Happy New Year. Below are several good-to-great holiday movies, one disappointment, and a little something called Notre Musique. And because nobody lives on flicks alone, I've buried down at the bottom an album worth digging out.

The Aviator (Warner Bros. Pictures and Miramax Films)

No telling what Martin Scorsese's diehard, tough-guy fans will make of this smooth, efficient, somewhat cluttered biopic. (Damn thing's practically a studio picture, a notion that once seemed wholly foreign to the one-time raging bull.) Regardless, Leonardo DiCaprio's admirers will have even more reason to pontificate about his greatness. Intensely merging Howard Hughes' boyish glee, competitive fervor, and crumbling sanity, Leo's portrayal requires unshakable charisma, not gimmicks, to move us. Rebounding from Gangs of New York, he and his director both do a superb job of delineating the limits of ambition and tracing the destructive path of madness. If DiCaprio's star seems to be rising even higher, then Scorsese's legacy is handling its middle period quite nicely. The director's done troubled outcasts throughout his career, but although he may have lost a little of his early zest, maturity has done wonders for his ability to make people seem real — not just figments of other movies. As an added bonus, Cate Blanchett is the Katharine Hepburn of this or any year.

Ocean's Twelve (Warner Bros. Pictures)

As a slap in the face of the indie "art" clique, Steven Soderbergh makes his most artistic, stylized, exhilarating cinema as a sellout hack. Whether with the original or this confident sequel, he never stops spinning out arresting scenes and sequences — even if it's at the service of a film about nothing. Sure, there's no reason for this movie to exist, but would you rather breeze through it or drown in the ponderous ooze of Solaris ever again? And, for the record, I think the Julia Roberts twist is brilliant.

Finding Neverland (Miramax Films)

You can't take this "inspired by true events" tale at face value. It feels too doctored, too sentimental, and a little too pat. But Johnny Depp does achieve the impossible: He demonstrates how a grown man could play with children without making us feely icky. Moving as far away from the grit of Monster's Ball as could be imagined, director Marc Forster accentuates the magical, lyrical qualities of this prestige-picture material, but he also knows how permanently sad the adult world remains. (In fact, that may be the one theme that links his two films.) Its British locations, star supporting cast, theatrical pedigree, period setting, and four-hankie ending will guarantee the film a certain number of instant supporters and detractors. Put me somewhere in the middle.

The Sea Inside (Fine Line Features)

Director Alejandro Amenabar wants to make a life-affirming film about euthanasia, and I guess I should be impressed how well he pulls off that dichotomy. But it's difficult to love the film when Javier Bardem's warm performance works so strongly against his character's wish to end it all. Ramon Sampedro's last 30 years on Earth were as a quadriplegic, but his was not an unloved, painful existence. He was sexy, he was funny, he could write, he could dream — and Bardem brings this all to life without any of the disease-of-the-week tricks we might expect. Characters can make iffy decisions, but I have to at least recognize what's shaping questionable choices. Maybe my own lust for life is simply too strong, but Sampedro's intentions never feel like the sensible wishes of a wonderful man. Quite the contrary: They seem like a horrible injustice to his great spirit.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Touchstone Pictures)

Wes Anderson finds these things funny and/or quirky: three-legged dogs, knit caps, weird uniforms, educational films, goofy portrait paintings, David Bowie tunes sung in other tongues, men running in a formation, and the name Zissou. As a conjurer of worlds, he renders them more fiercely than anyone I can name. But what is one to feel? What is one to care? I can always switch off my higher hopes for him as a filmmaker and just groove on his visuals. But, as of now, he's a permanently underwhelming next big thing.

Bad Education (Sony Pictures Classics)

So sneaky you never see where it's going until it's too late, Almodovar's latest is pure pulp fiction — if you could actually turn the pages of a movie, this would be how you do it. Cheeky but serious, sarcastic but not nihilistic, his tale of childhood crimes that never heal is both more stylish and more moving than Eastwood's Mystic River clompfest. The least campy of his "mature" period, this may also be Almodovar's best — which means his sexiest, funniest, meanest, and most stylishly unpredictable, too.

Spanglish (Columbia Pictures)

Before Punch-Drunk Love, there was some question whether or not Mr. Sandler could act. Turns out he could, and this film clinches it. So shall we move on to more pressing concerns: Can Ms. Leoni act? Since her early flukes, Flirting with Disaster and Bad Boys, she's been exceptionally unlikable — first in Woody Allen's disastrous Hollywood Ending and now in James L. Brooks' latest uneven glob of great romantic scenes and wacky digressions. Brooks stabs at something relevant — how foreigners both long for and resist American integration — but he can't make his gringo family worthy of embodying our divided country's well-meaning, spoiled-rotten spirit. Is there any question Sandler should end up with his housekeeper Paz Vega? And can we go with him?

Notre Musique (Wellspring Media)

In my very under-researched opinion, Godard was never the filmmaker Truffaut was — too intellectual, too contemptuous, too pretentious. But there is something bracingly challenging about his work, which is why although I can't say I like his latest, I have to acknowledge that I respect it. I respect the hell out of it. Too intellectual, too contemptuous, too pretentious — that's still all true. But his film's division into archival-footage hell, present-day purgatory, and speculative heaven creates a series of intriguing capsules of riveting ideas and amazing imagery. But as usual with this guy, it just doesn't add up to as much as he thinks it does. But, hey, at least the musique he selected is pretty great. And his notion of a heaven guarded by the U.S. government isn't satire or commentary — it's a smart assessment of our current administration.

Trashcan Sinatras, Weightlifting (spinART Records)

Tons of bands work the audience-as-lover angle, but Francis Reader's group plays the role of cute-girl-you-never-noticed-in-high-school. Look at her now, though: wistful, funny, gorgeous. Where has she been? And can I talk to her? If all the world is Before Sunset, then the Trashcan Sinatras are Julie Delpy — mysterious and elegant and just out of reach. Lots of bands hire string sections and pull out the acoustic guitars to prove how pretty their gloom can sound, but the best can evoke summer suns, the perfect wife, and optimism with the same simple instruments. These men from Scotland have been gone so long nobody missed them. That's part of what's great here: Effortlessly, they advertise their sane, sensible little corner of the world as a hidden treasure worth exploring.

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