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Will serious fare freeze out feel-good films this season?

What do you call soldiers being tortured, bosses being horrible, five armies battling, homosexuals being persecuted, girls being abducted and assassins being recruited?

Why, the 2014 holiday movie season, of course!

One of the paradoxes of holiday films is that they often have little to do with peace and good will toward men, or any other gender.

But this year we have at least two family-friendly animated features, plus a modernized remake of a time-tested Broadway musical to lessen the seriousness of a season that has become an annual campaign for studios to lobby for awards and critics' top 10 best lists.

Here are the movies scheduled for release during the next few weeks. (For those who care, the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch appears in three of them.)

Keep in mind that release dates are subject to change, so check movie listings. May the odds of seeing a great movie be ever in your favor.

<h3 class="briefHead">Nov. 26</h3>

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Horrible Bosses 2"</span> - Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis return as buddies who've survived terrible bosses, only to hook up with a ruthless capitalist CEO (Christoph Waltz) anxious to fleece them out of their promising business venture.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Penguins of Madagascar"</span> - Secret Agent Classified (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) recruits Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private to stop an evil scientist (voiced by John Malkovich) from destroying the world.

<h3 class="briefHead">Dec. 5</h3>

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Antarctica: A Year on Ice"</span> - In his doc, filmmaker Anthony Powell captures the splendor of this region in time-lapse photography shot during an entire year.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Panic 5 Bravo"</span> - American paramedics cross into Mexico to answer an emergency call. Boy, are they ever sorry.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"The Pyramid"</span> - U.S. archaeologists discover a lost pyramid unlike any other in the Egyptian desert. This one's a real killer.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Wild"</span> - Reese Witherspoon stars as a woman who, after her marriage breaks up and her mother dies, sets out to hike more than 1,000 miles down the Pacific Crest Trail. Nick Hornby directs.

<h3 class="briefHead">Dec. 12</h3>

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"The Captive"</span> - Ryan Reynolds plays a dad whose daughter vanishes from his truck one night. Years later, when photos of her pop up on the Internet, he throws everything he can into a search-and-rescue mission.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Exodus: Gods and Kings"</span> - Ridley Scott directs a religious epic about Moses (Christian Bale) splitting from his brother, Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses (Joel Edgerton), then leading 600,000 slaves on an escape from Egypt. In 3-D, too.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"The Imitation Game"</span> - The amazing Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing, the genius British mathematician and computer scientist who helped crack the German Enigma Code that allowed the Allies to win World War II. Then the government discovers he's gay, a crime.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Point and Shoot"</span> - Documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry tells the story of Matt VanDyke, 26, who left Baltimore in 2006, bought a motorcycle and a video camera and began a three-year, 35,000-mile motorcycle trip through Northern Africa and the Middle East to shoot - both guns and cameras - in a war against dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation"</span> - A doc about one of the most iconic and enduring structures ever built, Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Top Five"</span> - Chris Rock writes, directs and stars in a drama about a comedian-turned-movie-star whose midlife crises poses this question: Why isn't he funny any more?

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"The Two Faces of January"</span> - Set in 1962 Greece and Istanbul, this thriller (based on a Patricia Highsmith novel) puts two American tourists and a tour guide on the run after a murder. Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac star.

<h3 class="briefHead">Dec. 17</h3>

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"</span> - Peter Jackson's epic conclusion to the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield and the Dwarves, who unwittingly unleash a deadly force into the world after reclaiming their homeland from the dragon Smaug (yep, Cumberbatch again).

<h3 class="briefHead">Dec. 19</h3>

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Annie"</span> - John Huston's 1982 musical (based on the Broadway hit) gets a makeover with Oscar-nominated actress Quvenzhané Wallis as the orphan who winds up at the home of Jamie Foxx's billionaire.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"The Babadook"</span> - A 6 year-old (Noah Wiseman) has nightmares that a monster comes to kill him and his mom. When a book called "The Babadook" mysteriously arrives, he is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he's been dreaming about.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb"</span> - An all-star cast, including the late Robin Williams, returns in this second sequel to the silly 2006 special effects comedy.

<h3 class="briefHead">Dec. 25</h3>

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Big Eyes"</span> - Tim Burton directs a fact-based bully story about a painter (Christoph Waltz) who takes credit for artwork created by his wife (Amy Adams).

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"The Interview"</span> - James Franco and Seth Rogen play tabloid TV show guys recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un during a scheduled TV interview. (The real dictator didn't like this.)

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Into the Woods"</span> - Stephen Sondheim's 1986 musical, based on classic fairy tales, gets a Hollywood redo starring Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Johnny Depp, Jake Gyllenhaal and Chris Pine. Let's see how much of the darker material gets lost in translation.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Mr. Turner"</span> - Mike Leigh directs a bio-drama about eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner. Timothy Spall stars.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Unbroken"</span> - Angelina Jolie directs and produces a drama about Louie Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) and two crewmen, who survive a World War II plane crash at sea, then spend 47 days in a life raft, only to be caught by the Japanese and tortured in a POW camp.

<span class="x BTO fact box text bold">"Zero Motivation"</span> - Reportedly a "nuanced, often-hilarious portrait of everyday life in a remote desert outpost" where a senior Israeli officer's dreams of promotion are thwarted by a platoon of unskilled female soldiers.

“Annie”
“The Imitation Game”
“The Babadook”
“Unbroken”
“The Interview”
“Exodus: Gods and Kings”
“Big Eyes”
“Penguins of Madagascar”
“Into the Woods”
“Annie”
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