Film - Go with the flow - or you'll crash on the rocks. By Mark Kermode The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (15) The Sea Inside (PG)

In a sublime moment from the patchy comedy Quick Change, Bill Murray holds up a bank while dressed as a circus clown, replete with loon face, baggy pants and funny feet. "What the hell kind of a clown are you anyway?" splutters an outraged official, to which Murray (with trademark hangdog panache) replies: "The 'crying on the inside' kind, I guess."

It's a phrase that perfectly encapsulates Murray's deadpan appeal: a Keaton-esque mask of indiffer-ence, hiding an unexplored ocean of emotional turmoil. Think of the beautifully blank look on Murray's face as his demonically possessed date starts levitating ("This is a new look for you") and talking in tongues in Ghostbusters; or his barely registered shudder as he remembers an abortive sex-change operation ("Mexico was a nightmare") in Ed Wood; or even the crushingly off-hand manner of his hotel-lobby parting from soulmate Scarlett Johansson in the closing moments of Lost in Translation. These are the moments that divide the world into those who think Murray is a genius and those who don't know nuffink.

In The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Murray pours the sublimely melancholic porridge of his grimly bearded face into a role that brilliantly exploits his brand of majestic miserabilism. He plays the eponymous washed-up oceanographer whose screen adventures once rivalled those of Jacques Cousteau, but who has sunk to the level of embittered has-been on a final mission to find and kill the "jaguar shark" that ate his best friend. Estranged from his wife and "brains of the operation" business partner Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), dogged by the spiky, pregnant journalist Jane (Cate Blanchett) and mistrusted by a borderline mutinous crew ("Don't you like me any more?"), Steve sets sail in the Belafonte, a rust bucket, within whose cross-sectional compartments we observe the crabby disintegration of Team Zissou. Only the arrival of Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), a strapping young buck who may or may not be Steve's long-lost love child ("This is Ned - he's probably my son"), offers him a glimmer of salvation - the chance to be the father he never knew he was. As he tells Ned with characteristic empathy: "You're supposed to be my son, so I did want to meet you . . . just in case."

More expansive and less formal than writer/director Wes Anderson's previous satires Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic seems to go with the flow, splashing around in a sea of surreal invention, encountering the fantastical sea creatures of stop-motion whizz Henry Selick (director of The Nightmare Before Christmas) and accompanied by the acoustic sounds of Seu Jorge performing Portuguese translations of David Bowie's greatest hits. If this all sounds too wacky and whimsical for its own good, fear not - while the overall structure may tend towards zany indulgence, the dominant register remains determinedly droll, defined by the saggy exasperation of Murray's schlumping face, which stares straight out into the audience, apparently daring us to laugh. Torn between heartbreak and hilarity, I found myself squirming with conflicted delight, braying like a circus clown on the outside while merrily crying away on the inside. It's the perfect response to a Bill Murray movie, although a few former Anderson acolytes may be baffled and bewildered by the over-the-top oddness of it all.

From the magical froth of The Life Aquatic to the more morbid undercurrents of The Sea Inside, Alejandro Amenabar's dramatisation of Ramon Sampedro's battle to die with dignity after three decades of quadriplegia. Films about euthanasia must inevitably negotiate the treacherous waters of weary worthiness, and despite vibrant contributions from the cast, The Sea Inside doesn't quite steer clear of the turgid dramatic rocks.

On the plus side, Javier Bardem turns in a terrific performance as the charismatic spirit who learns to "cry with a smile" for the friends and family who attend his every need and who are, ironically, touched by the joie de vivre of a man ready to die. Feisty encounters with a sanctimonious, wheelchair-bound priest and a ribald relationship with the unruly Rosa (Lola Duenas) lend a gutsy charm. But a mawkish romance with Julia (Belen Rueda) - a composite character who "represents a group of women that loved Ramon after he was incapacitated", and whose degenerative condition neatly mirrors his - smacks too much of convenient contrivance. As for the music, the gradual transition from classical opera to sub-Tommy pop pomp (Amenabar composed the original score) threatens to drown The Sea Inside in soapy histrionics, even as its rewardingly imaginative dream sequences take flight.

A brave film, then, and one whose heart is in the right place, even if its head is somewhat fogged by the whiff of trauma-of-the-week "issue-tainment".

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