Movies are made for heist stories. Great robberies can be fun to watch on stage or read about in a book, but movies provide an immediacy and economy of narrative that no other form of story-telling can touch. Give us something worth a lot of money, whether it is money, jewels, or a secret formula, put it somplace hard to break into, whether it is a museum, a bank, or an enemy compound, and an anti-hero to root for, and we’re ready to enjoy.

The pattern may be familia, but it is reliable. Set out the task and explain the obstacles, come up with clever ways to get around the obstacles, then show us the heist itself, throwing in a few unexpected challenges and some even more clever on-the-spot problem-solving, add in some colorful characters with a few twists and turns in their relationships, and we will settle back and enjoy.

“The Score” benefits from this formula almost as much as it benefits from its Mount Rushmore of acting power. The story might not have much that’s new, but it is still fun to see a thief look at an intimidating new safe utterly undaunted, explaining that “If somebody can build it, somebody can unbuild it.” The movie’s real luster comes from stars Marlon Bando, Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton, and Angela Bassett, who are thrilling to watch under any circumstances. You can’t help wishing, though, to see them under other circumstances. I’ll be the rehearsals for some of these scenes were more fun to watch than the scenes themselves.

DeNiro plays Nick, a careful thief who plans meticulously, keeps his cool when the unexpected occurs, and lives by two rules: work alone and never rob in the city you live in. He is willing to think about breaking those rules when Max, his long-time fence Brando) offers him a job so big that he can retire and live happily ever after with the woman he adores (Bassett) and the jazz club he owns.

The job will require working with Jack (Norton), who came up with idea (stealing a priceless gold scepter studded with jewels) and who has done all of the prep work (posing as a retarded man to get a janitor’s job in the building, getting access to all of the technical specifications for the security system), but who does not know how to crack the safe. If they are going to do this job, Nick and Jack will have to work together.

There are not many surprises here. Of course Nick and Jack will have some trouble learning to work together. They will have to rely on a mother-ridden computer nerd to get the key access codes. Nick and his girlfriend will have a disagreement about this “one last job.” And there will be both honor and dishonor among the thieves. This would be a B movie without the world-class talent on screen, but even they can’t lift it to more than a B-plus. It is fun to watch them spark each other, though, and for my money, Norton (who does have the showiest role) takes the prize.

Parents should know that the movie is rated R for language, brief drug use, sexual references, and a brief, non-expliit sexual situation. The heroes of the movie are all theives, and there is no suggestion that there is anything wrong or even any harm in stealing an historic treasure.

Families who see this movie should talk about the conversation Nick and Jack have about taking risks, and how their views differ. They may also want to talk about how Nick was firm about his rules until enough money was offered to change his mind.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy some heist movie classics, like “Topkapi,” “The Great Train Robbery,” and “The Lavender Hill Mob.”

This movie has a lot of surface appeal, but at its core it is as vacant as the story’s main character.

It tries to be a sort of “Sixth Sense” with sex, a trippy mind game movie about a rich, successful, handsome, but superficial man named David (Tom Cruise), whose life turns upside down when he meets a woman who stirs him (because she is “guileless”). But then he must pay the price for his casual negligence. A woman becomes jealous, and drives them both off an embankment. She is killed, and he is badly hurt and disfigured. The life he took for granted is shattered.

At this point, a fairly conventional narrative is shattered, like David’s arm and his face. It becomes impossible to say much more about it without spoiling the surprises. David tries to piece together his story and we do the same, though sometimes based on conflicting information.

Like last year’s “Cast Away,” this is something of a vanity production. I suspect that Tom Hanks created the ultimate acting exercise for himself, based on what he feared most – being separated from his family. Cruise, who also produced this movie by purchasing the rights to the original, Spanish-language version, has done the same here. He may have chosen what he fears most – losing his looks and easy grace, losing his knack for owning the room. And, like Hanks, he selected a story that provides the opportunity for tour-de-force acting. In many scenes, Cruise’s famous face is covered with a latex mask, leaving him only his body and his eyes to convey all of the character’s emotions.

Cruise works hard and makes some arresting choices. Diaz turns in a terrific performance and Tilda Swinton is excellent in a brief role as an executive. But Kurt Russell seems a little lost as a therapist, and Penelope Cruz, repeating her role from the original, says her lines as though she is not really fluent in English yet.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language and explicit sexual situations and references. One character smothers another, and a different character kills herself and is unsuccessful at killing her lover. The facial disfigurement is graphically portrayed and may be very upsetting to some viewers.

Families who see this movie should talk about why David feels unsatisfied at the beginning of the movie, and whether he should have made a pass at the woman his best friend brought to a party. How much of the world around us do we control? How much would you like to control? If given the choice presented to David at the end of the movie, what would you choose?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The Sixth Sense,” “The Matrix,” and possibly “A.I.” They might also like to see “Waking Life,” an animated film that makes many of the same points.

The Plot: Harpo, Chico, and Groucho Marx bring their sublime brand of anarchy to perhaps its most fitting setting in this comic masterpiece. Groucho is (as ever) a fast-talking fortune hunter (this time called Otis P. Driftwood), chasing (as ever) dim dowager Margaret Dumont (this time called Mrs. Claypool).

Mrs. Claypool brings two Italian opera stars to the United States (Kitty Carlisle as sweet Rosa and Walter Woolf King as cruel Rodolfo Laspari) on board an ocean liner. Talented tenor Riccardo (Allan Jones), who loves Rosa, his manager Fiorello (Chico Marx), and Tomasso (Harpo Marx), Rodolfo’s abused dresser, stow away in Driftwood’s steamer trunk. They manage to get off the boat disguised as bearded Russian aviators, but are discovered and are chased by a New York detective. When Rosa refuses Rodolfo’s romantic advances, she is fired. But Tomasso and Fiorello wrack havoc on the opera’s performance of “Il Trovatore,” until Rosa and Riccardo come in and save the show.

Discussion: Many of the Marx Brother’s best-loved routines are here, including the wildly funny contract negotiation, as Groucho and Chico try to con each other (“That’s what we call a sanity clause.” “Oh no, you can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!”) and the famous stateroom scene, as person after person enters Groucho’s closet-sized room on the ship, while Harpo manages to stay asleep (and draped over as many women as possible) and Groucho stays philosophical (when the manicurist asks if he wants his nails long or short, he says, “You’d better make them short; it’s getting pretty crowded in here.”). The movie veers happily from the wildest slapstick (the Marx brothers replace the music for “Il Trovatore” with “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”) to the cleverest wordplay (by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind), punctuated by musical numbers that range from pleasant to innocuous. Children studying piano may especially enjoy Chico’s speciality — playing the piano while his fingers do acrobatics. And all children will enjoy learning that the stars were real-life brothers, who performed together for most of their lives.

Questions for Kids:

· Why won’t Rodolfo sing to the people who came to say goodbye to him?

· The Marx brothers play people who are not very nice in this movie — they steal, they cheat, they lie, and they cause havoc. How does the movie make you like them anyway?

Connections: This was the most commercially successful of the Marx Brothers movies, in part because of the very sections that seem most tedious to us now — the serious musical numbers and the romance. Children will enjoy the other Marx Brothers movies as well, especially “A Day at the Races” (NOTE–that movie contains some material that seems racist by today’s standards, particularly a rather minstrel show-ish musical number), “Duck Soup,” “Horse Feathers,” and “Monkey Business.” Fans of the many movie references in “The Freshman,” with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando, may notice that Broderick’s fake passport is in the name of Rodolfo Laspari.

A very uneven thriller-romance is brightened by dark comedy and another magnetic performance by Nicole Kidman as the 21st century equivalent to a mail order bride. Shy bank teller John (Ben Chaplin) orders his bride from an internet company called “From Russia With Love.” He orders a brand new double bed and cleans up his little suburban house in anticipation, though he is not able to (foreshadowing alert) rid his house of an infestation of ants, and then goes off to the airport to pick her up.

The good news is, well, she looks like Nicole Kidman. The bad news is that she does not speak English, she smokes, and on the way home from the airport she has to throw up.

John has some second thoughts, but he can’t get anyone from the agency on the phone. Meanwhile, Nadiya efficiently discovers his stash of porn and even more efficiently makes herself sexually indispensible.

Nadiya stays at home and knits, and John goes off to the bank with a spring in his step and the ring she brought him on his finger. He presents her with a Russian/English dictionary and she uses it to tell him that it is her birthday. But the celebration is interrupted by the arrival of her cousin and his friend.

At this point, things start to go wrong. Many betrayals, a bank robbery, a lot of smacking around and threats with guns later, there is a resolution as uneven as the movie’s tone. There are some signs of real talent here in John’s generic performance evaluation and the bank’s “trust” exercises, Nadia’s monologue about her binoculars and her bright red knitting. The movie’s director, screenwriters, and producer (three brothers) clearly intended to make a movie that transcends genre, but it does not really work. It just feels unsettlingly muddled.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language, a lot of violence and explicit sex, including bondage, references to prostitution, and an out of wedlock pregnancy. Stealing and corruption are positively portrayed.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Kidman’s sensational performance as a woman who entices two teenage boys to kill her husband in To Die For and Francois Truffaut’s mail-order bride thriller Mississippi Mermaid.