Holiday time is when movie makers present both their most potent blockbusters (for the dough) and their most serious efforts (for year-end awards).

There are some worthy films aiming for good year-end business which will already be in theaters by the time this column appears. Walt Disney Studios tries a new take on its storybook princess films with “Enchantment” (November 21), a musical comedy about a sweet young thing, Giselle (Amy Adams), thrown into the wilds of Manhattan by a wicked queen (Susan Sarandon) who, in trying to find her Prince Charming (James Marsden), discovers a savior in divorce lawyer-stud Robert (Patrick Dempsey). The film mixes some animation of the classic Disney type with a grittier Big Apple milieu. It’s clearly pitched to kids—who might want to take their folks along.

Also on November 21st comes “I’m Not There,” an intriguing essay on the facets and foibles of Bob Dylan written and directed by Todd Haynes (“Far From Heaven”). The different dimensions of the protean folksinger/songwriter are played out through six different chracters, each played by a very different actor, ranging from an 11-year-old black child (the charming Marcus Carl Franklin) through a tortured Christian Bale to a wizened Richard Gere. The real surprise here, though, is Dylan played as the 25-year-old rock star “Jude” by the amazing Cate Blanchett. For anyone who remembers D.A. Pennebaker’s singular documentary on Dylan (“Don’t Look Back”), Blanchett’s uncanny turn will be a fascinating memory trip.

This holiday season offers two major, big-budget Hollywood efforts which prominently feature Washington, DC, and they are two quite different enterprises. First (December 21) comes the action thriller “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” a follow-up to the Nicholas Cage flick of a few years ago. This time the treasure hunters, led again by Cage and Diane Kruger, are after a missing page from John Wilkes Booth’s diary. The production company did a lot of location shooting in DC earlier this year, virtually camping out in the open lot where the old Convention Center used to be. Expect it to be frantic, mildly amusing—but what is Helen Mirren doing in this project? The other DC-based film brings several layers of pedigree: “Charlie Wilson’s War” (due out Christmas Day) stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Amy Adams, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, was directed by Mike Nichols, and written by Aaron Sorkin. Based on a “true story,” it deals with the attempt by real Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson to covertly assist the Afghan rebels in their guerilla war against the USSR in the 1980’s. It appears to be aiming at comedy as much as drama, given the shenanigans Wilson gets involved in.

During the last few Christmas seasons, the Hollywood studios have tried (without too much success) to convert a major Broadway musical into a film blockbuster. This year it’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barger of Fleet Street” (Dec. 21) directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham Carter as Todd and the redoubtable Mrs. Lovett, maker of very special meat pies. Though Depp and Bonham Carter are not trained singers, their potential chemistry may make the film work. Expect from Burton a grim vision of Victorian London both stylized and somber, all the better to show off flashes of the blood gleefully spilt by the Demon Barber.

A couple of smaller, family dramas come out this season, too, both opening here on December 14th, and both, coincidentally, set in small-town Minnesota. “Juno” is a very wised-up comedy about a precocious high school girl Juno (Ellen Page) who inadvertently gets pregnant, then thinks she has found the perfect adoptive parents (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) for her baby. Written by a former stripper (stage-named Diablo Cody), the film has some pizzazz, has already been a festival favorite, and could make a indie star out of the young Ms. Page. The trick for audiences—which I sense will either love or hate this film—will be in their buying into what the smarty-pants title character is selling.

The other Minnesota picture is “Grace Is Gone,” a more serious enterprise, though not without its comedic elements. John Cusack plays a frustrated ex-soldier whose beloved sergeant wife dies in Iraq, leaving him with two daughters, 12 and 8. He can’t bring himself to tell them of her demise and, instead he tries to distract them—and himself—with a rambling road trip, during which he tests his lamentable parenting skills. Poignant at best, and clunky at worst, the film features a fine debut by young Shélan O’Keefe as the elder daughter Heidi, the sort of preternatural performance that reminds this reviewer very much of the young Sarah Polley.

A much-anticipated literary adaptation arrives December 7th from England. “Atonement” is based on Ian McEwan’s highly-praised novel of the same name, and reunites director Joe Wright and star Keira Knightley, who worked last in the latest version of “Pride and Prejudice” (2002). Already well-received in London, “Atonement,” set in the 1930’s and 1940’s, tells the tale of how a vicious lie can turn lives upside down. Said to be quite faithful to the novel, this picture could be just the tonic for those looking for one of those high-toned, Merchant-Ivory-type period productions.

Just as anticipated among literary adaptations—perhaps more so because more widely read—is the film version of “The Kite Runner” (Dec. 14) from Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel. While inevitably cut down from the expansive novel, the movie captures its essence in finely crafted scenes moving between late 1970’s Kabul—wonderfully evoked in scenes shot in China—and late 1980’s California. This is a film with no stars (thank goodness), but rather it is peopled by a bevy of solid actors of Middle Eastern and South Asian origins who actually speak the Afghan languages of Dari and Pashto as much as English, making for a most believable cross-cultural saga. Here again, child actors shine as the two young boys of the story, Amir and Hassan. They seem to have stepped right from the pages of the book.

A final worthy film to look forward to: “The Savages,” with Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as somewhat disaffected siblings, both on different tracks in their lives, who are forced to deal with each other and their mentally fading father, played by Philip Bosco (Dec. 21). Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, this is only her second film (her last was in 1995, “Slums of Beverly Hills”), but she gets this domestic drama right. The two leads are triumphantly real—testy with each other yet groping with a dilemma that millions of us face, but that is rarely treated convincingly in motion pictures or television. I will have more to say about this fine effort in my next Hill Rag column.

Films on the Hill
This holiday season limits “Films on the Hill” to one film—but a fine one: “One More River,” showing Saturday, December 8, at 7:00 p.m. This film, released in 1934, was directed by James Whale (“Frankenstein,” “Showboat”) and is a polished, elegant gem wherein Diana Wynyard leaves her abusive husband, Colin Clive, and falls for a kind young man (Frank Lawton). What follows is one of the best treatments of divorce and family law ever on film and a scathing attack on the puritanical British divorce laws of the time. Based on John Galsworthy's final novel of his "Forsythe Saga" series, this is a tastefully, beautifully acted drama.