Sensitive but highly responsible and straight-laced guys have been falling for sensitive but high-maintenance and irresponsible girls in movies since before they started selling popcorn from theater concession stands. That theme has been played for comedy (“Bringing Up Baby”) or poignancy (“The Sterile Cuckoo”), and its appeal is enduring, especially to teenagers, which is where this latest entry will find its most sympathetic audience.

Kirsten Dunst plays Nicole, the troubled daughter of a California congressman (Bruce Davison). She and her best friend Matty spend as much of their time as possible either getting wasted, getting into trouble, or both. She meets Carlos (Jay Hernandez), a poor but hard-working Latino boy who has to get up at 5 am to get to school and who dreams of going to the Naval Academy to become a pilot.

Nicole and Carlos are drawn to each other. At first, Nicole treats him like another drug. She brings him back to her house, tosses him a condom, and unzips her pants. He is another way to erase her feelings and hurt her father. But his tenderness and authenticity and his interest in knowing and loving the real Nicole, not the bad girl or the fun girl or the up for anything girl she can pretend to be make her want to deserve him.

Carlos has felt the burden of delivering all his family’s dreams of achievement. Every second of his life is planned. He is drawn to Nicole’s spontaneity and warmth. But he does not know if he is prepared to risk everything he has worked for to try to save her from herself.

There is nothing new here, but Dunst and Hernandez deliver warm, thoughtful performances as the two leads. Dunst is a little beyond her range, but deserves credit for taking on a complex challenge and being willing to present herself as vulnerable and without a movie-star glow. The director (who also did the first-rate docudrama “Cheaters,” about a real-life Chicago high school team that cheated on a scholastic competition) has a real feel for teenagers.

The weakest points are the cardboard character bad guys (the evil stepmother, played by the talented Lucinda Jenney, is an inexcusable stereotype) and the teen-dream resolution, in which everything turns out all right after a parent admits it was all his fault and sees the light. But that is just one more aspect of this teen fantasy that will appeal to its target audience. Many movies about teenage life feel more authentic to adults (who, after all, create them) than to teens themselves. I suspect that this will seem false to adults, but will seem real to a lot of 15-year-olds, whose stage of life leaves them naturally hypersensitive and with heightened emotions. They will also identify with the way the film portrays the importance (and unconditional support) of friends, the insensitivity of classmates and teachers, and the neglect of parents.

Parents should know that the movie includes very strong language, drug use and drinking by teenagers, driving under the influence, sexual references and situations, and difficult emotional confrontations. An off-camera suicide and suicide attempts are discussed. The romance is inter-racial, triggering some hostility from both sides, and there is an ugly racial dispute.

Families who see this movie should discuss the difficulty Nicole and her father have in showing love for one another, the way that Carlos does not want to have sex with Nicole until he can be sure it is for the right reason and at the right time in their relationship and the way that Nicole’s love for Carlos (and for her sister, Megan) makes her want to get better so that she can feel she deserves to be loved in return. When did Carlos stop being a symbol to Nicole and start being a human being?

Families who like this movie will also like “Save the Last Dance” and “The Sterile Cuckoo.”

Plot: In this blackest of black comedies, a “Duck Soup” for the Cold War era, a rogue American general named Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes mad and sends planes to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union. He cuts off all communication to the base, and only he knows the three-letter code to cancel the attack.

The mild-mannered President of the United States (Peter Sellers) and Captain Mandrake, a highly civilized British officer (Sellers again) are no match for the bloodthirsty General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the demented Dr. Strangelove (Sellers again!), a former Nazi expert on nuclear weapons whose arm gets out of control, giving a “Heil, Hitler” salute and even trying to choke him. Turgidson’s view is that America should take advantage of the accidental initiation of war to fight to the finish and establish American supremacy. Mandrake is unable to trick Ripper into revealing the code, but, after Ripper commits suicide, following his explanation that flouridation is a communist plot, Mandrake figures it out. He is almost prevented from revealing it, however, when the suspicious Col. “Bat” Guano (Keenan Wynn) arrives in search of Ripper, and then when it turns out that no one has change for the pay phone. At the last minute, the correct code is sent, but an enterprising American pilot insists on carrying out the mission. The Americans spend their last moments designing a post-nuclear world, where the few remaining people live in mine-shafts, with ten women (selected for their fertility and appeal) for every man. The Soviet ambassador thinks this is an outstanding idea, but Turgidson still worries that the Soviets might have more mine shafts than the Americans.

Discussion: Teens who view this movie may need some background to understand the sense of helpless peril of the Cold War years. More important, they may need some preparation to understand the nature of black comedy, and some may find it very disturbing, particularly the unconventional ending, in which the world is annihilated. This can be a good way to initiate discussions about the nature of war and peace (begin with Ripper’s quote from Clemeanceu about war’s being too important to be left to the generals), and about the best ways of ensuring an enduring peace.

Questions for Kids:

· What do you think of making fun of issues like madness and nuclear desctruction? Does it make you feel more or less comfortable about the possibility of nuclear war?

· If the movie were to be made today, what details would be changed? Who would the nuclear threat come from?

· Who should decide when to initiate nuclear warfare?

Connections: The same issues are addressed in a serious dramatic context in “Failsafe,” released the same year. Some of the same issues of control of the war machinery are raised by “Wargames” and even by “Independence Day” (which has an explicit reference to this movie in Randy Quaid’s attack on the alien spaceship).

Activities: Teens should see if they can find out what the current state of nuclear disarmamant is and what the current issues are.

“Hardball” is a softball, and this umpire calls it out at first base.

Keanu Reeves plays a compulsive gambler named Conor O’Neill who owes a lot of money to various thugs. A childhood friend offers to pay him $500 a week if he will take over the friend’s responsibility to coach a baseball team in Chicago’s Cabrini Green, one of the nation’s most dangerous housing projects. You know where it goes from there because you’ve seen it in “The Bad News Bears” and “The Mighty Ducks” and dozens of clones. That is not always a bad thing – there’s always room for another story of underdogs and redemption. But this one never delivers on any of the opportunities that formula creates. There’s a nine-member team and we barely get to know any of them except for two inevitable cliches — the fat kid and the cute little kid who talks a lot. Reeves can be terrific in a part that suits his range, but the blankness that works well for him in dumb parts (“Bill and Ted”) and silent parts (“Speed,” “The Matrix”) does not give him enough to work with when he is supposed to be struggling with his compulsion to gamble or angry with himself for getting into trouble. Reeves gets no help from the script, which makes him behave in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner and does not have a single memorable line of dialogue. We don’t want to be told that he and the kids come to care for each other in a movie like this – we want to be shown. And there is not one moment of practice, teaching skills (baseball or otherwise), or conversation to make us believe it.

The movie makes the most of the audience’s inherent commitment to the storyline. We want those kids to make it, and we want Conor to make it, too. The other reason to watch is yet another quietly arresting performance by Diane Lane, who brings a delicacy and complexity to every moment she is on screen.

The script is strictly by-the-numbers, but there is a timely plot twist concerning a player with a forged birth certificate. One of the movie’s most wrenching scenes shows him after he is kicked off the team, wearing gang colors and warning his former teammates with a meaningful glance to get away quickly.

Parents should know that the movie includes very strong language, including many four-letter words used by children. The boys are surrounded by drug use and gang violence. They can identify the weapon by the sound of the shooting and take it for granted that they must sit on the floor to be out of the way of gunfire that might come in the window. One child is badly beaten and another is killed.

I have to say something here about the MPAA’s rating system. This film was originally intended to be released as an R, due to the language used by the children. The producers argued that it was an authentic portrayal of the way that people in that environment speak. Protests during the filming, and, more significantly, marketing concerns about whether the audience really wanted an R-rated movie about a little league team, led them to cut some of the worst language to obtain a PG-13 rating. This shows again the absurdity of the MPAA’s standards because the movie still has some material, including the gang shooting of a child, that is far more likely to be upsetting to younger audiences than a few four-letter words.

Families who see this movie should talk about how the children helped Conor realize that he needed to make some changes. Why was it important that Conor made a rule that the players could not insult each other? What did Conor learn from G-Baby? What do you think will happen to the members of the team when they get too old to play in the league?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy The Sandlot and Angels in the Outfield. They might also like To Sir, with Love.

It may seem odd to speak of a made-to-be-blockbuster as unpretentious, but the aspirations of “Jurassic Park III” are remarkably — almost endearingly — modest. It does not waste time with chaos theory mumbo-jumbo or dumb “dinosaurs come to America” plot twists like the second episode, “The Lost World.” It just gets right down to business in 90 quick minutes of little people being chased by great big scary things, with just enough plot and character to provide breathing space and a reason to care who survives. It is not art, but it is fun

Instead of Steven Spielberg, director of record-breaking parts one and two, “Jurassic Park III” is directed by Joe Johnston, who showed a sure hand with little people being chased by great big scary things in “Honey I Shrunk the Kids.” We can never be astonished by the CGI technology again the way we were by the first one, and this chapter does not waste much time on grand themes of hubris in playing God with DNA.

There are few surprises. Two good things to have when fighting smart dinosaurs are opposable thumbs and a cell phone. When a man’s ex-wife says that he never takes chances, you know what’s coming, and you will probably be able to guess as we meet each character which ones will survive to the end of the movie. But the script it has clever moments, including some sly digs at “The Lost World.” There is a delicious variation on “Peter Pan’s” crocodile that once swallowed a clock, so Captain Hook can always hear ticking when he is approaching. And there is a nice “Blair Witch” moment when some characters find a video camera dropped by another character and replay the footage to see what happened to him.

Sam Neill, as the first episode’s paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant returns, now assisted by Billy (Alessandro Nivola). They are tricked onto the island by the Kirbys (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni). They are searching for their son, who fell onto the island when he was parasailing.

The dinosaurs are bigger and better than ever. This time, they swim, they fly, and they fight each other. They appear to play a sort of kick-the-can with the downed plane’s cabin. They also work together to trap the humans, so it is a war of brains, not just brawn.

Parents should know that, like the others, this movie is nonstop action and violence. There are jump-out-at-you surprises and some gross-out moments. Characters are in extreme peril and several are killed, but the movie is careful not to get rid of anyone we really care about. Some children will nevertheless find it very upsetting, especially because one of the characters is a child. But the child is brave, smart, and resilient, which some kids will find very satisfying. I also want to caution parents that this movie features what I call the “Parent Trap problem,” divorced parents who reunite and live happily ever after at the end of the movie. Families who are dealing with divorce may find this a scarier prospect than the dinosaurs.

Families who see this movie should talk about Dr. Grant’s comment that “Some of the worst things imaginable are done with the best intentions.” He also talks about the difference between astronomers and astronauts. Is he right in saying that the difference is between imagining and seeing?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the first two episodes (the first vastly better than the second, in my opinion). If they would like to see some friendlier dinosaurs, they might like to try “Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend” or “The Land Before Time.”

Rachel Griffiths (Oscar nominee for Hilary & Jackie) plays Pamela Drury, a harried 30-something magazine writer who wonders if she made a mistake, 13 years earlier, when she turned down a marriage proposal from Robert (David Roberts). She gets a chance to find out when she is hit by a car driven by none other than herself, the Pamela who married Robert and who is now living in the suburbs with husband, three children, and a dog.

The second Pamela disappears, leaving Pamela One to cope with assorted domestic crises. At first, in a daze, she lets the kids eat pizzas in front of the television, and she is so used to shopping for one that she forgets to take food for them at the grocery store. But she loves being with Robert, and begins to warm to family life. She teaches the baby to wipe his own bottom and the older boy to stop calling her “dumbhead.” She finds herself responding to her daughter’s first period the same way her mother responded to hers. She is disconcerted to find that the married Pamela is also a magazine writer, but of women’s magazine drivel like “ten ways to keep your marriage alive.”

Things are more complicated than she thought. As Pamela One, she met an attractive and sympathetic teacher named Ben (Sandy Winton), who tells her he once thought of being a journalist, and who dashes her hopes of romance when she sees him with a wife and children. As Pamela Two, she meets him in his other incarnation, now a single journalist who never got over the death of his first love.

Things get pretty much sorted out by the end. As in “Groundhog Day” or “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the main character gets a different perspective on his/her life, and gets a second chance to make it work. But this situation has some special poignance because it relates to the central conflict of many women’s lives — and many men’s, too — the balance between work and family. Pamela’s struggle, as Pam Two, to make her writing assignment into something meaningful about the modern woman, is a metaphor for her experience. So is her Pam Two nightie, with “Tic Toc Tic” on the front.

What Pam learns from experiencing her “what if” helps to turn her from someone who recites affirmations to herself every morning to someone who truly learns to value herself enough to connect to someone else.

The movie opens with young girls telling us their dreams — fashion designer, supermodel, wife and mother. Pam asks her own daughter (well, Pam Two’s daughter) about her dreams, but she is content for the moment to be open to everything.

Parents should know that the movie contains strong language, sexual references, including adultery, and sexual situations, including a comic encounter with a diaphragm. Characters smoke and drink, including use of alcohol to soothe anxiety, loneliness, and fear. One character attempts suicide.

Families whose teenagers see this movie should talk about how we make decisions and handle the consequences, and how any meaningful achievement at home or work requires sacrifices in other areas. They may also want to discuss why the youngest child is the only one who can tell the difference between the two Pams — is he the only one who really looks at her? — and how couples handle the challenges of long-term relationships.

Families who enjoy this movie will also like Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow and Groundhog Day with Bill Murray.