Plot: Big Daddy’s (Burl Ives) family is celebrating both his 65th birthday and his medical report, which shows his health problems have proven to be minor. He has two grown sons, Brick (Paul Newman), an alcoholic former athlete, and Gooper (Jack Carson), who is constantly trying to replace Brick as Big Daddy’s favorite. Gooper has five children, and Brick’s wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor) knows that no matter how much Big Daddy loves Brick, he cannot inherit Big Daddy’s property unless he provides an heir. Brick is angry at himself and at Maggie, and wants nothing more than to drink until he feels the “click” of peace when he is too drunk to feel anything else. But the “odor of mendacity” is too strong for Big Daddy, and all the lies come tumbling down like skeletons out of a closet.

Discussion: This movie, based on Tennessee Williams’ play, is about a family that has been damaged more by lies than by greed. They lie to Big Daddy about the results of his tests. Brick lies to himself about what really went on with Skipper. Gooper and his wife lie about their feelings for Big Daddy. And Maggie lies about being pregnant. It is worth discussing the different kinds of lies and the different motivations behind them, and the impact the truth has on the characters, when they are finally confronted with it. Compare this family’s method of accomplishing its goals with the methods of some other movie families, to see which interactions make families stronger and which tear them apart.

Questions for Kids:

· Why does Maggie compare herself to a cat on a hot tin roof? What is the roof, and what makes it hot?

· Why won’t Brick agree to get Maggie pregnant? Who is he mad at? Why?

· Why does Brick have such contempt for himself? What does Skipper’s death have to do with it?

· What makes Brick change his mind?

Connections: Compare this family to another classic Southern dysfunctional family, the Hubbards, in “The Little Foxes.” Other Williams plays adapted for the screen include “The Glass Menagerie,” “Period of Adjustment,” and “Sweet Bird of Youth.”

Activities: Read the play, and you will see that Tennessee Williams wrote two different endings. Take a look at the other ending, and read his comments on it before you decide which one you prefer.

Three close friends get together every week to share their saddest stories about looking for love. The one with the worst story of the week gets the consolation prize of a box of candy. Then, one of them has a good story, and the others are not as happy for her as they thought they would be.

The women are Kate (Andie MacDowell), headmistress of a school; Janine (Imelda Staunton), a police chief; and Molly (Anna Chancellor), a doctor. All three are very successful and capable and involved in the community. They just can’t seem to get the love thing right. And, in this movie, they discover that they as individuals and as a group may be more responsible for that problem than they have been willing to recognize.

While she is attending a funeral, Kate sees a handsome young organist (Kenny Doughty as Jed) who looks familiar. He was once her student, but is now grown up and, whether a reaction to seeing how quickly life is passing or just a need to be close to someone, she impulsively has sex with him. The bigger surprise is that it turns into a relationship of great tenderness for both of them.

Molly and Janine find it disconcerting. Kate’s radiant happiness rattles them. They persuade themselves that they are acting in Kate’s best interest when they try to break up the relationship. But their meddling has unforgivably tragic consequences.

The movie is uneven, partly because of its unconventional choice to make the story about the relationship between the three women rather than about the relationship between Kate and Jed. But its biggest problem is the awkwardly melodramatic interjection of a tragic death followed by a melodramatic pregnancy that threatens to turn it into soap opera.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language and many sexual references and explicit sexual situations. Characters drink and smoke and behave very foolishly and irresponsibly.

Families who see this movie should talk about how friends who are supportive when things are not going well may become jealous of each other’s happiness, and how important it is to search our own hearts to make sure that we do not make that mistake.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy seeing MacDowell and Chancellor in Four Weddings and a Funeral, where, like this movie, they are both in a church when a wedding ceremony is very unceremoniously interrupted. They may also want to watch two other movies about middle-aged women who have romances with younger men, Forty Carats and How Stella Got Her Groove Back.

It is 1942 and Stalingrad is “a city on the Volga where the fate of the world is being decided.” Hitler is trying to do what Napoleon could not and has sent his troops to invade the Soviet Union.

The Germans have enormous strength, and the Russians are overmatched. Soviet officers hand guns to every other soldier, telling them, “When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one following picks up the rifle and shoots.” The Germans establish a stronghold and the Russian soldiers are badly shaken. A new commanding officer, Nikita Krushchev (Bob Hoskins), terrorizes one of the senior officers into killing himself and asks for suggestions on how to build the morale of his soldiers. A young political officer named Danilov (Joseph Fiennes of “Shakespeare in Love”) makes a suggestion — “give them hope.” He has seen a soldier kill five Germans, each with a single shot. He urges Krushchev to “give them heroes.”

The soldier is Vassily Zaitsev (Jude Law), an uneducated boy from the Urals with an extraordinary talent for hitting his target. Danilov’s propaganda makes Zaitsev a legend. And that makes him a target for the Germans, who dispatch their own legendary sniper, Terminator-style, to go after him. When that legend arrives (Ed Harris as Major Koenig), he can research Zaitsev by reading Danilov’s circulars about Zaitsev. Danilov sees Koenig’s arrival as a chance for bigger and better propaganda. Koenig is a nobleman, so that now there is a class war to add to the story.

But everything Danilov does to make Zaitsev a hero and an asset to the Soviets makes him more vulnerable to discovery and attack by the Germans. Things get even more complicaged when Danilov and Zaitsev fall for the same girl, a tough soldier named Tania (Rachel Weisz of “The Mummy”).

This is a thinking person’s historical epic, so impressively ambitious in taking on issues and ideas that you have to cut it some slack when it does not manage them all as skillfully as it hopes to. The story of the German siege of Leningrad is worth a movie in itself. The cat and mouse game between Koenig and Zaitsev is like something out of a classic western, more much about strategy, courage, ingenuity, and patience as about sharpshooting. The issue of using one individual’s story to manipulate the masses plays out fascinatingly throughout the movie. It is reminiscent of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence’s” famous line, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” If the love triangle is the weakest part of the movie, that is only because the rest of it is so strong.

All four stars are excellent, especially Law’s guileless integrity and Harris’ variation — a sort of guile-full integrity. When the two men face off against each other, it is clear that they understand each other in a way that no one else ever can.

Parents should know that this is a very tense and violent movie, with graphic battle scenes and piles of dead bodies. Characters are in constant peril and many are killed, including a child. There is a brief but fairly explicit sexual encounter with brief nudity. The characters use strong language, drink, and smoke.

Families who see this movie should talk about the effect that fame has on people. At first, Zaitsev innocently enjoys the attention, though he never lets it go to his head. Later he says, “I can’t carry that weight any more. I want to fight as a regular soldier.” Was what Danilov did necessary? Was it fair to Zaitsev? Did it do what it was intended to? How was that similar to what the Germans did to Koenig? (Think about the scene where he turns in his dogtags)? Why did Tania chose the one she loves? Think about what it says about the real Zaitsev at the end of the movie — does the movie do to the real Zaitsev what Danilov did to the fictional one?

Families who enjoy this movie should read more about the invasion of the Soviet Union, a key turning point in WWII. Younger members of the family might like to hear what happened to the commanding officer, Nikita Krushchev, whom baby boomers may remember best for banging the table with his shoe at the U.N. Families who enjoy this movie should also see “Doctor Zhivago.”

If you’re allergic to the kind of movie that starts with a funeral and then goes into a flashback about a sensitive kid’s last childhood summer, then stay away. But audiences with an appreciation or even a tolerance of this genre will find this to be above average. It is based on a story by Stephen King. There is some tension and an element of the supernatural, but this is King’s coming of age mode (“Stand By Me”) and contact with an extraordinary character mode (“The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile”), not a horror movie.

It is summertime, and Billy has just turned 11. His mother’s birthday gift is not the bicycle he dreams of but an adult library card. She is quick to remind him that they have very little money, since Billy’s father died leaving them with unpaid bills and no insurance. Billy’s friend Carol points out that his mother buys new clothes for herself, but Billy defends her, saying that she has to look good for work.

A stranger comes to live above Billy and his mother. His name is Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins). He hires Billy to read him the newspaper and watch out for “the low men,” who wear hats, drive fancy cars, and leave odd messages in code on telephone poles. Billy thinks Ted is a little loony, but he agrees, at first because he wants to earn money for the bicycle, and then because he is drawn to Ted’s warmth, humor, and even to his strangeness. He begins to see signs of the low men, but he does not tell Ted. He knows that when Ted hears that the low men have come, he will have to leave.

Billy gets a chance to see through Ted’s eyes, which may be weak when it comes to reading but which see important things very clearly. When Billy touches Ted, he gets a little bit of Ted’s ability to somehow “know” things. All of a sudden, in the next room, Billy can tell that what Ted is wondering about is his cigarettes. And a surprised three-card monte shark (well-played by “A Knight’s Tale’s” Alan Tudyk) finds that Billy can tell him where the Queen of Hearts is without even looking at the cards. Even more important, though, is that way that Ted, like all special grown-ups in the lives of children, guides Billy to a new knowledge of himself and the world. Ted helps Billy realize that his friend Carol is more special to him than he thought, that he deserves better treatment from his mother, and that the town bully is not as powerful as he thinks.

Parents should know that there is some strong language, characters are in peril and some are injured, and a character is raped (inexplicit and mostly offscreen). A character is wrongfully accused of molesting a child. A bully who accuses others of being “queer” turns out to be acting on his fears about his own sexuality. Fighting back is portrayed as heroic. There are a couple of chaste kisses.

Families who see this movie should talk about the grown-ups who inspired them the most, and might also want to discuss how we decide whom we will trust.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Stand By Me – Special Edition(some mature material).

Jet Li is always a pleasure to watch, even in this silly story about a Chinese spy befriended by an American prostitute on a mission in Paris.

No longer the pretty boy in the equally silly but more romantic “Romeo Must Die,” this time, in a story he created, Li lets us see some chicken pox scars on his face and he lets us see him get knocked down a few times, too.

But don’t confuse that with realism. This is still a ridiculous fantasy story about an evil policeman named Richard (Tchéky Karyo) who seems to be behind most of the crime in Europe. Richard runs prostitutes and deals in drugs. And when the Chinese government sends a representative to help investigate drug traffic into China, Richard kills his Chinese contact and frames the representative, whom he insists on calling “Johnny.”

All of this is, of course, just a thin excuse for extensive and sometimes inventive fight scenes, featuring lots of punching and kicking and also injury and death by grenade (which blows a guy in half), laundry irons (applied to faces), automatic weapons, chopsticks to the throat, a billiard ball to the head, and some tiny acupuncture pins with devastating effects. My favorite encounter was when Li, chasing through the police station, locks himself inside a room only to turn around and discover that he is facing an entire class of cops who are in a karate class.

Parents should know that the movie is extremely violent and very graphic, with many gross, bloody deaths and behavior that is reckless to the point of insanity. Richard makes Al Capone look like a consensus-builder. Even most movie bad guys are not as out of control as Richard, who wildly shoots automatic weapons into crowds of civilians. Li made headlines the week before the film was released by recommending that parents not allow their children to see the movie, which is rated R for extreme and graphic violence, drug use, and sexual references and situations. This is good advice.

Families who do see the movie should talk about how Jessica, an American girl from North Dakota, made the foolish choices that left her a heroin-addicted prostitute and kept her away from her daughter. What other options did she have? What will happen to her after the movie ends?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Jet Li in Romeo Must Die and Lethal Weapon.