It has an enchanted princess in a tower, guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. It has a big, green ogre with a Yiddish name. It has a donkey that not only talks, and not only sings, but sings the old Monkee’s song, “I’m a Believer.” It has an evil (but short) bad guy, kickboxing, a Robin Hood and Merry Men who perform an Irish Riverdance, potty humor, and some digs at Disney. And it has sensational animation, adventure, romance, and laughter – enough to make this one of the best movies of the year.

Shrek is a big, green ogre who lives happily alone in a swamp. But Lord Farquaad of nearby Dulac has a plan for creating the perfect kingdom, and that means getting rid of all of the fairy tale characters and sending them to “a designated resettlement community.” Soon, the three blind mice, the three little pigs, the gingerbread man, all the broom-flying witches, Pinocchio, and a talking donkey are all relocated to the swamp. Shrek is furious at the intrusion. He makes a deal with Farquaad, who needs to marry a princess to put the final touch on his kingdom. Shrek will rescue Princess Fiona and bring her to Farquaad, and Farquaad will give Shrek his swamp back.

The movie is a marvelous fairy tale, with a thrilling quest and a happily ever after ending. It has the great themes of enduring myths, about believing in yourself, being loved for the person you really are, and good triumphing over evil. It is also a delicious satire, tweaking all of our assumptions about ogres, princesses, rescues, and even fire-breathing dragons. The voice talents of Michael Myers (as the Scottish-burred Shrek), Eddie Murphy (as the talking donkey), Cameron Diaz (as Princess Fiona), and John Lithgow (as Farquaad) are all perfect. The computer animation is breathtaking, like nothing ever done before. The textures are stunning. The glass, fire, clouds, and water seem three-dimensional, and you will feel that the donkey’s fur almost brushes your hand. The animation has wonderful warmth and depth, but it also has a great deal of character and wit. The facial expressions and body language are such a treat that the audience can’t help thinking that if ogres and donkeys and don’t really look like that, they should.

Parents should know that this movie is rated PG, but it is right up at the limit of PG-13, with edgy humor directed at teenagers and adults. It is a shame that Hollywood finds it necessary to include this material in a movie that would be otherwise perfect family fare, but that is the economic reality of this era of moviemaking. You can’t have a major hit without selling tickets to teenagers, and teenagers will not go without some jokes worth sniggering at. They will be over the heads of most younger children, but parents should be ready for some questions. Parents should also know that it has some potty humor and some gross-out jokes. There are also some scary scenes with characters in peril, and some fighting. A bird explodes and its eggs are eaten, and a character loses a leg, but very few others get seriously hurt.

Families who see this movie should talk about the donkey’s statement that Shrek has “that kind of ‘I don’t care what nobody thinks of me’ thing.” Is it true that Shrek did not care what people thought of him? How can you tell? What did it mean to say that ogres are like onions? What does it mean to say that people have layers? Who in the movie is judged on his or her looks? By themselves or by others? Why does Shrek yell at the donkey when he is really angry about something else? Do you agree that “friends forgive each other?” Can you look up into the stars and see stories?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Ladyhawke” and “The Princess Bride.” Families with younger children will enjoy some of the books by William Steig, who wrote this story. My favorites include Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Brave Irene.

Not one of Disney’s best, but this is a nice animated story of an elegant cat (voice of Eva Gabor) who must find her way back home with her kittens to protect their inheritance from an evil butler. The plot is sort of “Lady and the Tramp” crossed with “101 Dalmations,” with less memorable characters and songs. The highlight is the jazzy “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” number, with Phil Harris as Thomas O’Malley “The Alley” Cat singing the lead.

NOTE: There is a very odd, but brief, drunken scene when a goose drinks the wine that was supposed to be used to marinate him.

More than 20 years ago, the Sex Pistols made one album, were let go by two record companies, one after only one day, and had the number one song in the UK, though it was so controversial it could not be played on the radio or even named on the published top 40 list. They were prouder of the blank space on the top of the charts than they would have been to see their names there.

Twenty years ago, director Julien Temple made “The Great Rock and Roll Swindle,” a documentary about the Sex Pistols from the point of view of their manager, Malcolm McLaren, who was presented as a Svengali who conceived and marketed the group. He said that they were the clay and he was the sculptor. Now, Temple returns with another take on the same story, as the surviving Sex Pistols tell their side.

According to the band members, McLaren was incompetent and corrupt. He played no part in creating the band; all he did was market them badly and take all their money. Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) talks about their origins as furious and iconoclastic working-class boys who wanted to make people think about what was going on all around them – and about what was not going on. When the Sex Pistols got together, the economy in England was stagnant. Garbage strikes led to streets piled with trash for months, job losses led to thousands being on welfare, and cuts in services left people feeling helpless. The Sex Pistols wanted them to feel angry. For a brief time, they served the role of the fictional character in “Network” who urged people to go to their windows and scream, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!” They said their music was “almost a battle cry.” They wanted the working class to question the system, and to fight back.

They pierced their skin with safety pins and wore shredded clothes. “Wear the garbage! At least you’re dealing with it!” They did everything they could to offend and enjoyed the horrified reactions. But there were a few things that they were not at all prepared to deal with.

The first was McLaren. The Sex Pistols were not the kind of rock and roll band who trash the establishment on stage but act like the establishment off-stage. They never gave any thought to money or made any plans. They trusted McLaren, who is portrayed in this movie wearing a bondage mask of the kind he used to sell when he first met the members of the Sex Pistols in his store. Or perhaps it is more likely to say that they did not pay much attention to him. He gave them a few pounds a week spending money, and the rest is gone. The Sex Pistols faced all of the problems of any young, uneducated, unsophisticated kids who become famous very quickly, but to make it worse they got the fame without the fortune.

They were also not prepared for the problems that face all people who rise to fame on shock value. There is inevitably a Catch-22 dilemma. First, audiences get over shock very quickly, and as soon as the act is popular it immediately becomes no longer shocking, but normal. One day, punks are appalling everyone by sticking safety pins in their ears and wearing shredded clothes and the next day some enterprising soul is selling special piercing safety pins and pre-shredded clothes. The fans pay tribute to role-shattering rock stars by imitating them, and suddenly they are the new role model instead of the one rebelling against role models. The alternative is for the fans to compete by trying to be even more outrageous. So the fans spit on the band members and slash them with razors.

Even in the world of rock and roll, which has always relied on challenging the accepted and rebelling against authority, the Sex Pistols were so shocking that no one would record them or book them. One of their tours was called SPOT (“Sex Pistols on Tour”) so that the authorities would not know who was booked. When they put a sign on their tour bus that said “Nowhere,” they did not know it would literally be true.

One of the things they rebelled against was the notion of competence. When one member was told he had to learn to sing, he said, “Why?” You can rebel against the whole oppressive notion of success being tied to talent, but it is difficult to get anyone to buy your records. Another problem was that they were a lot better at knowing what they didn’t like than what they did like. The shelf life of anyone who criticizes without presenting an alternative is even briefer than the shelf life of someone who markets offensiveness. The most poignant moment in the movie is when they perform at a benefit for the children of striking fire fighters. The band has come together musically and at last they are about something that is meaningful to them. But it is too late.

By then, they were on an irreversible downward spiral. Lydon says, “Yes, I could take on England, but I couldn’t take on one heroin addict.” When Sid Vicious becomes involved with Nancy Spungen and with heroin, that is the beginning of the end. Today, speaking in shadows, Lydon breaks down in tears when he talks about how he could not save his friend.

Temple, who was around when the band was together, clearly has the trust of the surviving members. He shoots them in shadows, so our visual image of them is not diluted by signs of aging. We see their present-day recollections over footage of themselves more than two decades ago. Temple skillfully intercuts scenes from music hall performers, Laurence Olivier’s “Richard III” and “Hamlet,” contemporary commentators, and “The Great Rock and Roll Swindle” to provide a sense of context and contrast. There are some fascinating details about the band members. Lydon had meningitis as a child, and lost his memory. It may have been his having to learn everything again that led to his insistence that everyone question their assumptions. And Sid Vicious was not from a lower-class family. He was the son of a prestigious Grenadier guard, which must have made for some interesting conversation at home when their controversial salute to the Queen was banned from the charts.

The Sex Pistols were enormously influential, and many rock bands found some inspiration in their willingness to take on any authority. For a brief time, they played the role of the child who tells the emperor he has no clothes. As one band member says, “I question everything. I always have done.” Not a bad slogan for rock and roll, for adolescence, or even for everyone.

Parents should know that this movie includes very strong language, drug use (though a powerful anti-drug message), and explicit sexual references.

Families who see this movie should talk about the role of rebellion, the influence of the Sex Pistols, and who is closest today to the role they played. People who like this movie will also like Julien Temple’s “Absolute Beginners.”

The Coen brothers (“Fargo,” “Raising Arizona,” “O Brother Where Art Thou”) are known for flamboyant, even grotesque, images and outlandish dialogue. They also have a deep appreciation for film history, and many of their past films have been tributes to the 1930’s and 40’s genres. With “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” they return to the inspiration for their first film, “Blood Simple,” the films noir of the 1930’s and 1940’s. With this film, a clear nod to the movies based on James M. Cain novels like “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” they go further than they have before in submersing themselves into the genre, with little of their usual ironic distance.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Ed Crane, a man who thinks of himself simply as “The Barber.” He is responsible for the second chair in a barbershop owned by his wife’s brother. He is not particularly happy with his life in a small California town called Santa Rosa, but that does not bother him too much. He does not expect happiness, and even if he did, he would not expect himself to be able to take any steps to find it. He does what he is told, not because he is meek or submissive, but because it never occurs to him that he has a choice. If he takes some quiet satisfaction in the ignorance of those around him of the cynicism of his internal running commentary, that is as far as his rebellion goes.

Ed believes that his wife, Doris (Frances McDormand), is having an affair with her affable boss, “Big Dave” Brewster (James Gandolfini). Ed is not jealous or angry. He has no particular feeling about it (or about anything else). But then he meets Creighton Tolliver (Joe Polito) who tells him that for only $10,000, Ed can invest in a new invention so strange and wonderful it would just have to make a man wealthy – “dry cleaning.”

Ed decides to blackmail Big Dave to get the money. But things go wrong, two people are murdered, and the wrong person is arrested. A pretty teenager who plays the piano makes Ed think about the world outside of Santa Rosa.

Part of the code of the films noir was that evil could not triumph. This was a literal code, the Hayes Code, which governed the content of Hollywood films until adoption of the MPAA rating system. But it also worked well for those dark films, providing morality tales for uncertain times. These times may be just as uncertain, but audience expectations have changed. This movie is so traditional in structure, tone, language (mild by today’s standards), and content (with the exception of one jolting moment in a car) that it might bewilder viewers not familiar enough with the genre to recognize that some of the names in the movie are taken from noir classics like “Double Indemnity” and Gandolfini’s performance seems to channel the brilliant, underrated 1940’s actor, Paul Douglas.

They will, however, appreciate outstanding performances from the entire cast, especially Tony Shaloub as Califonia’s leading criminal defense lawyer. Like all Coen brothers films, it is filled with stunning images, this time brilliantly filmed in black and white.

Parents should know that the movie’s themes include adultery, blackmail, murder, and the death penalty. There is a very violent struggle and a character is killed. Another dead body is briefly visible. A character commits suicide and characters are injured in car accident (off-screen). An adult has some unfocused fantasies about an intimate relationship with a teenager. Characters drink and smoke (Ed smokes constantly).

Families who see this movie should talk about how it compares to the movies that it salutes, and about whether audiences have changed. Why was Ed so passive? What else could/should he have done?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “They Won’t Believe Me” and “Double Indemnity.”

In honor of this year’s B-Movie celebration, the DVD pick of the week is one of the films they are showing at the festival, the classic George Pal version of the H.G. Wells fantasy. A man named Wells (Rod Taylor) invents a time machine and uses it to travel to the future, where he finds a post-apocalyptic world of gentle Eloi and monstrous Morlocks. It is an exciting adventure, and well worth discussing, to ask kids why Wells thought that this was where the future would lead and what he would predict if he set the story 100 years from now.