This Christmas
(Screen Gems)
If it's (nearly) Christmas, then it must be time for another ensemble comedy-drama about family, friends, life, love, relationships, careers, and anything else you care to shout out in a drunken haze. This Christmas at least boasts an impressive cast that will probably do wonders with the otherwise hackneyed material: Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba, Mekhi Phifer, and the criminally underrated Regina King lead the charge.

Christmas in Wonderland
(Yari Film Group)
Speaking of cast lists, this family-friendly Christmas caper boasts one that is also stunningly impressive, but for all the wrong reasons: Patrick Swayze, Carmen Electra, Chris Kattan, Tim Curry, and Jackass's Preston Lacy — if you served coffee and set up some folding chairs, this could be a support group. Wonderland (actually Edmonton, it turns out — go figure) is a mall-set crooks-on-the-run goof that wants nothing more than to invoke Home Alone.

Nina's Heavenly Delights
(Regent Releasing)
There's nothing better pre-Thanksgiving than a movie about the wonders of food. This tiny comedy centers on Nina (Shelley Conn), an Indian girl raised in Glasgow who returns after an absence to run her late father's restaurant. It's being sold as "Scottish humor mixed with Bollywood spectacle" and, honestly, who isn't instantly game for that?

— Eric Alt