Ocean's Twelve. Director Steven Soderbergh reassembles his cast for this sequel to the comic heist movie Ocean's Eleven, with George Clooney as master thief Danny Ocean. Added to the cast are Catherine Zeta-Jones and Vincent Cassel. The first film was distinctly second-rate Soderbergh. Some of us are holding out for sex, lies and videotape 2.
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Another ensemble comedy from Wes Anderson ( Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), The Life Aquatic stars Bill Murray as a washed-up underwater-documentary filmmaker, determined to exact revenge on a mythical shark that killed his partner. The subject may be wet but the humour should be extra-dry.
Dec. 15 Million Dollar Baby. Girlfight meets High Plains Drifter as Clint Eastwood directs and stars as a boxing manager who agrees to coach a woman pug (Hilary Swank).
Rumour is that Swank, whose career has foundered since her Oscar in Boys Don't Cry, may have a second shot at the title here.
Dec. 17 The Aviator. After the oddly truncated Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese's believers are hoping this will be the film that finally gives the director the accolades he deserves (he still hasn't won an Oscar). The movie features a big cast, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes and Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn. Scorsese is the great American director of the past 30 years, and even if this isn't the best film of the season, it's bound to be the most ambitious.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This big-budget Gothic version of the first of the dark children's stories follows three Baudelaire orphans who travel from guardian to guardian. The cast includes everybody (Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly, Jennifer Coolidge, Luis Guzman, Cedric the Entertainer, Timothy Spall, Catherine O'Hara) but mostly, it's an almost unrecognizable Jim Carrey as the eccentric, conniving Count Olaf who dominates the previews.
The Sea Inside. Based on the life Ramon Sampedro, The Sea Inside was the talk of the Toronto International Film Festival for Javier Bardem's performance as quadriplegic fighting for the legal right to end his life. If academy members can bring themselves to read subtitles, this should be a sure Oscar nod.
Spanglish. James L. Brooks directs this comedy about a Mexican single mother (Paz Vega), who is taken in by an affluent Los Angeles family as they squabble about different parenting styles. Can you smell the TV spinoff?
Dec. 22 Meet the Fockers. In the sequel to Jay Roach's hit comedy Meet the Parents, Robert DeNiro, the paranoid former CIA operative, is now subjected to meeting the parents of his son-in-law (Ben Stiller). The Fockers are played by Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman as huggy New Age hippies.
Hotel Rwanda. The People's Choice winner at the most recent Toronto International Film Festival is a quality drama by Terry George ( In the Name of the Father) starring Don Cheadle as a real-life hotel manager who saved almost 1,000 Tutsi refugees from massacre.
Andrew Lloyd Weber's The Phantom of the Opera. The musical that wouldn't die finally closed and now the inevitable movie is here. Little-known British actor Gerard Butler plays the title role with Emmy Rossum ( Mystic River) as Christine. Miranda Richardson and Minnie Driver also have roles. The director is Joel Schumacher, who can be good ( The Client, Tigerland) or very bad ( Batman and Robin).
Dec. 24 The Woodsman. First-time filmmaker Nicole Kassell's debut work is a subtly disturbing profile of a paroled child molester, played by Kevin Bacon, trying to put his life back together. Benjamin Bratt and Kyra Sedgwick also star.
In a less crowded year, Bacon's performance would be an obvious Oscar contender, although admittedly this is not your usual holly-jolly seasonal fare.
Bride and Prejudice: The Bollywood Musical. London-based writer-director Gurinder Chadha ( Bend It Like Beckham) has turned Jane Austen's novel into a Bollywood extravaganza. Former Miss World and gorgeous Indian star Aishwarya Rai ( Devdas) plays the Elizabeth Bennet role, as a girl who strikes sparks with a snooty, rich Californian, Will Darcy (Martin Henderson), at a wedding. After publishing Pride and Prejudice, Austen wrote to her sister saying that "the work is rather too light, bright and sparkling." Clearly, she was thinking Bollywood the whole time.
Dec. 25 Fat Albert. A live-action version of the Saturday-morning cartoon series, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, itself based on Bill Cosby's comic reminiscences of childhood. Comedian Kenan Thompson wears a fat suit as the title character, and Bill Cosby himself appears to look upon what he hath wrought. Dec. 29 The Assassination of Richard Nixon. It's 1974 and Sam Bick (Sean Penn) is a resentful furniture salesman who plots to kill the president of the United States by crashing a plane into the White House. Don Cheadle plays his friend and Naomi Watts his wife. So why, you ask, is he so resentful?
In Good Company. In this midlife-crisis comedy, Dennis Quaid stars as an advertising salesman who discovers his daughter (Scarlett Johansson) is having an affair with his much-younger boss (Topher Grace). Paul Weitz previously directed About a Boy. Think of this as his more mature About a Middle-Aged Guy.
The Merchant of Venice. Michael Radford's astute production of Shakespeare's still-controversial play features Jeremy Irons as Antonio, who, in an effort to help Basanio (Joseph Fiennes), borrows money from a Jewish money-lender (Al Pacino). The movie is so good, it may even get the play off high-school banned lists.
Liam Lacey