Sumptuous, clever and cold.

Bold in scope and aptly mimicking the loose structures of kinship, friendship and work most city dwellers make do with these days, Breaking and Entering nonetheless plays out too quiet and too loose for its own good.

In a time of darkness, under the evil reign of John Malkovich -- who sits upon a throne in a different sound stage from the rest of the cast -- a hero shall rise. But lo, there will be little rejoicing, for this dragon rider (newcomer Edward Speleers) is but a nancy boy, about as imposing as Lance Bass, and somehow in possession of the only soap and clean clothes in all the land.

For a movie conceived and executed in the mainstream Hollywood idiom, it has uncommon depth and honesty.

Shot on digital and layered with animated segments, performance footage and clips from Smith family home movies, Family Movie unfolds with a gentle, justified confidence in the power of its subject.

There's no use griping about the superfluous white-on-white romance that generates so much dead space in Zwick's movie, for without it Blood Diamond would never have been made. Which would be a pity, for as liberal hand-wringing goes, it's a winner.

For those of us who prefer to judge Gibson solely in terms of his art, the movie is a virtuosic piece of action cinema -- particularly in its second half...And while there has been no shortage of recent films that decry the horrors of war and man's inhumanity to his fellow man, I know of none other quite this sickeningly powerful.

The causal combination of pop culture and Holocaust imagery is an arresting start to a film about contemporary European anti-Semitism, but the doc quickly turns to well-worn themes.

Off the Black gradually establishes its own peculiar cranky rhythm, fighting to resist the usual male-bonding sentimentality. But despite some nice touches, this is the sort of too-precious indie film that gives its characters unnecessary quirks.

So many documentaries about genocides play art-house theaters that it can be easy to get jaded, but combining one with tour footage from the most innovative metal band in the world is genius, banging the viewer's head before he realizes it's being filled with awareness too.

Director Christopher J. Scott hits all the technical marks with his look at the history and current status of snowboarding, yet he doesn’t find a strong enough hook to pull in any except the already converted.

It is Lynch's most experimental endeavor in the 30 years since "Eraserhead," that it will do nothing to draw new fans to the director's work and that, after two viewings, I cannot wait to see it again.

So why not a sequel that subtracts the only good thing about the first movie, Ryan Reynolds? When Tara Reid won't even come back, you know things can't be good.

The Lives of Others wants us to see that the Stasi -- at least some of them -- were, like their Gestapo brethren, “just following orders." You can call that naive optimism on Donnersmarck's part, or historical revisionism of the sort duly lambasted by the current film version of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys." I, for one, tremble at the thought of what this young director does for an encore.

Though the subdued performances every so often find a poignantly understated moment, on the whole Two Weeks feels too detached and well-mannered for its own good.

An embarrassment of a vanity project, Living the Dream is a film written, directed and starring a real corporate headhunter.

Part dewey-eyed paperback romance, part acid-trip planetarium show, this extravagantly silly movie comes on like the second coming of "2001."

"The Blues Brothers" it is not, but in its best moments, the movie feels like a comic exaggeration of the real hardships that a couple of average, decidedly unhip guys went through on their unlikely way to the top.

What's appealing about Bond is precisely its unhip classicism -- its promise of clean, crisp excitement delivered without the interference of whiplash-inducing camera pyrotechnics, attention-deficient editing patterns, gratuitous color tinting and/or ear-splitting rock ballads.

Antarctica is a beautiful blue paradise, and the final set piece, in which penguins and humans tap their way to a unity of green-minded spirit, is a small masterpiece of conciliatory wackiness.

Like two of the year's other standout American films, Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy" and Ryan Fleck's "Half Nelson," it's a movie of ideas in which the ideas flow effortlessly out of the material instead of being plastered on top with a heavy cement roller (as in "Crash," "Babel" and "Little Children").

Doesn't risk ruffling any feathers, and that's exactly what's wrong with it: It's less a satirical bite at the hand that feeds Guest than it is a toothless nibble, and it isn't particularly funny.

Once the Quay brothers confidently establish their film's astonishing look, they merely repeat their techniques until the images no longer delight or surprise, leaving all too visible the Quays' struggles with the trickier demands of storytelling and character development.

In this fascinating documentary, directors Ronit Avni and Julia Bacha ask what kind of person counters malicious violence with activist conciliation, but offer neither pat answers nor false redemption.

The only character who emerges as more than an ideological mouthpiece, and nearly saves the movie, is the Ambassador's resident hairstylist, who masks her faded beauty with a thick coat of eye shadow and an overteased hairdo. I kept wondering who this deeply sad, earthy actress was, making so much out of so little, until I realized it was Sharon Stone in the most naked performance she's ever given without taking her clothes off.

Whereas "Nine Queens" was a movie of clockwork precision and blindsiding reversals, El Aura is more internalized and digressive but no less striking, in large part thanks to Darin's mesmerizing performance.

The results are far from perfect: For one thing, Lipsky is so far from being a fluid visual storyteller that the garishly lit, appallingly composed Flannel Pajamas makes another two-hander talkfest Lipsky famously distributed -- "My Dinner With Andre" -- seem like "Lawrence of Arabia" by comparison.

The Return gets this year's award for most misleading poster, with its image of an empty-eyed, gray-skinned zombie/ghost that appears nowhere in the movie. You might, however, feel a little empty-eyed and zombie-like yourself after emerging from this languid story.