With an anguished wail, Larry (Clive Owen) asks where he can find intimacy. In a private room in a strip club, where the rules say that you can look, but not touch. The stripper’s ex-boyfriend is now romantically involved with Larry’s ex-wife, Anna (Julia Roberts). Does he really want intimacy or does he want revenge? Or does he just want the stripper to bend over and touch the floor?

Probably all of the above. This is a searing story of hurt and betrayal with two men and two women who reach for each other and hurt each other in almost every combination. They may get, as in the movie’s title “Closer,” but do they ever really get close?

Larry is a dermatologist. Anna is a photographer. Alice (Natalie Portman) is a stripper turned waitress turned stripper again. And Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer who has written a novel. Larry first talks to Anna as the result of a prank — Dan pretended to be Anna on an online sex chat and set up the meeting. Anna and Larry become a couple and then get married, but she is having an affair with Dan, who is living with Alice, the stripper turned waitress whose life inspired the main character of his novel. One of the portraits in Anna’s art show is the photograph she took of Alice, who had just discovered that Dan was attracted to Anna. And all of this roundelay is delivered in glossy dialogue by glossy people in glossy surroundings.

This film is more clever than wise, and it is not as clever as it thinks it is. Those in the audience who have been angered and betrayed by love might find it validating, but that does not make it insightful. The main characters toss around the L-word a great deal, but there is no evidence that any of them even see each other, much less know or love each other.

Neither Anna nor Alice are really characters; they are somewhere between a fantasy and a narrative convenience. Their only function is to drive the men crazy, mostly by just being gorgeous and arbitrary.

The center of the movie is the relationship between the two men. Larry and Dan send instant messages to each other in an anonymous sex chat room, Dan pretending to be a woman. Their connections with the women in their lives have more to do with the struggle between the men over power and territory than with knowing or caring for Anna and Alice. Larry demands to know Alice’s real name, but neither he nor Dan ask her for any details about her past or preferences or aspirations.

The script has some snappy lines and Nichols keeps guessing by not telling us how much time has passed between the encounters. Portman is dazzling to watch. Owen and Law do well (those who saw Law cry in the very different I Heart Huckabee’s will see his range when Dan cries here). But this is not the best use of Roberts’ considerable talents; it may be that Nichols was relying more on the shock value of hearing America’s sweetheart speak about oral sex in explicit terms than on her ability to convey a superficially conceived character. It’s always fun to watch pretty people say clever things, but for all its knowing banter about truth and lies and love, like its characters, it is a little too much in love with itself, and no wiser or happier when it’s over.

Parents should know that this movie is filled with extremely adult material, with exceptionally explicit sexual references, including adultery and oral sex. There are scenes in a strip club. Characters drink, smoke, and use very strong, explicit, and graphic language. There are tense and upsetting scenes of jealousy, anger, and betrayal.

Families who see this movie should talk about what the characters were really looking for. What did playwright/screenwriter Patrick Marber want to show us with the occupations of the four characters? What do we learn from the name on Alice’s passport? Why do two different people say “Hello, stranger?” Were Dan and Anna using Alice by writing the novel and taking her photo? They may also want to talk about how genuine trust and intimacy are established.

Families who appreciate this movie will also like Carnal Knowledge, also directed by Nichols, and Dangerous Liaisons and Valmont, two different movie versions of the epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos.

An officer about to arrest a beautiful blind dancer who works in a brothel tells her that if she can win the “Echo Game” he will let her go. She is surrounded by 100 drums. And then, in one of the most extraordinary scenes ever put on film, as the officer tosses stones at the drums, she must listen carefully to replicate the patterns of the sounds through her dance by tossing her long satin sleeves to strike the drums in the same precise rhythms. Her arm sweeps across so that the sleeve extends far enough to pull the officer’s sword from its sheath. And then things really start to heat up.

Director Yimou Zhang (Hero, Raise the Red Lantern) is a master of ravishing, rapturous images drenched with glowing, jewel-like colors, unfurling like a rich tapestry. The fight scenes are dramatic, as much a part of telling the story and revealing the characters as the dialogue and the plot. And they are beautiful, like exquisite blood-soaked ballets.

In the brothel, all the girls have taken fancy flower names except the beautiful blind dancer, who is simply named Mei (Ziyi Zhang). A drunken playboy captivated by her tries to rip her clothes off and an officer arrives to arrest them both. That is when Mei shows her prowess in the Echo Game. But she is arrested anyway when she attacks the officer. It seems she is an operative for the rebel House of Flying Daggers. She is about to be tortured when she is rescued by the drunken playboy, who tells her he is on her side. They escape together, followed by the soldiers.

And like all movie journeys, the characters are on a spiritual quest as they travel. Love and loyalty will be tested and lessons will be learned. The confrontations and battle scenes reveal the characters and move the story forward as they dazzle us with breathtaking images and stunning stuntwork. A shower of daggers, a bamboo-forest skirmish that looks like it was choreographed by Cirque du Soleil, and a final encounter in a snow-covered field are striking, moving, and dramatic all at the same time. But the most exquisite image of all is the face of Ziyi Zhang, a brilliant actress, a classically trained dancer, and a fearless combatant. The story may seem unfinished (there is one shot of an advancing army that leaves us wondering what happened next), but ultimately it is as spare and graceful as a calligraphic symbol.

Parents should know that the movie is extremely violent. The fight scenes are beautiful but deadly, with graphic injuries and many deaths. There are sexual references and situations including a scene in a brothel and attempted sexual assault. A strength of the movie is its portrayal of women and of Chinese men and women as strong, brave, and loyal.

Families who see this movie should talk about the difficult choices presented to Mei, Jin, and Leo. How did they decide on what was most important to them?

Families who see this movie will also appreciate Hero by the same director and the award-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, both starring Ziyi Zhyang.

A shy teacher comes to a school for wayward boys and decides to organize a choir.

This plot could be a cheesy after-school special or Sister Act 3. Or, it could be this lovely, tender, unpretentious French film, a small delight.

A distinguished orchestra conductor returns to his home for his mother’s funeral. A visitor arrives with a book under his arm. They have not seen each other for more than half a century. But once they were students together at a school for boys with behavior problems. The visitor has brought the diary of their teacher, Clement Mathieu (Gerard Jugnot). As they open the book, we are taken back to the teacher’s arrival at the school.

Rachin (François Berléand), the principal, is a petty tyrant who believes the only way to run the school is by controling the boys with brutal punishment. He has no hesitation in punishing the innocent if he cannot identify the guilty.

The shy Mathieu, who feels like a failure, shows a talent for getting the boys to trust and listen to him. Though past failures made him vow to give up music, the boys’ discovery of his sheet music leads him to invite them to sing for him. Several have enthusiasm, and one, Morhange (Jacques Perrin) has talent.

There is a gentle authenticity in the portrayal of the Mathieu and the boys, the music is glorious, and the ending is perfection.

Parents should know that the movie has some very crude schoolboy language and some violence. Children are punished by being beaten and a prank results in a serious injury.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Rachin and Mathieu have such different ideas about how to handle the boys. Why couldn’t Mathieu tell Morhage’s mother how he felt about her?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy two Disney films about boys’ choirs, Perfect Harmony and Almost Angels (a fictional story set in the Vienna Boys’ Choir). They might also want to go to a concert featuring a choir like this one, or they might even like to try singing with one.

This meretricious claptrap is exactly the kind of baloney it purports to be saving us from.

There’s a reliable genre of family holiday movie that is made up of three-fourths slapstick followed by 15 minutes of sentiment. In this case, however, the characters are so unpleasant, the jokes so un-funny, the sentiment so blatantly hypocritical that the result is as heavy and unappetizing as last year’s figgy pudding.

The Kranks always do Christmas in a big way. But with their daughter Blair (Julie Gonzalo) departing for Peru, the prospect of a Christmas at home doesn’t seem too appealing. Luther (Tim Allen) proposes to Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) that they skip Christmas. For half of the $6100 they spent on Christmas the previous year, they can take a luxury cruise. After Nora persuades Luther that they must still make their annual $600 charitable contributions, she agrees.

At first, they feel liberated from the pressure and hassles of Christmas. But when their friends and neighbors start to put pressure on them to conform. Luther is defiant, but Nora is uncertain. The neighbors are furious.

Instead of getting ready for Christmas, Luther and Nora get ready for their cruise. Just as they are ready to leave, their daughter calls. She will be home for Christmas after all, with her new boyfriend, Enrique, and she wants everything to be just the way it always has been. And she’ll be home in just a few hours.

This means that we are subjected to excruciating set-ups about the outrage of the community when the Kranks refuse to put their enormous Frosty up on the roof (“Free Frosty! Free Frosty!” they chant), turn down the Boy Scouts who come by to sell them a tree, and ice the walk to keep away the carolers. Then there are further sit-not-coms as they go to a tanning parlor (Curtis lets it all hang out in a tiny bikini) and Luther gets Botox in his face and can’t close his mouth to chew his lunch. There are equally un-funny escapades as everyone slips on the icy walk and as everyone scrambles to get everything ready for Blair. There are useless digressions about a robber and about a mystery man who seems to know everyone. The fact that Blair has a boyfriend who is a FOREIGNER is supposed to be funny. A cop spells his name wrong. Hahahaha!

One of the Kranks’ neighbors develop a very serious health problem, a particularly manipulative and awkward plot development that is too-obviously inserted to get our sympathy and give Luther a growth experience.

But what takes this movie from the harmless trifle category into the genuinely toxic is its attempt to leverage all of its audiences’ feelings about the best of Christmas while having no sense at all of what makes those feelings matter. Nora’s only contact with her clergyman is contrived so that he sees her in her skimpy bathing suit. The film’s phony attempt to make fun of the craziness, commercialism, and conformity of the holiday season is in fact just one more example, so fundamentally fake and superficial it makes tinsel look like sterling.

Parents should know that the movie has some mild sexual references (Nora thinks Luther wants to have sex and starts taking off her sweater and gulps down some wine, saying, “But it isn’t Saturday!”). Characters drink wine and beer on social occasions and some reach for alcohol to deal with stress. There is a lot of comic violence and mayhem, with many falls, bashes on the head, and electrocutions that are intended to be funny. A character receives bad news about the recurrance of cancer, which may be disturbing to some audience members.

Families who see this movie should talk about what is important about Christmas or other holidays and which traditions have the most meaning to them. They should also talk about peer pressure and how to know when to listen to the community and when to stick with your own judgment about what is right.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy seeing The Santa Clause (also starring Allen) and Home Alone.

This is the touching story of Whitwell, Tennessee,a small coal mining community (population 1600) outside of Chatanooga. The population is almost entirely white and entirely Christian. When the local school set out to teach children about tolerance and diversity, the teachers realized that most of the children had never seen a person from another country or faith. So the school decided to teach students about the Holocaust in Germany during World War II.

As the students tried to come to grips with the Nazi genocide, they had a hard time visualizing the magnitude of the loss of six million people. They wanted to collect six million of something to represent the people who were killed.

The students did some research and learned that the paperclip was invented in Norway and that Norwegians wore paperclips on their collars to demonstrate their sympathy for the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other groups being persecuted by the Nazis. The students decided to collect six million paperclips and began writing letters to everyone they could think of to ask for help.

This documentary shows how the project grew from a classroom assignment to an event that transformed the entire community. At first, progress was slow. The teacher feared it would take the students ten years to collect 6 million paper clips. But two White House correspondents from Germany heard about the project and came to Whitwell to visit. They wrote about the school, and then the Washington Post wrote a story, and finally the network news reported on the remarkable events in Whitwell.

Millions of paperclips started to pour in from around the world. Some came with letters from Holocaust survivors, their families, American soldiers who helped to liberate the concentration camps, and celebrities from Tom Hanks to then-President Bill Clinton. Tiny Whitwell became a meeting place for people of hope from around the world. Everybody wanted to pitch in to help. A group of Holocaust survivors came to visit the school to tell their stories and the entire town turned out to welcome them.

But what makes this story — and this movie — work is not the big moments but the small ones. The documentarians don’t do anything fancy. They have the good sense to get out of the way and let the story be told by the people who lived it. The result can be a little sugary at times, but it is always honest and touching.

We see the students opening up and growing as human beings before our very eyes. A teacher admits that the project made him confront his own prejudices. A survivor says that what makes him cry is not his sadness in the camps but remembering the happiness he has had since. A hug, a look, a touch, the expressions on the young faces as they meet with people who survived the Nazi death camps and telling and touching.

An astonishing contribution to the project arrives from Germany — on September 9, 2001, and it will be en route when the terrorist attack occurs in New York and Washington.

This is an illuminating and moving film, not about the Holocaust so much as it is about compassion, learning, respect, and change. It should be essential viewing for middle and high school students and their families.

Parents should know that while the film is rated G because it does not have any bad words or nudity, the film is about the study of the Holocaust and the topic of genocide and discrimination is a theme of the film.

Families who see this movie should talk about what the teachers say they learned from the paperclip projects. One of the students refers to the project as a “life-changing experience.” What have been your life-changing experiences?” What can you do to help make the lessons of history more meaningful to your friends and family? How will the students continue to make the project meaningful now that the collection is complete?

Families who see this movie should look at the Whitwell middle school’s website, with more information about the paperclip project. They should also visit the United States Holocaust Museum and learn about the memorial to the Holocaust martyrs and heroes at Yad Vashem.

The Holocaust History Project is one of many worthwhile internet resources for further study, and Nizkor is an exceptionally useful site that frankly and candidly addresses issues raised by people who deny that the Holocaust took place, whether through ignorance or anti-Semitism. It is an outstanding example of how to deal with any sensitive issue that is the subject of debate, addressing all questions with consideration and dignity. There can be no better evidence of credibility and integrity than this: “Nizkor believes that truth has no need for secrecy. We present the material of the Holocaust-deniers unaltered and completely openly, with links back to their web sites so that the reader may examine exactly what they say. And if and when they have a response to our work, we will of course cross-link to it, so that the reader may examine that response.”