There is nothing more appealing to watch in a movie than one character teaching another, except perhaps when two characters teach each other. This reliable formula is well presented in this fine film about two great writers, one who has not published anything for nearly half a century and one who is 16 years old.

A mysterious character lives in an inner-city high rise. Known to the neighborhood as “The Window,” he has never been seen to leave the apartment, and the local teens are curious about him. Jamal (Rob Brown) accepts a dare to enter the man’s apartment. The man surprises him, and he races out, leaving his backpack behind.

The next day, the backpack is thrown out the window, and Jamal finds that his private journals have been extensively marked up with comments, ending with “Where are you taking me?” Jamal has never shared his writing or his intellectual curiosity with anyone. All his friends know is that he is a good basketball player. Jamal goes back to “The Window” to ask for more comments, and, very slowly, a friendship begins. It turns out that “The Window” is William Forrester, author of one of the greatest books of the 20th century, who has not published a book since the first one won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. He is a recluse, with no communication with the outside world beyond his window, his television, and delivery of groceries by his publisher.

Meanwhile, Jamal’s test scores bring him to the attention of a posh private school, which offers him a full scholarship, though they expect more from him on the basketball court than in the classroom.

Some of the students at the new school are friendly, especially Claire (Anna Paquin). But a teacher named Crawford (F. Murray Abraham) suspects that Jamal’s work is not his own, and when Jamal embarrasses him in class, he accuses Jamal of plagiarism. The only one who can defend him is a man who has not left his apartment in decades.

The strengths of this movie are its themes and its performers. Newcomer Rob Brown is up to the level of the Oscar-winning trio (Connery, Paquin, and Abraham) who appear with him. In addition to the pleasure of seeing Jamal and Forrester spar with each other, teach each other, and support each other, there is the guiltier pleasure of those moments, in which Jamal takes off his Clark Kent/boyz in the hood disguise and lets his Superman intellectual energy and prodigious reading skewer those who dared to have preconceptions about him. There are a couple of scenes that recall that supremely satisfying moment in “Annie Hall” when Woody Allen pulled Marshall McLuhan out from behind a theater sign to refute the man who had been pontificating about McLuhan’s theories. The theme of a character whose true value and genius is not seen by those around him is a recurring theme in stories with a lot of appeal for teens, who often feel that way themselves.

There are also scenes of real loyalty and connection, not just between Jamal and Forrester, but between Jamal and his brother (rapper Busta Rhymes in his best performance yet) and between Jamal and Claire.

The movie’s primary weakness is its climax confrontation, which is artifically constructed and unsatisfyingly unrealistic. Forrester’s explanation of his decision to withdraw from the world and his decision to change is weakly handled. Jamal may be just a little too perfect. And a brief in-joke appearance by a big star is distracting.

Parents should know that the movie has brief strong language and sexual references and situations (Jamal’s neighbors have loud sex on the other side of his bedroom wall). Forrester says that women will have sex with anyone who has written a book. Jamal and Claire take their relationship very slowly and show a lot of respect and concern for each other. Forrester drinks a good bit, and talks about a character who died in a drunk driving accident.

The movie raises a lot of great issues for family discussion. Why do Jamal and Forrester hide their talents? How does the fact that both have lost family members provide an important connection for them? Why is it important for us to find people who can teach us? Why was Crawford so angry, and do you agree with Forrester’s comment about “bitterly disappointed teachers?” What prejudices are revealed by the characters? Do you agree that “people are most afraid of what they don’t understand?” Family members should also talk about Forrester’s advice that the first draft is written with the heart, the second with the head, and might want to try his technique for getting started on writing. They might also like to read some of the books Jamal talks about. And (note the way I started that sentence with “and” per Jamal’s comments on the subject) every teen should read “Catcher in the Rye” by famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger, the inspiration for the Forrester character.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Powder,” about another teen with extraordinary powers and “Field of Dreams,” another movie with a character based on Salinger. Mature teens will also like “Good Will Hunting” (very strong language and sexual situations) by the same director, also about a brilliant young man from a poor community.

Six lonely, insecure single people sign up for a beginning Italian class that changes their lives in this small, endearing Danish movie that feels as much like a documentary as like a traditional romantic comedy.

That is because it was made under the auspices of a group of film-makers who have made a commitment to making movies as simply as possible.

The Dogme 95 film-makers have pledged to obey some severe restrictions as a part of their commitment to making movies with more freshness, intimacy, and authenticity than the big-studio productions that they believe interfere with story-telling. They film in real locations, their only props those that are already present. They use minimal additional lighting and do not re-record dialogue. There is no musical score. The best known Dogme 95 films are Lars van Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” and “Dancer in the Dark.” “Italian for Beginners” is the first Dogme 95 romance and the first directed by a woman. One of the Dogme 95 rules is that the movie must not have a director’s credit. But it was directed by its screenwriter, Lone Scherfig.

The movie begins as Andreas (Anders W. Berthelsen), a young, newly ordained minister, is shown around the church he will be taking over temporarily. The current minister has been suspended (later we will find out why), and Andreas is a temporary fill-in. He moves into a hotel managed by Jorgen (Peter Gantzler), a shy man who has two big problems. He has not been able to have sex for four years, and he has been told to fire his best friend, Finn (Lars Kaalund), a handsome man who loves the sports restaurant he manages but cannot manage to be nice to any of the customers.

All three of them end up in the Italian class, along with a beautiful hairdresser and a clumsy bakery shop cashier. The two women, who are both caring for sick, demanding, parents, find out that they have even more in common. And Jorgen learns enough Italian to ask the pretty Italian cook who works with Finn if she would like to come to the class — even though she already speaks Italian. And then, like Shakespearean lovers running off to the woods, they leave Denmark to go to Venice, that most romantic of cities, to sort it all out.

This is the kind of cute concept that Hollywood studios churn out regularly (see Liza Minnelli’s “Stepping Out” for a pretty good example). But Schefberg has the courage to make the story messily un- formulaic. She trusts the audience enough to give us complicated characters coping with great loss and sadness. And here, in Dogme 95’s stripped-down style, the camera puts us so close to the action that we feel we are watching a real story unfold. There are moments of great intimacy, as when the hairdresser allows her hand to caress the side of Finn’s head as she washes his hair, and when Jorgen squats next to the swimming pool to ask advice about his problems with women as Andreas swims laps. And there are moments of great sweetness, as when the Italian cook steps away to consider a marriage proposal, to come racing back with her answer.

Parents should know that the movie is romantic and often comic, but characters cope with some very serious problems, including suicide, mercy killing, fetal alcohol syndrome, impotence, the death of parents, and the consequences of divorce for the adult children.

Scherfig said in an interview that there are no villains in her story, and that one difference between her story and most movies is that most movies made the audience want to be like the characters, while in her movie the characters want to be like the audience. Do you think that is true? What is the significance of Karen’s failed attempts to cut Finn’s hair, and his finally getting it done by someone else? What do we know about Andreas’s late wife that makes us think his new romance will work? Why does it take a trip to Venice to allow the characters to finally take a chance? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of the Dogme 95 style? What kind of stories is it best for, and what kind would it do badly?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Brassed Off” and “The Full Monty.”

When a movie’s on-screen explanation about what happens to the characters after it ends contains a typo (“aide” instead of “aid”), we get some idea of why it seems that so little attention was paid to other details like story and character.

The sad thing is that somewhere inside this mess of a movie are a couple of characters we like. “American Pie” alums Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari play Paul and Dora, freshmen at NYU. We see right away what a sweetheart Paul is, at his family’s party celebrating his scholarship. Paul dances with his little sister and slips the money his grandfather urges on him back into his grandfather’s own pocket. And we see right away how nice Dora is, putting ice on Paul’s knee when he falls down the classroom steps. Biggs and Suvari are very appealing and make a great couple. We settle back, waiting for them to find out what we already know, that they’re perfect for each other.

Unfortunately, it’s a frustrating and annoying hour and a half until we get there. The other characters are all tedious and the plot developments are either lame “but I thought”-type misunderstandings or lamer lifts from better movies. Paul has three interchangable and odious roommates who think of college as a four-year party. Dora is desperate for money, so she takes a job as a waitress in a strip club, sleeps in Grand Central Station (after paying a homeless woman to tell her mother that she is sleeping in a dorm). And she’s having an affair with a selfish and egotistical professor (Greg Kinnear).

As the typo indicates, the movie has an unfinished quality, as though someone was trying to create structure through editing that was not there in the script. There are several unnecessary cameos (David Spade, Andy Dick, Everclear) that seem to have been thrown in as an effort to pick things up. A lot of the plot twists and details are so dumb or unbelievable, even within the context of romantic comedy, that they are just distracting. Why would Paul agree to a second party when the first one was such a disaster? Why would he and Dora believe what people they know to be unreliable tell them about each other? Characters do things for the sake of the plot that are completely inconsistent with the rest of their behavior. Some things just make no sense at all. If the whole movie is supposed to take place in the first semester (at the end of the movie they are making plans for Thanksgiving) then Paul wears that thick wool hat when it isn’t even cold out? When did Dora have time to meet and start an affair with the professor? It seems to be well underway when school starts.

Parents should know that the movie has a casual attitude toward drinking and drug use. Paul’s roommates spike girls’ drinks with the “date rape drug,” which is treated as little more than a regrettable prank. Despite the fact that integrity is a key aspect of Paul’s character, Paul and Dora casually steal bread, coffee, and theater seats, and this is portayed as clever and charming. Students also blackmail a professor into giving them good grades.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Paul and Dora evaluate their choices. Why does Paul go along with his ex-roommates’ party plan? Why does he care what they think of him? Why is Dora so wrong about the professor? How do people make friends in college? Paul’s father (Dan Ackroyd) gives him some very good advice, and another of the movie’s many frustrations is waiting for that to be important later in the movie.

People who want to see a better movie about this stage of life should see “Breaking Away” or the syrupy blockbuster “Love Story.”

This semi-successful attempt at a post-modern comic-book style story that has it both ways, archly commenting on superhero sagas while actually giving us a new and cooler version of one at the same time. That is an all but impossible task, and “Mystery Men” comes closer than many, with its sensational production design and cast members who know how to nail dialogue with just the right spin of irony (“Maybe you’d better put on some shorts,” says Jeaneane Garofolo as The Bowler to the Invisible Boy who has just become visible, “if you want to keep fighting evil today.”).

Champion City is just about idyllic now that its superhero, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) has thoroughly vanquished all the bad guys. But without bad guys, Captain Amazing’s visibility — and his corporate endorsements — are declining. He arranges for the release of an old arch- enemy, Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush), so that they can battle again. Things do not go as he planned, however, and Frankenstein captures him. A group of secondary superheroes with quirky powers come to his rescue, including the Blue Rajah (Hank Azaria), who throws forks and spoons (but never knives); Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), whose anger gives him strength; The Bowler (Jeaneane Garofolo), who has a powerful bowling ball with her father’s skull inside); Invisible Boy (Kel Martin), who can’t disappear if anyone is looking; The Shoveler (William H. Macy), who shovels very, very well; and The Spleen (Paul Reubens), who has killer flatulence. Guided by the Delphic Sphinx (Wes Studi), they learn the importance of self-esteem and teamwork, as though they had wandered into some “Mighty Ducks” movie.

Parents should know that much of the humor will be above the heads of most teens, and that what is left tends to be potty humor. Furthermore, though the violence is comic book style, three characters are incinerated in a scary manner. Almost as scary is the way that no one seems to care about that very much, even though one of them is one of the good guys. It is nice to see a female superhero (despite the title), and Garofolo’s Bowler is first among equals in self-possession, maturity, and ability. Families should discuss individual abilities, and what superpowers each member of the family would most like to have.

Remember when Humphrey Bogart told Ingrid Bergman that “it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world?” Well, this is a story that comes down on the side of the hill of beans.

Although it tries mightily to follow the “Titanic” formula, “Pearl Harbor” is not going to inspire the same “let’s go see it again” spirit. Like “Titanic” (and “The Perfect Storm,” and “Twister,” and a zillion others), this movie attempts to tie a love story to a catastrophe, with the theory that if it can make us care, make us gasp, and make us cry, they’ll have a box-office bonanza. But both the love story and the war story have a synthetic feel to them that does not permit us to care enough. It’s worth seeing – but only once.

After a brief prologue, in which we meet the two male leads as young boys to see their passion for flying and their loyalty to each other, we open as the war is going on in Europe. America is sending equipment and supplies, but has not yet entered the war. The two boys, Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett) are army pilots. Anxious to get some action, Rafe volunteers to go to England, where he can join an American division of the RAF. Before he leaves, he meets a pretty nurse named Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) and they fall in love. He leaves for England, and Danny and Evelyn are assigned half a world away, to the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor. When Rafe is reported killed, Evelyn and Danny are devastated. They comfort each other, and become involved. Rafe arrives to find them together, just before the Japanese attack. That attack, lasting just about as long on screen as it did in reality, is devastating to the unprepared Naval Station and to a country that thought it could stay out of the war. But Rafe and Danny train for a counter-attack on Tokyo to send Japan a message that America can and will punish those who attack us.

Director Michael Bay (“Armageddon”) has visual flair and superb command of action sequences. There are some nice moments, like Evelyn’s arrival at the hospital in Pearl Harbor, rows of neat white beds with just one occupant, being treated for sunburn. Dan Ackroyd is fine as an intelligence officer and Jon Voight, somewhere under a lot of make-up, shows us FDR’s compassion, political skill, and intelligence. Affleck, Hartnett, and Beckinsale look gorgeous and do their best to give some depth to the cardboard characters, but they cannot overcome a soapy plot and dialogue that is often wooden and sometimes wildly anachronistic. I do not think that anyone in 1941 spoke of somone’s “having too much time on their hands.” And I am pretty sure that no one, seeing the bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor, concluded that “World War II has just started.” For one thing, the war in Europe had been going on for a while, and for another, they had not started calling “The Great War” “World War I” yet. Rafe writes a lot of letters for a guy who is dyslexic. And can we please, please agree never again to have one of those scenes where some hot-shot flyboys break the rules and are then called on the carpet by crusty commanders who come across all disciplinarian but call them son and thinly disguise the “that’s just how I used to behave” twinkle in their eyes? We know producer Jerry Bruckheimer had a hit with “Top Gun,” but he does not have to make this one into “Maverick and Goose Go to War.”

Like last year’s “The Patriot,” the movie fails to provide any sense of the reason for the conflict. When asked why he fights, a character says nothing about freedom or fighting the Nazis. He just says that he wants “to matter,” a disconcertingly me-oriented answer from a would-be representative of the greatest generation.

No one wants them to demonize the people we fought in World War II, but they go too far in the other direction. It’s almost as though they were more interested in selling tickets in Japan than in giving any substance to the story. Cuba Gooding, Jr. does his best with a part that is awkwardly inserted into the main storyline.

The movie bends over backwards to be fair to the Japanese, portraying them as brave and loyal. But it is also dismayingly US-centric, showing (inaccurately) both the English and the Japanese in awe of American spirit and strength. The Japanese general says that he fears they have “awakened the sleeping giant.” And Rafe’s British commander says that if other Americans are like Rafe, he feels sorry for anyone who goes to battle with the US.

Parents should know that the movie features extended and intense battle violence with thousands of casualties, including characters we care about. Soldiers use strong language and joke about seduction techniques. A couple decides not to have sex because they do not want to have any regrets. Another couple does have sex and the woman becomes pregnant. Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays a real-life hero of World War II, the first black man to win the Navy Cross. The woman may be there because they thought it would be exciting and they would meet men, but when they are needed, they are strong, brave, and dedicated.

Famiies who see this movie should talk about the events that led to World War II and about some of the real-life characters who are depicted. Make sure that they know that in 1941 the armed services were segregated. The character played by Cuba Gooding, Jr., Dorie Miller, like most other black soldiers, was not trained to fight and was assigned to cooking and menial jobs.

Characters in the movie face choices that are well worth family discussion. Why didn’t the US realize how vulnerable it was to attack? How do you decide which wounded to help? What should Evelyn have done when Rafe returned? Why did the pilots volunteer for the raid on Japan?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy other Michael Bay action spectaculars like “Armageddon” and “The Rock.” Fans of WWII movies will do better with “Saving Private Ryan,” “Mr. Roberts,” and “30 Seconds Over Tokyo,” with Spencer Tracy as the real-life James Doolittle, portrayed in “Pearl Harbor” by Alec Baldwin. Mature audiences will also appreciate “From Here to Eternity,” a brilliant movie about soldiers stationed at Pearl Harbor before the attack.