Sportscaster Al Michaels unforgettably called out “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” as the 1980 US Olympic hockey team beat the Russians. They then went on to win the gold medal. And so the team, the last group of amateurs sent by the US to play ice hockey, has been known ever after as the “Miracle on Ice.”

But as this movie shows, miracle is the very last word to be used to describe this team. It’s better than a miracle because it is the story of a team that succeeded through heart and hard work and commitment. If it is a miracle, it is in the “God helps those who help themselves” category.

This is not an “up close and personal” saga. You’re not going to get to find out all the quirky personal details or love lives of the members of the team. This is a movie first of all for hard core hockey fans. Its meticulous re-creation of the training, strategy, and the key moments of the team’s games is the movie’s greatest strength. The silver medal goes to Kurt Russell’s fine performance as coach Herb Brooks. Russell is willing to be unattractive in appearance and behavior to convey Brooks’ famously tough and withholding style.

The movie is less successful when it gives us the inevitable toll-on-the-family scenes, even with the ascerbic Patricia Clarkson as Mrs. Brooks. She brings a warmth and even some sexiness to the inevitable complaints that just because Herb is coaching the Olympic team does not mean that he can shirk his responsibilities at home. And the movie’s weakest point is its attempt to make the team’s triumph too much of a symbol. It spends too much time trying to convey the sense of the era, with an opening credit sequence of clips showing lines at the gas station and Jimmy Carter’s speech about how depressed everyone was. Yes, the miracle on ice was immensely satisfying at a moment when America needed some heroes. But trying to re-create that mood takes away from the genuine splendor of the team’s achivement, which is more than enough on its own.

Parents should know that the movie has brief strong language (including calling someone a “pansy”) and some intense sports scenes. There is a discussion of a team member’s loss of a parent. Some younger viewers may be uncomfortable with the pressure Brooks puts on the team and his dismissal of a loyal player.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Brooks picked the team he wanted — “not the best players, but the right players.” He was not much of a team player himself, when it came to the committee members. Families should talk about the coaches and teachers and mentors who have inspired them to do their best — probably not always the ones who were the nicest. Do you think that Brooks intentionally made the players hate him so that they would bond with each other? Families might also want to talk about how the game has changed for the better and worse since the players are now professionals instead of college kids.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Cool Runnings. The made-for-tv movie Miracle on Ice, with Karl Malden as Brooks, tells the same story from the perspective of the team.

This would be mindless but enjoyably cheesy cinema fluff if it did not cross the line into the category of the unforgivable by using the murder of a child as a plot contrivance. That is a complete violation of the core premise of a movie like this one, which is that if you will offer 90 minutes of your life, it will provide something reasonably entertaining.

Other than that one jarringly misbegotten detour, the movie is exactly what you would expect from a Hollywood fantasy in which street dancers compete for a $50,000 prize and the chance to appear in a Lil Kim video.

Best friends Elgin (Marques Houston of IMX) and David (Omari Grandberry of B2K) are best friends in the neighborhood’s top street-dancing “crew.” They compete with other crews at a local warehouse presided over by the fatherly Mr. Rad (Steve Harvey). And they say things to each other in Hollywood’s idea of hip and happening street talk, like “You crazy but you know I always got yo back, bro” and “may the dopest crew win.” They have elaborate handshaking rituals which appear to take up much of the time they spend together. But trouble arrives in the form of a crew from another part of town that comes to Mr. Rad’s place and out-dances them.

And soon they are feuding because David likes Elgin’s sister Liyah (Jennifer Nicole Freeman). David was with Liyah when he was supposed to be with Elgin make a delivery for bad guy Emerald (former pro football player Michael “Bear” Taliferro). Because Elgin was alone, he was badly beaten by thugs who stole Emerald’s delivery package. Emerald expects Elgin to replace the money that was stolen. And there is this dance contest with a $50,000 prize, where all of these plot threads will come together.

For a movie like this, all we really need to know is first, whether the dance numbers are any good (yes, with lots of pnuematic shaking and fierce attitude). But the numbers are not always photographed well; the cuts and angles do not become a part of the choreography as they did so successfully in Chicago and Drumline. It is not even always clear who is in which crew. The second thing we need to know is whether the story gets in the way of the dancing (not too much). Fans of hip-hop groups B2K and IMX will enjoy seeing those performers as well as a guest appearance by Lil Kim. The one to watch out for, though, is Meagan Good, as Beautifull (“two l’s”), Liyah’s wisecracking best friend, who is as much fun as the best of the dance numbers.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language. A brother tells his sister she is acting like a “ho” because she is out on a date. Characters deliver packages for a man who is apparently a drug dealer and there is always a strong sense of the pull of thug life. A child is shot and killed (off camera). The main characters are in general responsible, respectful, and devoted to their families. One female character is committed to education and plans to become a doctor.

Families who see this movie should talk about why the dance crews are so important to the characters and how they determine who is the best.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Saturday Night Fever and Breakin’.

“Big Bounce” wants to be comic caper movie, but the real crime is inflicted on the Elmore Leonard book credited with inspiring it.

You can tell that somewhere in there there is a book with colorful characters and a couple of lines of dialogue that crackle. There is some evidence that there was an actual plot of some kind. At some point. But not now.

What passes for plot looks something like this. Sticky-fingered surf bum Jack Ryan (Owen Wilson) loses his job for bashing the boss with a baseball bat. He gets a new job as a sort of handyman for some bungalows owned by Judge Crewes (Morgan Freeman, adding a little class). He meets a beautiful woman named Nancy (Sara Foster) who has a weakness for men who have a weakness, and the next thing you know everyone is trying to double cross everyone else over $250,000 in cash. It is is supposed to be used to pay some goons to beat up the people who are protesting a development owned by a mean guy who happens also to have Nancy as a girlfriend. But Nancy wants Jack to steal it. “All you have to do,” she purrs, “is walk in poor and walk out rich.”

Wilson, who always looks like a surf bum in whatever part he is playing, finally gets to play a surf bum and is surprisingly uninteresting in the part. Foster has some spirit and Freeman’s bemused spin makes his lines feel fresh. But the movie feels recut by people who weren’t sure what tone they were trying for, and the result is just bland.

Parents should know that the material in this movie is pretty intense for a PG-13, with strong language, sexual references and situations (including making fun of a gay character), drinking, smoking, violence, and general bad behavior by just about everyone.

Families who see this movie should talk about whether anyone in this movie trusted anyone else, and if so, how. What will happen to Jack, Nancy, and Crewes after the movie ends?

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy better movies based on Elmore Leonard books, Out of Sight and Get Shorty.

Repeat after me: “We know they survived because they are up on the screen telling the story.” You’ll need to hold onto that thought tightly to get you through this almost unbearably tense re-enactment of a terrible mountain-climbing accident and the extraordinary determination and courage that got the climbers home.

In 1985, Joe Simpson (age 25) and Simon Yates (age 21) decided they would be the first climbers ever to climb the west face of the 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. They made it to the top, but on the way down Simpson fell and shattered his leg. Yates risked his own life to help Simpson descend, lowering him 150 feet at a time with a rope holding them together. But when Simpson fell again and Yates could not see or hear him, the rope that connected them was pulling Yates to certain death. Yates, believing Simpson had to be dead, cut the rope. He searched for Simpson but could not find him. He managed to make it down to the base camp, frozen, dehydrated, and utterly devastated. His story is one of the great feats in the history of mountaineering.

But Simpson’s story is one of the great feats in the history of human endeavor. A dozen different times over the next four days he faced certain death, but even when he thought it was hopeless, he simply refused to give up.

When Yates believed that Simpson had fallen off the mountain, he had instead fallen into a 150-foot crevass. By going down further into the crevass instead of trying to climb out of it, he managed to escape. But that still left him alone, badly injured, frostbitten, with no food or water, no hope of rescue and no way to get down. Facing a series of obstacles that would challenge a mythological hero, Simpson persevered. Even when he accepted that death was inevitable, he still kept going because “I didn’t want to die alone.” At times angry, terrified, and delirious, he kept trying anything and everything he could think of to get back home.

Director Kevin Macdonald lets Simpson, Yates, and Richard Hawking, who was waiting for them at base camp, tell the story in understated British style, as two actor/climbers re-enact the story on the actual site. Incredibly, Yates and Simpson returned to the Andes for the filming and put on their gear and performed some of the re-enactments themselves.

Their story is gripping and, in their perseverance and dedication, deeply moving. Simpson’s first comment when he sees Yates is as heart-wrenching as any of his struggles. Their candid but matter-of-fact delivery is far more effective than any actor could muster. Even now, they seem so young and open-hearted, Yates with bright button eyes and ears like the guy in “Wallace and Gromit.” It was in part their youthful audacity that made it possible for them to survive. If they had been more experienced, they would have known that what they were trying to do was impossible.

Macdonald reaches his own summit with an electrifyingly thrilling movie that makes the mountain more than a setting, almost another character in the story. The sheerness of the slope, the friable “meringues” and “cornices” of snow, the sweep and sparkle of the ice — the mountain’s terrible beauty is alternately austere, majestic, implacable, ominous, and menacing.

Parents should know that the movie is extremely tense, with characters in the direst peril imaginable. They use some very strong language, completely understandable in the circumstances.

Families who see this movie should talk about Simpson’s statement that the important thing was to act, even if the decision was the wrong one. What made Simpson refuse to give up? Families should discuss Simpson’s comment in an interview with the Washington Post, that he owed his survival to having gone to a British boarding school: “When you’re used to being rejected, like being sent away when you’re a youngster, you become very good at hugging yourself. And I think if I hadn’t been like that, I wouldn’t have survived.” This is reminiscent of Wellington’s famous comment that the battle of Waterloo was “won on the playing fields of Eton,” though not quite the same point.

Families should also talk about the way Simpson broke the insurmountable challenge into possibly surmountable segments in order to keep himself going. How can we apply that to our own challenges? Do you agree with Simpson that Yates did the right thing in cutting the rope? Was there something they could or should have done differently? Were you surprised that Simpson returned to climbing? Note, too, how they responded to each successive potential disaster with not just determination but with a very expert assessment of all of the options. And consider these options — at one time, Simpson’s book was considered as the basis for a feature film with an actor like Tom Cruise. How would that have made it different? What do you think about the combination of documentary and re-enactment?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Cliffhanger, Vertical Limit and K2. They will also enjoy Eric Newby’s classic mountain climbing story, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.