For better and worse, this is what Hollywood knows how to do — a grand and eminently watchable epic with no expense spared, ambitious in scope, thoughtful in execution. If it is not particularly original or meaningful, and if it is a bit too careful, at least it avoids some of the usual pitfalls. It includes some outstanding action scenes and some memorable performances. But it never makes us care enough about the conflicts it portrays — those between the warring factions or those within the leading character.

Tom Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a Civil War veteran reduced to whiskey-soaked exhibitions for a gun manufacturer. He feels irredeemably corrupted by atrocities in fighting the Indians and has lost any sense of honor. When he is offered a job to train Japanese soldiers in modern fighting techniques, he does not car whose side he will be on. “For 500 bucks a month, I’ll kill whoever you want,” he tells his former commanding officer (Tony Goldwyn). “But keep one thing in mind. I’d happily kill you for free.” He is still haunted by a raid that killed civilian Indians and admits to himself, “I have been hired to suppress the rebellion of yet another tribal leader.” But it is the only job for which he is suited. The sustaining force of honor, dignity, and meaning are gone and all that is left is skill for which he no longer has any respect. “I am beset by the ironies of my life.”

Algren is lost in the gulf between his ideals and the world he sees around him.

In Japan, he meets Simon Graham (Timothy Spall), an expatriate Englishman who serves as his translator and our exposition-provider (“I have a tendency to tell the truth in a country where no one ever says what they mean. So now I translate other people’s lies.”) Graham helpfully lets us know that “The ancient and the modern are at war for the soul of Japan.”

Algren goes to work training soldiers in modern tactics so that they can defeat a samurai rebellion led by Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). Against his best judgment, the troops are sent in against the samurai too soon. They are defeated, and Algren is captured.

Rebellion is in the eye of the beholder. Algren learns that the samurai believe that they, not the troops Algren who has been training, who are doing what the emperor needs. He is impressed and ultimately moved by them. “From the moment they wake, they devote themselves to perfection of whatever they do.” Algren — or at least the man he once was — has more in common with the samurai, who live a life of “service, discipline, and compassion,” than he has with any of his peers. That includes a Miniver Cheevy-ian sense of being born in the wrong time. But it also includes all the honor and self-respect that Algren left behind when he followed orders he despised. Instead of training troops to fight the rebellion, Algren is trained by the samurai in the ancient arts, which include not just fighting but living.

The movie’s greatest strength is its scope. Just as Algren admires the idea of spending a life searching for a perfect blossom, director/co-author Edward Zwick imbues every part of the screen with respect, even majesty. The epic reach of the movie is grounded in committed and thoughtful performances, especially Wantanabe and Koyuki as Taka, his sister. Cruise delivers his usual performance, sincere and loaded with movie star charisma. His mastery of the samurai fighting techniques is impressive but his acting shows us nothing we have not seen from him before.

The movie’s greatest weakness is that not every part of the screen is due that level of respect. It may be more fair to give both sides of the story, but it interferes with our commitment to the outcome. We know that Algren’s commanding officer is not a good guy and that the emperor is a weak guy advised by a greedy guy, and that Katsumoto is a good guy. But we never understand the substance of the conflict well enough to take sides. One side may be corrupt, but it is grappling with the inevitable in engaging with modernity. The other side may have honor and dignity, but in embracing its own extenction it seems to have forgotten how to do anything but fight, no matter what the consequences to its community. And the last 20 minutes or so are disappointingly formulaic, undercutting the power of everything that went before and teetering into the “movie that is ostensibly about the non-whites but turns out to be about the white guy who gets paid the big bucks” category.

Parents should know that this movie has extreme and graphic violence with many grisy wounds and a lot of blood. Many charactrs are killed, including some we have come to care about. Parents should especially be aware of the way that this movie portrays the traditional samurai notion of suicide as an honorable choice in the event of a defeat. The movie also includes some strong language, alcohol abuse, smoking, and sexual references. One of the movie’s strengths is its respect for the Japanese culture and its portrayal of strong and respectful relationships between people of different races and cultures.

Families who see this movie should talk about what it means to say that “A man does what he can until his destiny is revealed.” Why was Algren able to find redemption in Japan and not in the United States? How did he know which side he was on? Who won that last battle? Why? What is important to know about your enemy? Given the inevitability of changing times and technologies, how do you know what you should change or adapt to and what you must hold on to?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Glory, by the same director, and also Dances with Wolves, Braveheart, Henry V, and The Seven Samurai. They can check here and here for more information on the battle of Thermopylae and here for more information on 19th century samurai warriors.

This is a movie about a very bad Santa, indeed. He’s worse than bad. He’s vile. He’s disgusting. Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie, a department store Santa who is constantly either drunk, horrifyingly inappropriate and obscene to the kids, or having sex, sometimes all three at the same time.

Willie and his partner Marcus (Tony Cox), an African-American little person, get jobs as Santa and elf in a different department store every December. Then they rob the store’s safe on Christmas eve and pretty much blitz out until the next year.

It’s a pretty close call as to whether Willie is more throroughly disgusted with himself or the rest of the world. But it doesn’t much matter to him. He seems incapable of holding onto a thought of any kind, much less a goal or plan. Then, in a demented twist on the usual movie plot, Willie meets a boy (Brett Kelly) who appears to really believe he is Santa and whose completely pathetic disaster of a life begins to wake Willie up to some all-but-vestigal notion of compassion.

Most of the movie is the same joke over and over — Willie’s grossly (in both senses of the word) inappropriate behavior. Willie tells a child he got into trouble for having sex with Mrs. Santa’s sister. This is supposed to be funny. Then, when the child walks in on him while he is having sex with a pretty bartender who has a Santa fetish (Lauren Graham of television’s “Gilmore Girls”), the child says matter-of-factly, “Hello, Mrs. Santa’s sister.” This is supposed to be even funnier. I am always up for something twisted and demented, especially in the midst of the overstuffed and over-marketed holiday season, but “Bad Santa” just gets sad.

The movie begins to feel more shoddy and exploitive of the child than Willie is as it tries to have it both ways, skewering and embracing the conventions of the holiday movie and the holidays themselves. Despite some funny moments, the best efforts of Thornton and Cox, and top-notch support from John Ritter as an anxious store executive and Bernie Mac as the store detective, the movie runs out of steam and becomes just unpleasant.

Parents should know that this movie has extremely mature material, including non-stop smoking, drinking, and profanity (often in front of or addressed to children), exceptionally explicit sexual references and situations, and graphic violence, including a suicide attempt, hitting below the belt, murder, and shooting.

Families who see this movie should talk about what made both Willie and Marcus decide to change.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the rude humor of Ruthless People and The Opposite of Sex. Other twisted holiday tales include Scrooged, Gremlins, and the brilliant A Christmas Story.

“Dopamine” is Mark Decena’s first journey as a director and it shows. While there are some lovely scenes and an evocative remote feeling, the dialogue and MESSAGE are as facile and meaningful as Snapple cap quotes. Decena has made a promising start here and the spunky performances by the leads (and its brief length at 84 minutes) keep the movie’s slow trot of a pace from getting dull. However, similar to those seemingly amazing ideas that result from philosophical discussions in the wee hours of the night, this movie loses brilliance in the light of day.

Rand (John Livingston) is a regular guy who is working hard on creating an interactive computer friend named Koy Koy with co-partners Johnson (Rueben Grundy, a dread-locked designated decent guy) and Winston (Bruno Campos, whose alpha-male persona from “ER” is given free rein here). Meanwhile Rand is trying to reconcile his conflicting feelings about romantic relationships as he watches his father retreat from loving husband into bitterness in response to his wife’s Alzheimer’s disease. Rand chooses to hide from intimacy by explaining away love as a chemical reaction hard-wired into our DNA, acting as drug whose effect is doomed to wane over time. The closest he gets to an intimate relationship is in his feelings for his own creation, Koy Koy.

The plot is fairly simple, which is a good thing. The psychology is equally simple which is not as good a thing. Rand might as well be reciting Bio 101 for all the passion he commits to his argument. Johnson is a disturbingly patient fount of good advice on how to be human, while Winston is an anthropomorphized id, greedy and self-absorbed. Against these emotional primary colors, the deus ex machina for life (and plot) development are the venture capitalists, who force the three partners to “test” their product’s synchronicity with the perceived target market: kids. Enter Sarah (TV’s Sabrina Lloyd), the petite teacher/artist, whose saucer-eyes are haunted by a past unresolved relationship which has “left deep holes to fill” (yeesh).

Johnson makes the first move on the passive Sarah but it is Rand who spends the majority of the movie courting her in his own conflicted way. The scenes between them alternate between sparkling and soggy as they tread over-familiar ground in their journey to understand love. It gives nothing away to say that along the way they learn a little about themselves and a lot about the nature of loving relationships, which is the MESSAGE after all and is not a bad message to have at that. But it could have been delivered with a little more, well, heart.

This film is the first that was incubated from beginning to end at the Sundance Institute, and that is why it seems oddly overly structured for an independent film. That is usually more of a problem for an overcooked studio creation as a result of input by too many executives and not enough faith in the audience’s ability to figure things out on its own. “Dopamine’s” characters seem pinned down by the motivations assigned to them, as though their behavior was programmed — like Koy Koy’s.

Parents should be aware that sexual relations are both extremely casual and alternately devoid/laden with psychological implications. Characters use drugs to deal with a stressful work situation. Smoking and drinking are the social norm. Emotional detachment, refutation of love’s existence by a husband for his sick wife, and passivity in slipping into relationships are adult themes that will not be suitable for kids and young teens.

Families should discuss different types of relationships that exist and how they change over time, under duress or during the upheaval of personal growth. How is the relationship between Johnson and Rand different at the end of the movie? How might the creation of Koy Koy’s mate represent a more complicated emotional step for Rand than for his partners?

Families also might discuss whether the vocabulary of “love” is misleading here, from Rand’s description of the initial, chemical feeling of attraction versus Sarah’s search for something more meaningful.

Families who enjoy this movie might wish to see Singles, which shares a similarly ambivalent take on love in relationships between twenty-somethings. Those who enjoy William Windom’s performance as Rand’s father might wish to see him in the classic To Kill a Mockingbird.

There is absolutely no need for you to read any further than the title of the film if you are not a fan of slasher flicks. If you are a fan, than this is a solid enough, if derivative, scare-fest with sufficient “eww” factor to satisfy those weaned on the blood-floods of Michael, Jason and Freddy. However, there is not enough originality here to make this version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” better than average, and there is certainly nothing to justify it entering the vaunted ground of classic horror movies, where its predecessor and namesake resides.

The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre set the standard for horror movies of the blood-letting kind for the decades that followed and continues to top the lists as one of the most influential movies in a genre. This substantially more sanguineous remake –- the original had a full 40 minutes without bloodshed— again takes the Ed Gein murders as a starting point, places them in the heart of Texas in the 1970’s and replaces Ed’s hunting knife with a chainsaw. This movie pays homage to the original but delights in amplifying the bloodshed and adding its own twists to that nest of Gothic horror where Leatherface resides.

As for plot, don’t ask why, but a van of five bell-bottomed rebels, having just returned from Mexico on a penny-ante drug run, are driving across Texas and choose to stop in a small town as a result of picking up a hitchhiking waif whose strong desire not to go on to that town is made patently evident when she kills herself rather than return. It turns out that the small town is tiny -– comprising a slaughterhouse, a freaky farmhouse, an abandoned barn, a trailer home, a decrepit shack and a gas-station with a rotting meat display that would make David Lynch feel at home. The five youths wait at the barn for the sheriff to show up to cart away the suicide’s body but because they have Lynyrd Skynyrd tickets for that evening decide to expedite the process by going to the farmhouse where the Sheriff allegedly lives. As you might guess this is the last in a series of bad decisions that follow some of the familiar rules of slasher movies. These include:

• 1. When you come across a spooky hitchhiker who warns you about continuing on the road that you are traveling, do not listen to her but go right to the creepy location in question.
• 2. When greeted by the native, who is eyeing you from behind a display case full of flies, maggots and meat, you stay and chat. After all, how often do any of us have a chance to visit with the colorful locals in small eccentric towns?
• 3. If you meet with a feral kid, nesting in an abandoned and bizarrely decorated barn, stay. It will make a great story later.
• 4. Split up your party as often as possible to cover more ground and allow for more prolonged carnage. “Safety in numbers” is so passé.
• 5. Trust everyone, even the freaky sisters alone in their trailer home who insist you drink tea with them while a maniac wearing your boyfriend’s face is just steps behind you with his chainsaw. Sure, they will protect you.

The movie does a fair job at helping the audience to suspend disbelief at these and many, many more highly dubious choices, both by setting the movie in the early ‘70’s (like the original) when people apparently did not know that exploring freaky houses alone was a bad idea, and by relying heavily on the acting of lone survivor, Erin (Jessica Biel). While she does a decent enough job, the standout performance here is R. Lee Ermey (who made Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket into an icon) as the Sheriff who might be even scarier than the mechanically-inclined behemoth, Leatherface, or the rest of his enabling brood.

For dedicated admirers of the original, this version is just another rehash of the classic, but for new-comers or those who are looking for a good, old-fashioned scare, then there is plenty of meat on this table.

Parents should be aware that there is nothing misleading about this movie’s title. The chainsaw in question is assisted in its macabre work by meat hooks, axes, sledgehammers, knives and other assorted tools of the slasher trade. In addition to quick death, there is torture, mutilation (self and inflicted) and amputation under less than sterile conditions. Leatherface’s trademark fashion statement is his fondness for wearing other people’s skin to mask his disfigured face. While there is sexuality, drug use and strong language, it is the peril and carnage that pushes this movie to the cusp of its R-rating. This movie is only for audiences strong-stomached (I am not going to say “mature”) enough to handle the gore.

Families who watch this movie might discuss what about the setting, the characters and the circumstances heightens the scariness of this movie. What decisions would you make differently and how would you react?

Some families might wish to discuss why the survivors in slasher movies like this one are typically the kids who do not use drugs or become involved in casual sexual encounters. With their roots deep in morality lessons, scary stories have been popular throughout history. What might be the appeal of this medium? Why do some people find horror movies cathartic?

Families who enjoy this movie should see the original. For those who find the gore excessive but the story interesting, Hitchcock’s Psycho, and Silence of the Lambs both feature characters based on Ed Gein.

Dr. Miranda Gray (Halle Berry) explains that “Logic is overrated” in the middle of a climactic confrontation. It feels like a last-minute attempt to justify the resolution of a movie that begins as a promisingly creepy thriller but then falls apart.

Miranda is a psychiatrist at a facility for the criminally insane. The director of the facility is her husband, Doug (Charles S. Dutton). Driving home on a dark and stormy night, Miranda swerves to avoid hitting a girl standing in the road. When she gets out of the car, she sees that the girl is badly hurt. Miranda tries to talk to her. The next thing she knows, she wakes up in the mental hospital, but now she is on the other side of the glass wall. She is a patient. Doug has been murdered, and all of the evidence points to Miranda as the killer. How can she find out what really happened if everyone thinks she is crazy?

Director Mathieu Kassovitz (who played the love interest in Amelie) creates a nicely creepy feeling, though he overdoes the flickering lights and the guess-what’s-just-out-of-her/our-field-of-vision surprises. But the last half and especially the last half hour are both predictable and presposterous.

Parents should know that this movie has intense peril and disturbing, graphic, and grisly images of violence. There are references to extremely violent crimes. There is nudity in a scene of a group shower and a joke about circumcision. Characters use very strong language. One positive note is the portrayal of a strong, intelligent, resourceful black woman.

Families who see this movie should talk about Pete’s comment that “the ability to repress is actually a vital survival tool.” What other survival tools did Miranda demonstrate?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound.