Opening next week is Nowhere Boy, a solid though far-from-inspiring biopic about the troubled teenage years of teddyboy John Lennon. It contrasts Lennon's emotional arc with his burgeoning love affair with music, which begins with banjo plucking and ends with his going to Hamburg. Aaron Johnson swaggers and sulks his way through it and is supported by two great performances from Kristin Scott Thomas who plays his aunt Mimi and Anne-Marie Duff, his estranged mother Julia.

Meanwhile, Happy Ever Afters is an Irish screwball comedy from writer/director Steven Burke. It sparkles like a glass of flat lemonade. Burke throws two weddings into the one hotel and lets the clichés explode on screen. Happy Go Lucky star Sally Hawkins plays the bride who the audience knows will end up with the groom (Tom Riley) from the other wedding, but I can't imagine anyone wishing for these two to be together, while the film sinks under the weight of turgid writing.

In the upcoming Sherlock Holmes, writes Ben Walsh, Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law team up as the opium-loving sleuth and his trusty pal Dr Watson in Guy Ritchie's buddy movie. The ubiquitous Rachel McAdams – Time Traveler's Wife, State of Play – plays the very welcome love interest and worthy sparring partner for Holmes, and the equally lovely Kelly Reilly (Eden Lake) plays Watson's paramour.

Holmes and Watson are pitted against the dastardly fiend Lord Blackwood, played by Mark Strong, in this expensive re-imagining of Conan Doyle's crime series. The plot itself is not based on anything specific in Conan's canon but on a yet-to-be published comic book by Lionel Wigram. The Lock Stock director has duly taken liberties with the traditional Holmes signifiers, ditching the deerstalker, magnifying glass and pipe (but he's still making a pig's ear of playing the violin) in favour of some fighting prowess (Holmes gets his pecs out) and the kind of sunglasses you could pick up in Camden market for a tenner.

It promises to be a good, old-fashioned mystery tale for Christmas.

Nine, Rob Marshall's film adaptation of a Broadway-musical version of Fellini's 81/2, by Maury Yeston, boasts a sensational cast, including Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day-Lewis – following up his terrific turn in There Will Be Blood – Judi Dench and Marion Cotillard.

The film, co-scripted by Anthony Minghella, follows the life of famous film auteur Guido Contini (Day Lewis) as he reaches a creative and personal crisis, while balancing the various women in his life: his wife (Cotillard), his mistress (Cruz), his film-star muse (Kidman), an American reporter (Kate Hudson), his mother (Sophia Loren) and a prostitute from his youth (Stacy Ferguson). Crikey.

Who would like it? Anyone who enjoyed Chicago, which Rob Marshall also directed, or Baz Luhrmann's wildly OTT Moulin Rouge. Musicals like The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins go down a treat at Christmas, but this is a saucier, more provocative affair.