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From the popular to the prestigious, this week's new movies offer plenty of variety. For some people, it is traditional to go to the movies over the long Christmas holiday. And for a change, this year's offerings include risk-taking films as well as the expected movies conceived simply to rake in money. Among the former group is this year's possible Oscar winner for best picture, a deserving movie if there ever was one. See if you can figure out to which film I'm referring.

Two of the movies reviewed here -- Flight of the Phoenix and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events -- opened Friday. Meet the Fockers, A Very Long Engagement, Bad Education (which screened at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival) and The Phantom of the Opera open today. The Aviator, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and Fat Albert, which was not previewed in time for our deadlines, will open Christmas Day.

LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
Starring: Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Timothy Spall, Catherine O'Hara, Cedric the Entertainer and Meryl Streep
Rated: PG
Web site: www.unfortunateeventsmovie.com

Children are very lucky these days to see some of their favorite stories transferred to the screen with such loving care, and the Lemony Snicket books are no exception. Based on the first three installments in the series -- The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window -- this highly inventive movie is extremely fun in its own scary little way.

In the dark mode of classic fairy tales, A Series of Unfortunate Events begins with the three Baudelaire children -- Violet (Emily Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken) and Sunny (played by twins Kara and Shelby Hoffman) -- becoming orphans when their enormous house burns down and their parents perish. It sounds awful, and things get worse: This is not about happy times.

The orphaned children, charismatically portrayed by all four young actors, are sent to a series of awful guardians and questionable relatives. As Violet comments: "Does it strike you as odd that none of our relatives are related to us?" The most diabolical guardian is Count Olaf, played with evil vigor by a superb Jim Carrey, who shows up in other roles. Other relatives include the paranoid Aunt Josephine (a warmly funny Meryl Streep), who lives in a rickety old house on a cliff overlooking the sea, and the cheerful, welcoming Uncle Monty (Billy Connolly), a herpetologist surrounded by slithery snakes. Cedric the Entertainer and Catherine O'Hara appear in small roles.

Violet, Klaus and Sunny are, respectively, an inventor, a reader and a biter. Violet invents odd, Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, Klaus reads everything he can get his hands on, and the adorable toddler Sunny can't seem to keep her mouth off of things. The oft-repeated image of Sunny dangling from a wooden kitchen table is hilarious. Narrator Lemony Snicket (Jude Law, who's seen only in silhouette) says the children's best guardians "are people who can appreciate unique children who can read, invent and bite."

With exceptional production design by Rick Heinrichs and strong direction by Brad Silberling, A Series of Unfortunate Events is quite a fortunate event for moviegoers.

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Jean-Pierre Becker and Dominique Bettenfeld
Rated: R
Web site: www.averylongengagement.com

If you want a really meaty and strikingly unusual movie for Christmas, this exceptional French film may be your best bet. From the creative director and charismatic star of Amélie comes one of the most unusual war movies you will ever see.

Set in World War I, A Very Long Engagement is actually a mystery, one that unravels at a deliberate pace, compelling attention. Based on the 1991 novel by Sebastien Japrisot, the story concerns a young woman named Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), who refuses to accept that her fiancé (Gaspard Ulliel) has been killed in the war and searches tirelessly for him for three long years. She's told that he was one of five wounded-but-court-martialed soldiers sent into no-man's land, a hell on earth between the French and German lines. None of the soldiers is thought to have survived the experience.

But Mathilde doesn't believe the story, and her painstaking search is on. The childlike and lovingly innocent-seeming Tautou demonstrates her unique ability to stir great emotion with a plaintive glance from her sparkling, dark eyes. Look for Jodie Foster, displaying perfect French, in a small but critical role.

Not only is the movie accomplished in its dark and lonely war re-creations, but its emotional draw is considerable. This is a love story for the ages and, in the realm of great World War I dramas, this adaptation rivals Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory and Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet dabbled in American moviemaking with the very dark Alien: Resurrection in 1997. His early, even-darker French films (co-directed with Mark Caro) The City of Lost Children (1995) and Delicatessen (1991), show amazing creativity, but none of them presages this kind of greatness. It's a welcome surprise.

BAD EDUCATION
Starring: Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Daniel Giménez Cacho and Javier Cámara
Rated: NC-17
Web site: www.sonyclassics.com/badeducation

Another prominent European filmmaker, Spain's Pedro Almodóvar, offers a gift of a different kind this Christmas. Bad Education, which closed the FLIFF last month, is a compelling yet odd mystery.

Almodóvar, an openly gay writer-director, frequently includes gay characters in his movies, though his plots more often revolve around heterosexual life. Bad Education is his gayest movie to date, featuring two men who had a shared, unpleasant experience as schoolboys but whose adult lives have taken different turns. One has become a moviemaker, the other a hustler. The nonjudgmental Almodóvar fashions a convoluted plot that transforms a priest who has molested children into a very complex character, not a one-dimensional villain. But the movie may be best-remembered for the performance of the transcendent Gael García Bernal, who plays a transvestite. Looking like Juliette Lewis' younger, prettier sister when he's in drag, the actor surprisingly shows off quite a bit of his body, which should thrill some people in the audience, as will the suspenseful movie itself.

The film opens today at Sunrise Cinemas 11, Sunrise Cinemas Gateway in Fort Lauderdale, Sunrise Cinemas Mizner Park in Boca Raton and Regal South Beach.

THE AVIATOR
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, John C. Reilly and Alan Alda
Rated: R
Web site: www.theaviatormovie.com

Even though many people may be skeptical of its potential entertainment value, this biopic of aviation pioneer and Hollywood rebel Howard Hughes is fascinating and well-filmed. It represents the first substantial adult role for Leonardo DiCaprio, who spearheaded the project. Yes, he was wonderfully ornery in 2002's Catch Me if You Can, but he still seemed like that boyish immigrant on the bow of the Titanic who mawkishly screamed, "I'm king of the world." In The Aviator, he leaps into adulthood portraying a gutsy and borderline insane man, a visionary who helped propel this country toward its dream of traveling by air, making the world seem smaller and more accessible. DiCaprio masters this role with sparkling charm, intelligence and, despite the character's lack of it, unwavering stability.

The spoiled son of a Texas industrialist, Hughes didn't see any limit to what he could accomplish in life -- save his internal demons. He had tons of money, so he followed his whims, from moviemaking (the World War I epic Hell's Angels and the original Scarface) to building bigger and bigger experimental planes (witness the boondoggle known as the Spruce Goose). He was a genius who helped catapult Trans World Airlines into prominence. And he was a death-defying test pilot, who almost died in one spectacular crash.

Hughes' story also involves simmering sex, notably in his steamy but substantial affairs with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett, doing a dead-on impression) and Ava Gardner (a less impressive Kate Beckinsale). In critical supporting roles are Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe, the head of Pan American Airlines, who battled Hughes in commercial aviation; John C. Reilly as Noah Dietrich, Hughes' miracle-working financial officer; and Alan Alda as Sen. Owen Brewster, Hughes' chief nemesis in a compelling political subplot. Also look for cameos by Gwen Stefani as blond bombshell Jean Harlow and the ubiquitous Jude Law as Hollywood bad boy Errol Flynn.

In most modern yarns, Hughes is depicted as a crazy billionaire who degenerated into a mad recluse. He was a true eccentric who wore tennis shoes with Sears and Roebuck suits and fought Hollywood censors over the right to show Jane Russell's considerable cleavage in The Outlaw, known as the first "sex Western." The Aviator demonstrates his obsessive-compulsive attitude toward cleanliness and his steadily declining mental health, but the movie also shows his brilliance and willingness to gamble, which ultimately made him a great and significant person.

Director Martin Scorsese makes this his most dynamic film since Raging Bull. Proving why he's one of Hollywood's most esteemed directors, he gets a boost from the incisive screenplay by Josh Logan (Gladiator) and master camerawork from four-time Oscar nominee Robert Richardson, who won for JFK. The Aviator affords viewers that rare moviegoing experience -- the chance to actually learn something from a film. The movie screams importance but not in a bad, spoon-fed way. This is a movie of substance that represents the best that Hollywood can produce, suitably about one of its own pioneers.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum
Rated: R
Web site: www.lifeaquatic.com

Writer-director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Bottle Rocket) grasps for mainstream respectability in this oddball movie, which requires a fair amount of interest and knowledge in the famed sea explorer Jacques Cousteau, who died in 1997 at the age of 87. Cousteau made tons of documentaries, including the long-running TV series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Without this background knowledge, viewers won't get many many of this spoof's inside jokes.

With droll, deadpan humor and zero semblance of a French accent, Bill Murray portrays Steve Zissou (pronounced Zee-sue) as an arrogant, ignorant, sexist, homophobic, almost-idiotic undersea adventurer. Was Cousteau really like this? Maybe Anderson knows something we don't.

Zissou finds himself in a pickle as the story begins and he debuts his latest documentary to an unappreciative audience. His most trusted collaborator is eaten by a mythical shark; his wife, Eleanor (a gloriously understated Anjelica Huston), threatens to leave him; and a pilot from Kentucky named Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson, restraining his smart-alecky side) shows up claiming to be his son. Yet Zissou stays remarkably optimistic, offering every visitor his trademark gift: a red cap and a Speedo. He decides he wants Ned to stick around and even renames him Kingsley Ned Zissou. A snoopy reporter (Cate Blanchett) comes onboard the team's ship and attracts both Steve and Ned. By admission, Zissou's wife is not only the brains of the business -- "Who will tell me all the Latin names of the fish?" Zissou laments when Eleanor leaves -- but also its financier, as her family provides the big bucks for the whole operation.

This is the type of film you're either going to get or you aren't. Is it a mainstream movie? Hell, no. Is it Oscar material? Emphatically not. But taken on its own terms, The Life Aquatic is still a rather clever spoof, filmed with gorgeous clarity and offering some precious bits of witty humor.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Starring: Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver, Ciarán Hinds and Simon Callow
Rated: PG-13
Web site: www.phantomthemovie.com

A beautifully designed movie with a fragile, breakout performance by Emmy Rossum (Mystic River, The Day After Tomorrow), The Phantom of the Opera presents what might be expected: a blowsy musical that isn't going to lure new fans into its stodgy corridors. Already-converted supporters of Andrew Lloyd Webber's operatic form of musical (Evita, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar) are probably the only ones who can tolerate two-plus hours of his minor-key and often-unhummable tunes. The story of the Phantom (a straining Gerard Butler, who's no match for Broadway's Michael Crawford), a disfigured and bitter artist who haunts a theater and, subsequently, innocent chorus girl Christine Daae (Rossum), is clearly a classic by now. Minnie Driver, whose vocals were reportedly dubbed, overplays an obnoxious Italian diva who loses her job to the beautiful and agreeable Christine.

Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever, Phone Booth) was an odd choice to direct this adaptation. His challenge was to make the work more intimate for the screen, but this musical is too grandiose to be scaled down. Butler's uninterrupted, atonal singing, though, will put you to sleep. Dialogue is used to jump-start the story, but as the film progresses, the singing begins to sound a tad like caterwauling. The odd result is that The Phantom of the Opera can be both boring and agitating. Still, it remains visually stunning throughout.

FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi, Tyrese Gibson, Miranda Otto and Hugh Laurie
Rated: PG-13
Web site: www.flightofthephoenix.com

When the airline pilot played by Dennis Quaid yells, "We're not garbage, we're people!" you can pretty much assume that things have gotten a little desperate in Flight of the Phoenix, an unexpectedly fun if completely improbable action thriller. Fans of the TV series Lost might find complete joy in this plane-crash yarn. The crew from an oil rig gets stranded in the Gobi desert after its plane, flown by the rather surly and bossy pilot Frank Towns (Quaid) and co-pilot AJ (Tyrese Gibson), goes down. In this remake of a 1965 film, a bizarre man among the 11 survivors offers the crew some hope. Elliott, played with extreme strangeness by a blond-haired and crazy-eyed Giovanni Ribisi, says that he designs airplanes and that the crew can rebuild the plane from the wreckage.

The movie enters a holding pattern in which the men and one woman (Miranda Otto of The Lord of the Rings) prepare for takeoff. Of course, there are many setbacks and frantic missteps along the way. Flight of the Phoenix offers a surprising number of jolts, not the least of which is the plane crash. If you want to be shaken from your Christmas Day lethargy, Flight of the Phoenix will do the trick. Considering the surprising number of people who've seen the awful National Treasure, this much better action movie deserves an appreciative crowd.

MEET THE FOCKERS
Starring: Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo and Tim Blake Nelson
Rated: PG-13
Web site: www.meetthefockers.com

It's unusual to see four actors the caliber of Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand and Blythe Danner in a comedy, but Meet the Fockers has been so blessed. Not quite as funny or novel as Meet the Parents, this sequel still manages to be entertaining, with several clever and cute scenarios.

While getting Hoffman and Streisand to play the parents of Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is a great example of stunt casting, the veteran actors actually make believable parents. Greg's mother, Roz, is a senior sex therapist, while his retired-lawyer father, Bernie, stays home and plays Mr. Mom. Their chosen occupations and lifestyles have the potential to scandalize Greg's rigid future in-laws, Jack (De Niro) and Dina (Danner) Byrnes. Macho retired CIA agent Jack is a little put off by the prospect of a stay-at-home dad, but Hoffman plays the warm and cuddly Bernie to the hilt in the movie's best performance.

The presence of the Byrnes' grandson, Little Jack (twins Spencer and Bradley Pickren), is the source of plenty of laughs, particularly when the inept Greg stays home to baby-sit his future nephew and ends up accidentally teaching him his first word -- and not a preferred one. Also returning is the Byrnes' spoiled, toilet-flushing cat Mr. Jinx, matched only by the Fockers' humping little dog, Moses.

Much of the film's humor derives from precious slapstick that works most of the time. Streisand is particularly funny trying to get De Niro to loosen up, and Stiller generously gives most of the laughs to his senior partners in comedy. Fans of Meet the Parents won't be disappointed by this mostly pleasant production.