Holy Moses, is it already time again for the War on Christmas? Well, we prefer to wage it in the comfort of our (sort of) neighbourhood theatres, kicking back in the Oscar zone while various genres duke it out for the top spot in the holiest of shopping seasons. With more than 40 flicks vying for increasingly hard-to-find screen space in the lower brainland, expect some of these dates to shuffle a bit.

December 19

The musical Annie stars Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) as the pupil-challenged orphan, and Jamie Foxx plays the Daddy Warbucks character. Mark Wahlberg is The Gambler in this remake of that stylish James Caan movie from 1974. Ben Stiller picks up his flashlight for another Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, which offers the last screen appearances of Robin Williams and Mickey Rooney. There were only four books with hobbits, but by now we’re up to a sixth movie, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which pits our height-challenged friends against Moses. Just kidding. But not really.

December 25

TMZ types Seth Rogen and James Franco land The Interview of a lifetime when North Korea’s Dear Leader agrees to meet them. Fairy tales get Grimm in Into the Woods, with a witchy Meryl Streep connecting the stories. Angelina Jolie directed Unbroken, the fact-based tale of a wartime flyer who survived a crash in the Pacific and two years in a Japanese POW camp. Tim Burton’s Big Eyes stares at the tainted marriage of painters Walter and Margaret Keane, as played by Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.

January 2

The Woman in Black is back, dammit, in WIB 2: Angel of Death. It’s a horror movie.

January 9

If The Master’s Paul Thomas Anderson had directed American Hustle, it would look a lot like the ’70s-set Inherent Vice, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a hapless detective perpetually in over his head. Time for some more Liam Neesoms (as Key & Peele would say), in Taken 3, another spy-on-the-run spectacle written and produced by Luc Besson. And a fictionalized Martin Luther King Jr. returns to Selma, the Ferguson of its day.

January 16

The live-action Paddington finds everyone’s favourite teddy bear (except for Seth MacFarlane’s) adopted by Sally Hawkins and chased by Nicole Kidman. Kevin Hart is The Wedding Ringer, a best-man-for-hire in this Sandleresque farce. Chinese and American cybercops join forces in Michael Mann’s Blackhat.

January 23

Bradley Cooper bulks up as American Sniper Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood’s explosive drama. Jennifer Lopez finds trouble with The Boy Next Door, and Johnny Depp plays Mortdecai, a mustachioed art dealer looking for gold with Gwyneth Paltrow and Olivia Munn. Disney casts Strange Magic in an animated tale of goblins and fairies.

January 30

A dog named Max helps a soldier with PTSD, and teens build a time machine in Project Almanac.

Of course, cinema isn’t all Hollywood blockbuster this and studio franchise that. Here are some of the more offbeat docs, boutique productions and indie breakouts coming our way in the next few months.

December 19 Benedict Cumberbatch is Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, a simplified depiction of the shabby treatment Britain gave one of its biggest war heroes. The Vancouver Asahi recalls the trials of a Japanese baseball team in prewar B.C. Well-aged fashionistas are nicely displayed in the doc Advanced Style.

December 25 In Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, Timothy Spall plays pioneering painter J. W. M. Turner, whose work can be seen in London’s National Gallery, explored in this three-hour doc. The Internet brings problems and opportunities for a budding film director in China’s Love on the Cloud. January 5 A multiracial boy is obsessed with straightening his Bad Hair in this Venezuelan drama.

January 9 Apparently, hyphens are expensive in Italy, where A Five Star Life finds one middle-aged hotel consultant reexamining her luxurious but lonely past.

January 16 Belgium’s Dardenne brothers look at Two Days, One Night in a struggling woman’s life, while the Turkish Winter Sleep, set in a rural inn, is already on numerous top-10 lists.

January 23 Julianne Moore is Still Alice, even as dementia sets in, and Leviathan lands us in a small Russian town rife with corruption.

January 30 Margin Call’s J.C. Chandor set this drama in 1981, A Most Violent Year for NYC. And Red Army looks back at the USSR’s unstoppable hockey team of the early seventies.