USA TODAY's 2012 holiday movie calendar

'The Details' Opens Nov. 2 Stars: Tobey Maguire, Laura Linney and Elizabeth Banks. Plot: The dark comedy follows a married couple (Maguire and Banks) as their lives spin down an unfortunate path due to infidelity, attempted murder, jilted spouses and invading raccoons.

'A Late Quartet' Opens Nov. 2 Stars: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener. Plot: The members of a world-renowned string quartet face increasing egos, debilitating disease and relationship troubles as they attempt to stay in tune with each other.

'The Man With the Iron Fists' Opens Nov. 2 Stars: Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu and RZA. Plot: Everybody is kung-fu fighting in the martial-arts movie from RZA. The man behind the Wu-Tang Clan stars as The Blacksmith, who outfits his fellow 19th-century Chinese villagers with weapons against a common enemy, and Crowe twirls a mean dagger as the dangerously named Jack Knife.

'This Must Be the Place' Opens Nov. 2 Stars: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand and Judd Hirsch. Plot: Penn plays a goth rocker (think Robert Smith of The Cure) who leaves his life of living off royalties in Dublin to search America for the Nazi war criminal who persecuted his father at Auschwitz.

'Vamps' Opens Nov. 2 Stars: Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter and Sigourney Weaver. Plot: A pair of club-crazy vampire party girls (Silverstone and Ritter) learn that love can be a buzzkill even for the undead when one falls for a vampire slayer and the other runs into a crush from decades past.

'Wreck-It-Ralph' Opens Nov. 2 Stars: John C. Reilly, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch. Plot: An 8-bit video-game bad guy named Ralph (a Donkey Kong-inspired brute voiced by Reilly) decides he has had enough of being antagonist to Fix-It Felix Jr. (McBrayer) and ventures into a futuristic war game and a candy-coated racing world on a quest to become a hero.

'Lincoln' Opens Nov. 9. Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. Plot: In the heat of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln (Day-Lewis) is forced to battle on different fronts. The leader and his wife (Field) are dead-set against their son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) joining the Union troops, while he fights alongside men such as Thaddeus Stevens (Jones) to get an amendment passed in the contentious House of Representatives to abolish slavery once and for all.

'Skyfall' Opens Nov. 9 Stars: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judy Dench and Ralph Fiennes. Plot: A spy never shaken. James Bond turns 50 this year and hasn't aged a day over 007 in 23 films (if you count only official Eon Production films). Craig returns as Bond, who finds his loyalty to M (Dench) tested as M16 comes under attack.

'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2' Opens Nov. 16 Stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. Plot: The conclusion of the franchise finds vampires Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) seeking allies to protect their family from a supernatural menace.

'Anna Karenina' Opens Nov. 16 Stars: Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jude Law. Plot: Based on Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of the Tolstoy classic, Russian aristocrat Anna is married to a government official (Law) in 1870s-era St. Petersburg, but falls for a young military man (Taylor-Johnson) when she travels to Moscow to help her brother.

'Life of Pi' Opens Nov. 21 Stars: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan and Gerard Depardieu. Plot: When his family is lost to the sea after their shipwreck during a storm, a zookeeper’s son named Pi (Sharma) and a Bengal tiger survive and connect on a deep level while adrift in the Pacific Ocean.

'Red Dawn' Opens Nov. 21 Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson and Adrianne Palicki. Plot: A remake of the 1980s cult classic that featured a small American town being taken over by Russians, and a group of teens who call themselves “the Wolverines” fighting back. This time, however, it’s the North Koreans who are invading.

'Rise of the Guardians' Opens Nov. 21 Stars: Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin and Hugh Jackman. Plot: Jack Frost (voiced by Pine) joins Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy — protectors of children everywhere — when Pitch the Bogeyman (Jude Law) attempts to bring darkness to the entire world.

'The Silver Linings Playbook' Opens Nov. 21 Stars: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. Plot: Pat (Cooper) exits a mental institution after being admitted following an incident involving his wife and her lover, but things really get crazy when he moves back in with his parents and he befriends a young widow (Lawrence) with her own complications.

'Hitchcock' Opens Nov. 23 Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson. Plot: Famed director Alfred Hitchcock (Hopkins) and his wife, Alma (Mirren), weather ups, downs and high-maintenance leading ladies — Johansson as Janet Leigh — as Hitchcock creates his classic 'Psycho' in 1959.

'Rust and Bone' Opens Nov. 23 Stars: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts and Armand Verdure. Plot: Alain (Schoenaerts), a single father and bare-knuckle fighter, becomes a key to the recovery of a killer-whale trainer (Cotillard) after an accident leaves her in a wheelchair.

'Killing Them Softly' Opens Nov. 30 Stars: Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta. Plot: A trio of wannabe crooks get in over their heads when they rob a Mob-protected card game, which causes the head wiseguys to bring in a calm and cool enforcer (Pitt) to investigate and fix the problem permanently.

'Hyde Park on the Hudson' Opens Dec. 7 Stars: Bill Murray, Laura Linney and Olivia Williams. Plot: Britain’s reigning monarchs make their first U.S. visit in 1939 to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Murray) and his wife, Eleanor (Williams), to win support for looming war with Germany. But the president has plenty of internal affairs of his own, including one with his distant cousin (Linney).

'Playing for Keeps' Opens Dec. 7 Stars: Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel and Dennis Quaid. Plot: Butler gets to show off his skills, and real Scottish accent, as a former soccer star who tries to pick up the pieces of his life by coaching his son’s soccer team.

'Deadfall' Opens Dec. 7 Stars: Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde and Charlie Hunnam. Plot: In possibly the most dysfunctional (and action-filled) Thanksgiving ever, two siblings (Wilde and Bana) reunite following a botched casino robbery at another man’s (Hunnam) family dinner.

'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' Opens Dec. 14 Stars: Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen. Plot: Director Peter Jackson returns to J.R.R Tolkein's Middle-earth to tackle the predecessor to his 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy.

'Zero Dark Thirty' Opens Dec. 19 Stars: Chris Pratt, Jessica Chastain and Kyle Chandler. Plot: Bigelow returns with a project almost as top-secret as the actual hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Oscar-winning team that brought us 'The Hurt Locker' follows Navy SEAL Team 6 and a CIA agent (Chastain) on the trail of the world’s most wanted terrorist. The great manhunt might have ended, but the awards buzz is just beginning.

'Amour' Opens Dec. 19 Stars: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert. Plot: A loving couple, two retired music teachers in their 80s, struggle with realities of old age in this powerful French drama, winner of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s highest prize.

'Monsters, Inc. 3-D' Opens Dec. 19 Stars the voices of: Billy Crystal, John Goodman and Mary Gibbs. Plot: Pixar’s 2001 classic returns in 3-D form.

'Jack Reacher' Opens Dec. 21 Stars: Tom Cruise, Werner Herzog and Robert Duvall. Plot: Cruise returns as the hero of best-selling author Lee Child’s novels. The former military investigator is pulled back into action to clear the name of a military sniper he believes was framed for shooting five people.

'Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away' Opens Dec. 21 Stars: Erica Linz and Igor Zaripov. Plot: Cirque du Soleil takes its varied amazing acts onto the screen for a 3-D experience in a story pulled from existing live shows, from The Beatles ('Love') to aerial battles ('Ka').

'On the Road' Opens Dec. 21 Stars: Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart. Plot: This is the long-awaited film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s cult classic, which was based on his travels through America in the 1940s.

'Not Fade Away' Opens Dec. 21 Stars: John Magaro, Jack Huston and James Gandolfini. Plot: Director David Chase reunites with Gandolfini for the first time since 'The Sopranos' in a tale of an aspiring rocker (Magaro) looking to break into the music big time and his disapproving father (Gandolfini).

'This Is 40' Opens Dec. 21 Stars: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann and Jason Segel. Plot: The followup to Knocked Up (sans Katherine Heigl) follows the lives of Pete (Rudd) and Debbie (Mann).

'Django Unchained' Opens Dec. 25 Stars: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. Plot: A former slave (Foxx) learns the way of the bounty hunter thanks to a mentor (Waltz) and aims to free his captured wife from a conniving plantation owner.

'Les Miserables' Opens Dec. 25 Stars: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway. Plot: Life couldn't kill this dream. The famous stage production (affectionately known as 'Les Mis') of Victor Hugo’s classic novel set in ravaged 19th-century France finally makes it to the screen.

Opens Dec. 25 Stars: Seth Rogen, Barbra Streisand and Adam Scott. Plot: An inventor (Rogen) and his overprotective mother (Streisand) hit the road (and at least one topless bar) for a cross-country trip as he sells his latest device.

'Parental Guidance' Opens Dec. 25 Stars: Billy Crystal, Bette Midler and Marisa Tomei. Plot: Two old-school grandparents (Crystal and Midler) learn about new-school parenting rules (the hard way) when they help their daughter with her kids.