Aileen Wuornos peers into the murky mirror of the gas station bathroom. Somewhere in that lumpy, mottled face, she catches a glimpse of a girl who dreamed of being admired and cared for. We glimpse that girl, too, hopeful, even loving. But we see no trace of the woman who is portraying her. Glamour girl Charlize Theron’s breathtaking, heartbreaking transformation makes this movie about the woman called America’s first female serial killer an astonishing achievement.

Aileen was an abused child who began turning tricks at age 13. She thinks she has nothing to live for. But then she meets Shelby (Christina Ricci), a shy and needy lesbian. Even though Aileen is not gay, she is drawn to Shelby. She finds that being able to take care of someone is even more important to her than being taken care of. For a moment, it seems that she can find a new life for herself. But she has no skills and no capacity to get a legitimate job. She is forced to go back to prostitution to take care of Shelby, and when a customer rapes and beats her, she snaps, and she kills him. She takes his money and his car.

And then she begins to entrap and kill more men, each less justified than the last as she becomes more desperate and ultimately delusional. The last victim is portrayed by Scott Wilson, perhaps in an echo to his own star-making role as a real-life headline-making killer in In Cold Blood.

At one point, Aileen planned to kill herself as soon as she spent her last five dollars. As she used it to buy a drink, she met Shelby, who gave her a chance to mean something to someone but at the same time showed her more devastatingly than ever how far she was from being able to live in a way that could make her feel loved and proud. The first murder may have been self-defense. It may have been her way of striking back at a world that had struck her once too often. The movie wisely does not pretend to explain what was going on in the mind and soul of a woman who was mentally ill. Unlike the similar Boys Don’t Cry however, it is unable to elevate the facts into a larger story about identity and intimacy.

What makes the movie worthwhile is Theron’s performance, open, vulnerable, tragic, moving, and most of all, honest. Aileen’s behavior is contradictory, volatile, and disturbed. She loses control and lashes out irrationally. There are moments when I was not sure whether Theron was acting or just trying to keep her dental appliance from slipping, and no one could make some of those voiceover speeches work, but with the ferocity of her grip on the character she never lets us lose sight of Aileen’s humanity. Theron’s portrait of Aileen is sympathetic without pretending that she is more of a victim than the men she killed.

Parents should know that the main character in this fact-based story is a serial killer and a prostitute. The movie has explicit sexual references and situations, including gay sex, prostitution, and rape, extremely strong language, violence (including a brutal rape and several murders), smoking and drinking. There are tense and upsetting scenes.

Families who see this movie should talk about who is the “monster.” If it is Aileen, what made her that way? What could have prevented it? In what ways is the movie sympathetic to Aileen, and in what ways is it not? How can you tell?

Families who appreciate this movie should look at the two documentaries about Aileen Wuornos by Nick Broomfield. In 1992, he made Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer which focuses on the way the people around Wuornos, including her lawyer, a woman who “adopted” her, and even the police who arrested her exploited her arrest. Eleven years later, he made Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, focusing on Wuornos as she approached her execution, defiantly and impatiently. Those who appreciate this movie will also appreciate Boys Don’t Cry, based on the true story of the murder of a young woman who was passing as a man.

Scientists will discover a way to bend the laws of time before anyone remembers that a movie about bending the laws of time has to have some way of handling the problem of determinism versus free will that is if not plausible then at least consistent.

The idea (from Blade Runner’s Philip K. Dick) is an intriguing one — a super-smart computer whiz who trades not only his intellect but his memory for big bucks.

Ben Affleck plays Michael Jennings, a brilliant engineer. In two months, he takes apart a revolutionary project for its competitor and makes it all but obsolete. Then the client writes him a big check, his friend Shorty (Paul Giamatti) zaps out his memory of the last eight weeks, and Michael is off to make the kind of memories he likes to keep, all of which seems fine to him. When Shorty tells him to think about stopping, Michael says, “My memories are basically highlights. The stuff you erase doesn’t matter.”

This of course is the set-up for that great movie plot device, the one last big job that is going to give Michael walk-away money for life.

Cue evil mogul Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), who offers Michael a three year project. Then cut to three years later. Michael’s memory is gone, and so is the $90 million he was supposed to be paid. All he has is a manila envelope with a bunch of mundane items — hairspray, a fortune from a fortune cookie, a pack of cigarettes, a paperclip, a matchbook. He knows it was a message he sent to himself before his memory was wiped. But what does it mean? And will he ever remember his relationship with a beautiful biologist (Uma Thurman)?

Even on one of his good days, this set-up would have been a challenge for director John Woo, whose stylish staging has turned less-than-impressive scripts into highly watchable films. But Woo seems to have taken a hit from that memory-eraser. We can stand it when a thriller requires some suspension of disbelief (see Woo’s entertainingly preposterous Face-Off). But the one thing we cannot forgive in a would-be thriller is boredom, and this movie just sags, even in the action scenes. Without spoiling what little suspense there is, all I can say is that the big “reveal” removes any sense of narrative tension by making the outcome all but inevitable. Even Woo’s trademarks, the fluttering birds and the two-gun stand-off, feel perfunctory.

Parents should know that the movie has extended action violence with guns, chases, kickboxing, explosions, and character deaths. Characters use strong language, smoke, and drink, and there are mild sexual situations.

Families who see this movie should talk about whether there are memories they would like to or be willing to erase. If you, like Michael, wanted to make sure that someone really knew you, what question would you ask?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the superior Terminator 2: Judgment Day (also featuring Joe Morton) and Minority Report, with similar themes. And they might enjoy director John Woo’s better films, including Face-Off.

Inman (Jude Law), a wounded Confederate soldier, walks away from the hospital to return to his home and to Ada (Nicole Kidman), a woman he barely knows.

But then, he barely knows himself or the world that has changed so completely around him. All around him is unspeakable brutality, terrible injury, and death. He thought he was fighting for honor and freedom. But as another soldier says, he feels that he is fighting to protect the rights of rich men to have slaves. No one around him seems to have the gentility, grace, and sweetness that he dreams that Ada had, that he dreams she still has.

Ada writes to tell Inman to come home. For her, too, if the war ever had a purpose, it now seems very far away.

So does the girl she was when the war began. Ada was raised by her minister father (Donald Sutherland) for a life of refinement and noblesse oblige. But when her father died and she was left alone she learned that she had none of the skills necessary to take care of herself. “I can embroider, but I can’t darn. I can arrange cut flowers, but I can’t grow them. If anything has a function, it wasn’t considered suitable.”

Ruby (Renee Zellweger) shows up to join forces with Ada, not as a laborer but as a partner. But the war is getting closer to them. Soldiers from both sides cover the countryside, the Confederates looking for deserters, the Union looking for provisions, both taking whatever they can.

Inman walks back to Cold Mountain, encountering an Odyssey-like assortment of characters and adventures, including a minister who is attempting to murder the slave he got pregnant (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a lonely young mother (Natalie Portman), and a man who is less friendly than he seems.

Ada is faced with challenges at home as she and Ruby try to work the farm and stay out of the way of the trouble that seems to be coming toward them from every direction. Ruby’s estranged father (Brendan Gleeson), now a musician, shows up, and she must decide whether she can trust him.

The movie benefits from outstanding performances by the lead actors and a stunning range of first-rate performers in supporting roles, including Portman, Kathy Baker, and Giovanni Ribisi. The terrain of Romania, standing in for the 19th century South, is beautifully evocative, as is the splendid soundtrack, assembled by O Brother Where Art Thou’s T-Bone Burnett and featuring traditional works performed by White Stripes’ Jack White. But, as often happens in the adaptation of literary works, without the balance of the book’s poetic language, the images tend to overwhelm the subtle issues it raises about great and small conflicts.

Kidman’s radiant loveliness persuades us that a man could develop a lifetime of devotion after one kiss, but it would be easier to believe her experience of hardship and growth if that radiance dimmed just a little now and then. Zellweger brings some spunk to a role that is reduced to a colorful sidekick that is more Andy Devine than Eve Arden. This is a thoughtful, intelligent film with lovely performances and heartbreaking themes, but like its main characters, it has great difficulty reaching the conclusion it aspires to.

Parents should know that the movie has very graphic battle violence, with many characters wounded and killed. There are explicit sexual references and situations, including nudity, prostitution, and attempted rape. Characters engage in a swindle involving seduction and betrayal, with nudity and graphic references. One character impregnates a slave and tries to kill her. Another character demonstrates his moral values by turning down sexual offers so that he can remain faithful to the woman he loves. Characters use strong language.

Families who see this movie should talk about how the perspective of this movie, sympathetic to the point of view of the deserter and putting a lot of emphasis on the challenges of the people who were not fighting the battles, differs from many stories set in wartime. What does that say about that era and ours? How does that relate to the description of what happens when the bird eats a seed? Ruby and Ada were both raised by their fathers. Which father prepared his daughter best for what she would have to do? What do each of the people Inman meets on his way home add to the story? If the sky were to fall down tomorrow, what would you want to make sure you said today?

Families who enjoy this movie will also appreciate the classic Civil War stories, The Red Badge of Courage, Gone With the Wind, and The Friendly Persausion. They will also appreciate the other movies by this director, Truly, Madly, Deeply, The English Patient, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, with variations on some of the themes of this movie, including lovers who are separated. A hard-to-find but very touching movie with some similar themes is Perfect Strangers, in which Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr play a boring British couple enlist during World War II and are each revitalized by their experiences. They reunite three years later, each worried that they will have nothing in common, to find that their experiences have made them much more appealing to each other.

The Farrelly brothers (There’s Something About Mary, Me, Myself and Irene, Shallow Hal) have shifted the mix a bit with their latest movie. There is still plenty of outrageous physical humor, but with more sweetness than slapstick. And they’ve even added a new element we haven’t seen from them before — subtlety.

Okay, someone’s head slams into a post before the credit sequence is over. And many of the jokes come from the challenges of the main characters’ physical condition. But not all the jokes are head-bonkers in the center of the screen. Some of the funniest moments come from off in the corners of the frame including sly, even understated, satire about show business.

Matt Damon and Greg Kinner play Bob and Walt Tenor, conjoined twins who own a small restaurant on Martha’s Vinyard. Bob is the shy one who is carrying on an email romance with a girl in California. Walt is the outgoing ladies’ man who wants to be an actor. Following a triumph in his production of “Tru,” the one-man show about Truman Capote, he tells Bob he wants to go to Los Angeles to try to make it as an actor. Soon they are installed in the Rising Star apartments and Walt is meeting with agents and going on auditions.

They run into a couple of celebrities, including Cher(!) and Meryl Streep(!!). Cher decides that the best thing she can do to get out of a contract to star in an idiotic television series about a lawyer/investigator team called “Honey and the Beeze,” is to exercise her right to select her leading man by insisting on Walt. Meanwhile, Bob has finally met his email-pal in person, but has kept the special nature of his relationship with Walt a secret.

Damon and Kinnear give full-scale performances and make their characters both hilarious and touching. Their relationship, especially the way they support each other physically and emotionally, is a delight. Eva Mendes is adorable as the starlet whose reaction to finding them joined at the abdomen is to ask where they had it done. Whatever “work” Cher has had done has removed some of the expression from her face, but she is game and seems to enjoy spoofing her diva image. Streep is just a hoot, especially in her last scene. Be sure to stay through the end credits for a moving speech by one of the disabled actors who appears in the movie, describing what the experience has meant to him.

Parents should know that this movie has material that would certainly have received an R rating if it had not been in a comedy. Characters use very strong language (several s-words) and there are very explicit sexual references and (off-camera) situations, including pornography and a description of masturbation. Characters drink and smoke and one gets drunk. There is comic peril and fighting. Although a theme of the movie is tolerance, the word “fag” is used as an affectionate insult to someone who is not gay.

Families who see this movie should talk about why this story might have special appeal to a team of film-makers who are brothers. What are the ways that Walt and Bob support each other?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the other films by the Farrellys (very mature material). High school and adult audiences will appreciate a very different film starring Streep and Cher, Silkwood.

A portrait by Johannes Vermeer inspired a best-selling novel by Tracy Chevalier, who imagined the relationship between the artist and his subject, not as a Shakespeare in Love-style romance but as a commentary on artistic imperatives and the creative process and the way we look at things. And power and money and sex.

Chevalier imagined that the girl in the painting was Griet (Scarlett Johansson), the daughter of a man who worked in the famous Delft tileworks until he was blinded in an accident. So she is hired out as a maid to the chaotic Vermeer household, where everything depends on the productivity of an artist who works very slowly and the whims of a patron who may be more interested in the model than the paintings.

Griet barely speaks. She wears the nun-like head covering of the era that hides her hair. She does what she is told and keeps to herself. But she notices things. She knows that she should not wash the windows in Vermeer’s studio because it will change the look of the light he is trying to capture. She knows that a prop should be moved to improve the composition of the painting. Vermeer (Colin Firth), not a person of words either, responds to the way she responds to the art. He asks her to help him mix his paints. He shows her how he uses a camera obscura to capture the images.

Vermeer’s patron, Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), is drawn to Griet, too, but not for the way she responds but the way she does not respond. It is her reserve that captures his interest. And since his interest is vital to the survival of the Vermeer family, Vermeer’s steely mother-in-law (Judy Parfitt) will do anything she can to keep him happy.

The movie superbly captures the shadows and lights of Vermeer’s Delft. Johannson’s face is as complex and haunting as the portrait of the anonymous girl she portrays. She is a marvel of delicate expression. When she must lick her lovely full lips she tells us volumes about Griet’s conflicts and longings. When at last she removes her headdress and we see her hair it is almost unbearably intimate and erotic.

But the movie is less successful at addressing some of the issues it raises about the other members of the household, including the clashes of art and commerce, sex and power, master and servant, parent and child. Griet’s resolution of her situation is clumsily handled, almost an afterthought. Perhaps the ultimate clash is between book and movie. Vermeer himself would understand the way that the images overpower the ideas. At the end, after being teased and seduced, we are at last allowed to gaze on the famous portrait itself, still more fascinating and more complete than any attempt to build upon it.

Parents should know that the movie has sexual references and situations and powerful erotic images.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Griet makes the choices she does and how in real life the painting made centuries earlier inspired the imagination of a writer to come up with this story. They might also like to talk about how this movie demonstrates that subtle glimpses can have more emotional and erotic power than our over-saturated media culture might expect. How did the film-makers use light and shapes to help create the sense of the world of Vermeer’s paintings?

Mature audiences who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Shakespeare in Love. They might also like to see some of the other films about artists, including Lust for Life and Surviving Picasso.