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Although the decision to stage a massive disaster in the heart of Katrina Country will strike many as an unfortunate lapse in judgment, it's the early scenes in Déjà Vu that are the most compelling, as Denzel's Doug Carlin uses his wits to stockpile various clues that will lead him in the right direction. The film is so accomplished as a straightforward thriller, in fact, that it feels obtrusive not only when it starts to pay more attention to the satellite images than to the characters, but also when it introduces its menagerie of fuzzy sci-fi fancies. By the time Carlin climbs into the time machine, you realize that a Marty McFly cameo might be the only way to salvage this dreary plunge into preposterousness. No such luck.

THE NATIVITY STORY
**
DIRECTED BY Catherine Hardwicke
STARS Keisha Castle-Hughes, Ciaran Hinds

There's no small irony in the fact that 16-year-old Australian actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, who plays the Virgin Mary in the new Biblical drama The Nativity Story, has recently revealed that she herself is pregnant -- an unexpected development that should lead to plenty of headaches for New Line Cinema's PR department.

Normally, I wouldn't pass along such chatter, especially since the holier-than-thou trolls on the IMDb message boards are one step away from hunting her down and stoning her to death on the street (Lord knows they don't need any local recruits added to their cause). But that tidbit will at least raise eyebrows; The Nativity Story, on the other hand, fails to even raise a pulse. That's a shame, because after Mel Gibson's garish snuff film, The Passion of the Christ, the time is right for a tasteful and respectful Biblical tale that inspires awe and amazement instead of rage and revulsion.

Unfortunately, this new film errs in the direction of too much propriety. Director Catherine Hardwicke, whose Thirteen was a wild and wicked look at out-of-control LA teens, seems fearful of adding any semblance of passion to this interpretation, resulting in a stillborn drama that inspires yawns more than anything else. Viewers in the mood for some celluloid religion this holiday season would do best to just stay home and rent the exceptional 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth instead.

Castle-Hughes, whose work in the lyrical Whale Rider earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination a few years ago, is curiously flat as Mary; the three wise men, meanwhile, are asked to generate so many nyuks during the film that they end up coming across as the Three Stooges. And as the Jew-baiting, would-be Christ killer Herod, Ciaran Hinds is suitably dour, though the question remains: Wasn't Mel Gibson available for this role?

FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS
**
DIRECTED BY Steven Shainberg
STARS Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr.

Before she committed suicide in 1971 at the age of 48, Diane Arbus spent the last decade of her life building up a still-controversial portfolio in which her subjects -- whether freaks, outsiders or ordinary folks -- were photographed in an unblinking style that only served to accentuate the unusual or unsettling. Her true story would have made for compelling enough cinema, but director Steven Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson, who previously teamed for the far superior Secretary, decided a fanciful interpretation of a brief period in her life would be the way to go.

Fair enough. But the problem with Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus is that it doesn't go far enough. In imagining that the artistic awakening of Arbus (Nicole Kidman) was influenced by the (fictional) neighbor living in the loft above her -- a former circus freak whose entire body is covered in hair (Robert Downey Jr., miscast even under all that shag) -- Shainberg and Wilson have made a surprisingly timid movie that isn't nearly as adventurous or risk-taking as Arbus (or even Kidman, whose film choices continue to startle). There are repeated visual references to the trippy world of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, but for the most part, this film is as comfortably familiar as the various screen incarnations of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. The more risqué elements are carefully ironed out, resulting in a movie that doesn't evoke the eeriness of Arbus' classic "Identical Twins" as much it brings to mind the harmlessness of C.M. Coolidge's "Dogs Playing Poker" series.

HAPPY FEET
**1/2
DIRECTED BY George Miller
STARS Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman