Breakfast on Pluto (Neil Jordan, 2005). Perhaps the perfect movie for those who find Cillian Murphy unbearably pretty. It's also a prety good movie for those who are primarily interested in his acting capabilities. Murphy plays an Irish transvestite who goes on an episodic quest to find the mother who abandoned him in his youth. Director Neil Jordan joined author Patrick McCabe in adapting (and apparently considerably softening) his novel, slicing the film up into multiple little pieces presenting like chapters in motion. This gives the film a bustling feel, but it also dulls the emotional impact by keeping everything unduly fragmented. Individual bits work, others falter (especially any segment that turns its attention to the "troubles"). It's only in the latter portions of the film when the narrative develops some focus and consistency that it begins to feel full and satisfying. It is fascinating to watch Murphy take on this gentle character, which he does with integrity and an utter lack of condescension. It never devolves into a pushy actor's showcase in Murphy's care.

12:08 East of Bucharest (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2006). Perhaps more of an exercise than a full ealized film, but fascinating nonetheless. Writer-director Porumboiu uses a handful of characters to consider the question of whether the bystander beneficiaries of a revolution can claim to have been actual members of that revolution. Specifically, he examines the Romanian revolution that unseated Nicolae Ceausescu and grapples with the activity, or lack thereof, in a small city in the eastern part of the country at the moment the Communist leader ceded power. Most of the film is staged as an awkward televised debate with scholars squirming in their seats and fumbling with paper as a series of callers berate them and challenge assertions of taking to the town square in protest before the Ceausescu regime officially crumbled. There is an audaciousness in this extreme simplicity and the faith that ideas and conflicted personalities can carry a film. It also offers a view of the overwhelming gray of an eastern European city, where every surface is the color of a well-trod sidewalk. That, combined with the wry humor of men clinging to the minor glory of having some small part in a long past revolution, makes for an intriguing bit intellectual business.

Broken English (Zoe Cassavetes, 2007). There's a last name that's going to carry some expectations with it if you go into the filmmaking business. Just as Nick Cassavetes hasn't been able to transform the great-taste-less-filling version of his father's aesthetic into a fully successful film, so too does Zoe Cassavetes play with wounded anxieties and urban cool and tight, tough, achingly real dialogue like a million little punches and emerge with something dismally dull. Parker Posey is a lonely single woman who bounces through bad hit-and-run relationship while her friends and family look on with furrowed brows. This may be the most stranded I've ever seen Posey. She flails around for a consistent tone or something to ground her character in, and it sometimes seems like she's trying out a few different ideas in a single scene. Her performance is plainly a mess. Cassavetes' film doesn't have enough going on in it to even earn the same description.

Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006). I've already expressed skepticism that Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar-nominated work in this film could possibly surpass the wrenching power of his work in that same year's The Departed. Having now seen Zwick's filmed condemnation of the illegal diamond trade, I can at least understand why the Academy opted for this performance: It hits on all the showy elements that awards dispensers love like they went down a carefully constructed checklist while working out the role. My gripe remains, although I can acknowledge that DiCaprio is quite good even if the role sometimes seems to contrive and calculated. There's a bit more darkness than our current crop of anti-heroes is usually afforded, but it's still couched in the protection of a fully Hollywoodized political prestige picture. (Sticking with my out-of-date Oscar diatribe, it's ridiculous that the various awards groups consistently slotted Djimon Hounsou into the supporting category for his role here considering he may very well have more screen time than DiCaprio and it's a story that belongs as much to his character as the white guy who was considered the sole lead.) All that noted, the film's not too bad, a tepid assessment that still puts it in the upper tier of Zwick's filmography.

Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007). In which Disney tries to have its magic apple and eat it too. In the film, a standard-issue Disney animated princess is banished to the flesh-and-blood reality of New York City by an evil enchantress. The fish-out-of-water scenario is given added meta-kick when it's the tropes of cartoon romances (and, in a way, all romantic comedies) that the sweet, floundering fish can't gibe with her new surroundings. The script, still trying to appeal to all the little Disney fans likely to fill theater seats and repeatedly watch their eventual DVDs, isn't as pointed or clever as it could be, and it eventually settles for caving in to many of the conceits it initially satirizes. There's also significant problems with the tumultuous concluding conflict which is staged so clumsily that it feels anti-climatic. What the film does have going for it is a pair of robustly realized performances that are completely unashamed in their broadness, a quality absolutely essential to their success. James Marsden plays a charming prince following his beloved to the dirty reality of our world with a vivid doltishness and hilariously misplaced self-regard. Amy Adams has to play the same cartoonish naivety but infuse it with enough emotional grounding to make her character's arc meaningful, a tricky task she accomplishes with aplomb. She uses her giant eyes (seemingly the size of full saucers at times) like not-so-secret weapons and beams her way through a performance that is consistently fun to watch.