By Dennis Harvey

Big Fish Parenthood can turn almost anybody into a softy, which is good news for the human spirit overall but occasionally very bad news for the artistic one. The fact that he recently had a child with Helena Bonham Carter (who plays several heavily disguised roles here, to no great effect) is the only explanation I can hazard as to why Tim Burton has suddenly started – suck in your breath now – imitating Steven Spielberg's worst instincts. This Hallmark-worthy slop bucket of bogus Americana, dysfunctional-family-healing sentiment, and labored fantastical "whimsy" is not recognizably the work of the man who made Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and Batman. Christ, even Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes were better. The bedside vigil of semi-estranged son Will (Billy Crudup, whom I hope was paid well for his space-filling role) over Southern braggart dad Edward Bloom (Albert Finney, better than this crap deserves) is the spur for reprise of the latter's favorite "autobiographical" tall tales, which are like old Twilight Zone episodes with a sugar glaze. They include ridding their Alabama hometown of a pesky but not-as-mean-as-he-seemed giant (Matthew McGrory), braving an encounter with the local "witch" (Bonham Carter plus prosthetics), visiting a mythic "perfect" village where time stands still, joining Danny DeVito's circus; and so forth. This crossbreeding of Forrest Gump and What Dreams May Come is Disney-esque pseudo-folklore whose grasp on "childlike wonder" and maudlin "family is the most important thing!" values feel factory-issued. Never mind that Edward has been a crappy, egomaniacal, hot-air-blowing father – reconciliation here is grimly, cloyingly inevitable. Just what retro hometowny "America" the film celebrates isn't quite clear, unless you see it as a P.C. follow-up to Song of the South. The actors' Deep Southern accents are all over the map, when present at all – only Finney nails it – and the sense of place is so artificial it speaks to a mind-set that only grasps movie history (as opposed to the human one). As the young Edward, Ewan McGregor tries too hard to ingratiate, as he did earlier this year in the bomb Down with Love. Cast as the matured same-age love of Edward's life, going four marital decades strong, is a wasted Jessica Lange – in reality Finney's junior by 13 years, but such is Hollywood logic. Presumably Daniel Wallace's novel, on which the film is based, is more palatable. But as a CGI-twinkle-eyed overestimation of audience gullibility, Big Fish gave me cinematic food poisoning.

Cold Mountain A more reliable literary adapter than Merchant Ivory (at least of late), Anthony Minghella, director of The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, brings admirable cinematic sweep, intelligence, and detail to Charles Frazier's hugely popular historical novel. Jude Law is astutely cast as Inman, the young laborer turned Confederate soldier who makes a long, dangerous trek back to his rural North Carolina town during the waning days of the Civil War. Egging him onward through various hardships and bounty-hunter perils is the promise of a reunion with Ada (Nicole Kidman), pampered, Charleston-bred daughter of a minister (Donald Sutherland) whose premature death leaves her alone and helpless amid wartime deprivation. The original, tentative romance between principals is flash-backed between scenes from their variously harrowing present: traveling on foot, he's nearly killed several times over; she almost starves to death before spunky hillbilly Ruby (Renée Zellwegger, dynamic if borderline cartoonish) shows up to commandeer cultivation of the late minister's neglected farmland. Vivid characters who crop up en route include Philip Seymour Hoffman's wonderful Reverend Veasey, Inman's reluctant fellow traveler for a while; Eileen Atkins's woman-of-the-woods Maddy, who nurses our hero from death's door; Natalie Portman as Sara, a terrified rural widow with child; Ray Winstone as Teague, the Ada-coveting leader of a vigilante band abusing their power as Cold Mountain's "home guard"; and many more, including roles for Brendan Gleeson, Kathy Baker, Giovanni Ribisi, Jena Malone, Melora Walters, and the White Stripes' Jack White. Starting with a memorably horrific depiction of the era's savage yet impersonal warfare (dramatizing the July 1864 siege of Petersburg, Va.), Cold Mountain is never less than engaging, with passages by turns lyrical, ironic, brutal, and tender. Still, it's not quite as moving as one would like – and actually becomes least so when Ada and Inman are finally reunited in the last act. The natural warmth Law brings to his role isn't equaled – at least for me – by Kidman, an expert technician who nonetheless seems too glam (I eagerly await her starring role in The Stepford Wives remake, where those Barbie looks should be satirically just right) and calculated to convey simpler human emotions. She's a fine actor – albeit not a likable one. Cold Mountain may thus fall short at its core as a love story. But it pulls off a great deal else, enough to make this one of the year's better big movies.

Girl with a Pearl Earring Lost in Translation It girl Scarlett Johansson plays another passive protagonist in Peter Webber's debut film, an accomplished yet oddly distanced translation of Tracy Chevalier's acclaimed novel. She's forced to work as a servant in the household of master painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) when her own family's fortunes take a downturn in 1665 Delft, Holland. Uneducated yet naturally inquisitive, she gains the attention of the master as model and apprentice – both roles scandalous for a lower-class girl of the era. But while her nascent artistic intellect flowers, she's increasingly viewed as a marital threat by Vermeer's insecure bourgeois wife (Essie Davis) and mother-in-law (an imperious Judy Parfitt). She's also left prey to the undercaste lustings of Vermeer's primary patron, Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson). Eventually, suspense around realization of the titular masterpiece becomes a narrative engine. Girl with a Pearl Earring is nothing if not artful: domestic strife, moral hypocrisy, and class consciousness are neatly interwoven with an artistic inspiration that would eventually loom large in art history. It's handsomely done in aesthetic terms, polished in performance terms (though Firth was arguably much more vivid as another reluctant father figure in the throwaway teen pic What a Girl Wants). Yet for all its intelligence and skill, Girl just kinda sits there, emotionally, and becomes more schematic than moving. To an extent this may reflect the repressed nature of Calvinist 17th-century Holland – but it also lends the film a chill dramatic neutrality that doesn't fully pay off.

House of Sand and Fog Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly) is a recovering addict whose husband left a few months ago and who ekes out a living cleaning other people's houses. She's depressed. Hence she's not very quick to catch a serious bureaucratic error: nonpayment of an (erroneously charged) business tax ends up getting her evicted from her own home, which has been put up for public auction. Even with a lawyer (Frances Fisher) working on her behalf, Kathy has nowhere to go but a cheap motel, then ends up sleeping in her car. Worse, the process has advanced so far that just days after her eviction, she discovers the house is already sold: to Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley), a former colonel in the Iranian air force who sees it as the lucky fiscal break he's desperately sought since fleeing his native country. He moves in high-strung wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and peacekeeping teenage son Esmail (Jonathon Ahdout) while cosmetic improvements are made that will hopefully make this cheaply bought "bungalow" (with three bedrooms! in Marin, overlooking the ocean! he paid $45,000 for it! no, this isn't science fiction!) into a big investment windfall when resold. In the meantime, however, the immigrant family becomes much more harmonious in their new digs – while Kathy grows ever more panicked in her homeless straits, despite the sometimes misguided help of besotted (and married, with kids) police officer Lester (Ron Eldard). As mutual obstinacy, legal snafus, and some very poor tactical decisions heat up resentment on both sides, Kathy and Massoud head toward a tragic showdown. Commercial director Vadim Perelman's debut feature shaves and/or downplays some of the more extreme melodrama in Andre Dubus III's original literary potboiler. If you can get past its howling take on local real estate reality (this house would be worth a mil, at least), the film does build efficient tension via fairly credible character conflicts, situations, and performances. But House takes itself awfully seriously, to diminishing results – the last reel goes over the top, with Sir Ben chewing scenery beyond duty's call. It ends up feeling like a good little page-turning thriller that unfortunately suffers delusions of Pulitzer grandeur. As a cable flick, this would be pretty decent. As a year-end prestige release waving its cast members' prior Oscars (not among the Academy's most inspired choices, in either case) like a flag, it's pompous, a bit silly, and finally underwhelming.

The Triplets of Belleville Perhaps the first major animated export from France since René Laloux's sci-fi epics Fantastic Planet (1973) and Light Years (1988), comic book artist Sylvain Chomet's feature debut is a uniquely vinegary comedy that's like a grown-up 101 Dalmatians. A champion Tour de France bicyclist is kidnapped by bad guys and taken to America for ill purposes. His abduction spurs cross-Atlantic pursuit by grandmother Mme Souza and their corpulent, waddling dog Bruno. Their principal helpers are the titular trio, 1930s music-hall stars since fallen into decrepit eccentricity. Dialogue-free Triplets is funny, inventive, and endlessly referential. The only minus is an overpoweringly dour comic tilt that may strike some viewers as a tad too dyspeptic and cranky for full enjoyment. Like Ralph Bakshi's cartoon features of yore – albeit in a much less racy vein – Triplets is dazzling at times yet so misanthropic you might leave the theater feeling a tad soiled.