Hollywood has outdone itself on Christmas spirit.
Studios typically offer two or three holiday-themed flicks toward year’s end. This season brings a half-dozen movies with Christmas angles.
Leading Santa’s sleigh, and opening this weekend, is Tim Allen as St. Nick again in “The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause,” battling Jack Frost (Martin Short) who’s hijacked Christmas.
Tricking Allen’s character into magically returning to the instant he first put on the red suit and became Santa, Jack Frost makes off with the Kriss Kringle duds himself and turns Christmas into “Frostmas.”
“I love ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” Allen said, “and I said, if there’s any way to make this an ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ moment, that would be great. Where I get the chance to see the world clearly without me as Santa. Then I have to figure out a way to get Christmas back.”
Also on the holiday front:
* A family man (Matthew Broderick) duels with his neighbor (Danny DeVito) who aims to create a gaudy Christmas display visible from space in “Deck the Halls.”
* Five youths try to elude airport officials (Lewis Black and Wilmer Valderrama) after they’re snowed in on Christmas Eve in “Unaccompanied Minors.”
* A college student (Michelle Trachtenberg) and her friends face a killer terrorizing their sorority house over holiday break in “Black Christmas.”
* Two women (Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet) on opposite sides of the world meet on the Internet and decide to trade houses for Christmas in “The Holiday,” which co-stars Jude Law and Jack Black.
* The birth of Christ is told in dramatic fashion in “The Nativity Story,” starring Keisha Castle-Hughes (“Whale Rider”) as the Virgin Mary.
“It is kind of a contrast to the usually funny holiday fare and the other more violent movies you get around the holidays. Maybe it’ll be an antidote to that,” said “Nativity Story” director Catherine Hardwicke.
A look at the season’s other film highlights:
Spy vs. spy
“Casino Royale,” the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond tales, introduces Daniel Craig as the sixth actor to play agent 007, with the British superspy on an early assignment. Bond is not yet the callous, love-them-and-leave-them type who has no problem sleeping with women then shooting them later. In fact, young Mr. Bond falls in love with a woman who turns the tables on him.
“The Good Shepherd” stars Matt Damon as a CIA founder who helps establish the agency’s methods amid the Cold War. Robert De Niro co-stars and directs, with a cast that includes Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt and John Turturro.
Stage to screen
Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy and “American Idol” star Jennifer Hudson star in an adaptation of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls,” following the rise of a female pop trio.
“The History Boys” reunites much of the cast from the stage hit about rambunctious British teens angling for admission to Oxford and Cambridge.
Talking critters
Hugh Jackman gets into animated action in a big way, providing the lead voice for the mouse tale “Flushed Away” (opening Friday) and supporting vocals for the penguin comedy “Happy Feet.”
“Flushed Away” features the voices of Jackman and Kate Winslet in the story of a pet mouse forced to live among the sewer rats after he’s washed down the toilet.
In “Happy Feet,” Jackman and Nicole Kidman are the mouthpieces for the parents of a penguin (Elijah Wood) who, unlike his crooning kin, has a terrible singing voice – but can tap-dance up a storm. The voice cast includes Robin Williams.
An all-star lineup led by Julia Roberts, Robert Redford and Oprah Winfrey provide voices for a live-action version of E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web,” the tale of a spider who helps a barnyard pig avoid his fate on the dinner table. Dakota Fanning leads the human cast.
Fantastic journeys
Jackman also stars with Rachel Weisz in “The Fountain,” about a man who discovers a fountain of youth and lives a sprawling adventure from the 16th to 26th centuries.
Clive Owen stars with Julianne Moore in “Children of Men,” a sci-fi tale about a near future facing a plague of infertility that could wipe out humanity, directed by Alfonso Cuaron (“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”).
The dragon fantasy “Eragon” features Jeremy Irons, Robert Carlyle, Djimon Hounsou and John Malkovich in the story of a young hero fated to protect his homeland from destruction.
Luc Besson directs the live-action and computer-animated fantasy “Arthur &the Invisibles,” featuring Mia Farrow, Freddie Highmore and the voices of Madonna, David Bowie and Snoop Dogg in the tale of a boy out to save his family home.
Fact meets fiction
Writer, director and co-star Emilio Estevez mixes real life and make-believe with “Bobby,” the story of 22 people present at the hotel the night Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The ensemble cast includes Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins, Lindsay Lohan and Laurence Fishburne.
“Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” stars Nicole Kidman as the celebrated photographer in a fictional romance. Robert Downey Jr. co-stars.
“Blood Diamond” stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly in the story of three unlikely partners on a quest for a priceless gem, the tale set against the savage civil war in 1990s Sierra Leone.
Jack Black and Kyle Gass star as variations of themselves in a whimsical comedy about the formation of their folk-rock duo in “Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny.”
“Fast Food Nation” adapts the best-selling nonfiction book about America’s eating habits into a fictional narrative whose ensemble cast includes Greg Kinnear, Ethan Hawke and Avril Lavigne.
For laughs
“Night at the Museum” features Ben Stiller as a museum night watchman guided by a wax figure of Theodore Roosevelt (Robin Williams) when the exhibits come magically alive.
Three actors (Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer and Parker Posey) catch Oscar fever when their little movie earns awards buzz in Christopher Guest’s Hollywood satire “For Your Consideration.”
A crook (Dax Shepard) seeks revenge by arranging to become cellmate to the son of the judge who sent him to jail in “Let’s Go to Prison.”
After the wars
Steven Soderbergh directs George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire in “The Good German,” a drama about a U.S. war correspondent and his imperiled former lover in Berlin after World War II.
“Home of the Brave” stars Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in the story of U.S. troops adjusting to home life after serving in Iraq.
High art
“The Painted Veil,” adapted from E.M. Forster’s novel, stars Naomi Watts, Edward Norton and Liev Schreiber in a love triangle in 1920s China.
Renee Zellweger is children’s author Beatrix Potter, caught up in a romance with her publisher (Ewan McGregor) in “Miss Potter.”
“Candy” features Heath Ledger as a poet whose affair with an art student and bohemian lifestyle leads to heroin addiction.
Turning serious
Will Smith plays a struggling dad who finds himself and his 5-year-old son homeless in “The Pursuit of Happyness.”
Anthony Minghella’s “Breaking and Entering” features Jude Law, Juliette Binoche and Robin Wright Penn in a drama about a landscape architect whose life is changed through encounters with a burglar.
Matthew McConaughey relives a sports tragedy in “We Are Marshall,” playing a coach who rebuilds a West Virginia college football program after a 1970 plane crash kills 75 players and coaches.
“Notes on a Scandal” stars Blanchett and Judi Dench in the story of an art teacher’s affair with a student.
Will Ferrell tones it down for a comic tale with sober themes in “Stranger Than Fiction,” playing a meek, solitary tax auditor suddenly able to hear an unseen narrator (Emma Thompson) who’s writing the story of his life – and impending death.
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