Woody Allen pays loving tribute to movies like “Double Indemnity” and “The Big Sleep” with this delicious comedy for grown-ups about a 1940’s insurance investigator who, under hypnosis becomes a brilliant jewel thief.

Allen is C.W. Briggs, an old-fashioned guy who likes things the way they are, which means solving crimes through tips and hunches and having his files right where he — but no one else — can find what he needs. The boss, Mr. Magruder (Dan Ackroyd) has brought in an efficiency expert, Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt). C.W. and Betty Ann clash immediately, despising each other on sight. But then, at a colleague’s birthday celebration in a nightclub, they are both hypnotized by Voltan the magician, who has them believing that they are deeply in love. That ends when the trance is over, but Voltan plants post-hypnotic directions that make C.W. and Betty Ann obey his commands whenever he says the trigger words. Voltan calls C.W., says the magic word, and C.W., in a trance, goes off to break into the homes of his firm’s clients and steal their jewels.

Criminal and romantic mix-ups follow as C.W. and Betty Ann run into each other in all kinds of compromising positions and discover that even the most skilled hypnotist cannot make someone do or feel anything unless there is some basis in reality.

This is the lightest of light comedies, silly but sophisticated, especially by comparison to the gross-out humor of just about every other comedy released this summer. It’s unapologetically pitched at people old enough to understand a reference to Mussolini and appreciate Charlize Theron’s dead-on take on all those spoiled rich femmes fatales played by Lauren Bacall and Gail Patrick. Allen’s quirky casting (starting with himself as the leading man) may not work for some audiences, but it can be fun to watch. Hunt is particularly fine as a woman who is not as sure of herself and her choices as she would like to be.

This story is reminiscent of Allen’s segment in “New York Stories.” In that short film, a nightclub magician makes the Allen character’s secret desire come true by making his smothering mother disappear, only to become his not-so-secret nightmare when she reappears as a looming image in the sky, so that everyone in Manhattan can hear her noodging. In this movie, we again have a nightclub performer who makes some real magic with unexpected romantic consequences. Possibly, Allen is trying to say something about connections between love and magic, guilt and freedom, or heart and brain, or perhaps he is just following the advice of the aliens who visit him in “Stardust Memories” and tell him that if he wants to help humanity he should make funnier movies.

Parents should know that in keeping with the period setting, characters smoke and drink a great deal, including drinking to numb emotional pain and drinking to excess. There are sexual references, including adultery and a character who makes it clear that she sleeps around and offers herself to C.W., but there are no explicit sexual situations. Characters discuss C.W.’s old-fashioned sexism and Betty Ann’s difficulties in being accepted as a professional woman.

Families who see this movie should talk about what they might do – and what they would not do – if they were hypnotized. Betty Ann trusts both Magruder and C.W., one rightly and one wrongly. How does she decide whom to trust and how does she deal with the consequences of her choices? Is there anyone you would trust despite all appearances? Is there anyone who would trust you? What would be different if the movie were set in 2001?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery” and “Sleeper” and the movies that inspired this one like “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep” (some mature material in all of them).

There is a golden boy, young, handsome, a champion golfer, and he wins the heart of Adele (Charlize Theron), the most beautiful debutante in Georgia. His roots in Savannah are so deep that even his name seems spelled with a Southern accent — Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon). Then he goes off to fight in World War I, and comes home “confused, broken, and unable to face a return to a hero’s welcome.” He does not speak to Adele or see any of his old friends and he does not play golf for more than 10 years. And then Adele needs him to play the two greatest golfers in the world at an exhibition match that can keep her from bankruptcy. A mysterious stranger named Bagger Vance (Will Smith) arrives to give Junuh the guidance he needs to get back in the game.

Your ability to appreciate this movie will depend on your tolerance for larger-than life stories with allegorical, even epical, overtones. Some people will find it simplistic and clichéd. They will see Bagger Vance’s relationship with Junuh as too much like having Yoda coach Luke Skywalker on whether he should use an iron to get out of the sandtrap. Vance tells Junuh things that will either strike you as wise or fortune-cookie corny, depending on your point of view: “Golf is a game that cannot be won, only played,” “A man’s authentic swing can’t be learned, only remembered,” and “You can’t make the ball go in the hole, you can only let it.” But others, particularly those who have spent some time in the South, will recognize it as not too far off from the way things actually occur in that part of the country, especially on the golf course. They will enjoy the sun-dappled greens and the pleasures of seeing a man find a swing that makes a sound like thunder when it drives the ball.

This movie has a lot in common with what I consider director Robert Redford’s best film, “A River Runs Through It.” Like that one, this story begins with an old man remembering the sport and the setting of his youth, with golf, like fly-fishing, as a metaphor for man’s interaction with nature and fate and even love. But “A River Runs Through It” was more complex and more comfortable with ambiguity. Its message was that a person can love completely without understanding completely. This movie, with its more traditional journey of redemption, is not as wise or moving. But it is a good story, lovingly told, and beautiful to watch.

Parents should know that the movie has a brief but bloody battle scene, brief mild language, brief sexual references, and inexplicit sexual situations. A woman offers to trade a man sex for a favor. She does not go through with it, even though it is clear that she loves him, in fact, probably because she loves him. A man commits suicide (off-camera). Junuh abuses alcohol in an attempt to forget his experiences and his pain.

This is a very good film to help families initiate discussions of important issues, including how we respond when things go badly. One character kills himself when he loses his money. Another says he would rather do nothing than do something beneath his dignity. Junuh tries to make himself feel better by isolating himself and drinking and gambling. But another character insists on paying all of his debts instead of declaring bankruptcy and takes whatever job he can find so he can feed his family. And Adele, a steel magnolia in a series of divine cloche hats, refuses to give up on her father’s dream of a golf resort, showing courage, intelligence, and resilience. Junuh learns to accept the fact that he will never be the naively confident man he was before the war. He can still be someone who will take risks, even though he now knows how painful the consequences can be.

Talk to kids about Bagger Vance. Who is he? Why does he want “$5 guaranteed” instead of a part of the prize? Why does he leave when he does? Why does he tell Junuh to hook and to quit? What does he mean when he advises Junuh to see the field? Why does he leave him alone in the woods? Some families may want to talk about whether a black man would really have been called “sir” and “Mr.” and allowed to sit on a resort’s porch in 1930’s Georgia. Older kids may want to talk about the potential racism inherent in assigning a sort of magical “otherness” to the lone black character.

The movie also shows us the importance of integrity, not just for the community but for ourselves. When a character tells Junuh that one of the best things about golf is that it is the only game in which a character calls a penalty on himself, we know that information is going to be important. Talk to kids about what that means, and why Junuh makes the choice that he does. Ask them why Junuh has to find a way to feel good about himself again before he can return to Adele. And discuss the different approaches of the other golfers, one who makes every shot perfect and one who makes one brilliant shot make up for three terrible ones. Talk with them, too, about how we find our own “authentic swings,” the ones that our hands know before our heads do.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Hoosiers.”

Just about everything is a little off-kilter in this quirky story about a wildly dysfunctional family.

A prologue tells us that Royal (Gene Hackman) and Etheline (Anjelica Houston) had three children, all of whom were so prodigiously accomplished while still in grade school that they were the subject of books, including one by their mother.

It seems that they lived their lives backward, though. As children, they easily surpassed adults with their astonishing achievements in the arts (Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a playwright), sports (Richie (Luke Wilson) was a tennis champion), and business (Chas (Ben Stiller) was a financial wizard). But as adults, they have reverted to childhood, and either can’t or won’t perform anymore. One by one, they return home, moving into their old bedrooms. And then Royal, long estranged from the family, tells Etheline that he, too, wants to come home, to make his peace with the family before he dies of cancer.

The result is a crackpot blending of J.D. Salinger’s stories about the gifted Glass children, the classic Kaufmann-Hart play “You Can’t Take it With You,” and a made-for-TV movie called “The Gathering,” in which a tough old rich guy played by Ed Asner visits his long-estranged but never- divorced wife, played by Maureen Stapleton, and asks her to persuade their grown children to come together for Christmas.

But this is very far from the glossy but conventional “Gathering.” It takes place in a whacked-out fantasy version of New York City, where hotels employ uniformed elevator operators, decrepit taxis literally labeled “Gypsy Cab” show up whenever someone needs to go somewhere and there is a YMCA on “375th Street.” The production design is brilliant, especially the house (the children’s bedrooms are magnificent) and the hotel.

Director Wes Anderson and actor Owen Wilson (who plays the Tenenbaum’s neighbor, Eli) wrote the screenplay, and like their previous collaborations, “Bottle Rocket” and “Rushmore,” this movie defies categorization, combining elements of satire, fantasy, comedy, tragedy, farce, and drama. That’s a combination that will make some audiences uncomfortable, but will seem to others to be the best possible way – maybe the only possible way — to truly convey a story of family conflict. The result is messy, even outrageous, but reflecting a singularity of vision that is welcome in a mainstream studio film starring three Oscar-winners.

Families should know that the movie has very mature material including a graphic and bloody suicide attempt, sexual references and situations (brief nudity, brief shot of gay embrace, adultery and a possible romance between adopted siblings) and painful issues of betrayal and deception. There are references to a tragic death. An adopted child is made to feel like an outsider. A character has a serious drug abuse problem. Some people may find the light-hearted treatment of these issues offensive.

Families who see this movie should talk about whether its wild exaggeration of family communication problems can be of help to families who are struggling to connect to each other. What can parents do to give gifted children the stimulation and support they need without making them feel isolated from friends and family? Eli says to Royal “I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum,” and Royal responds, “So did I.” What does that mean? Why did such accomplished children become such fragile adults? Why did Chas react to his wife’s death by becoming obsessed with safety?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Rushmore.” Every family should see the Best Picture Oscar-winning “You Can’t Take it With You,” starring Jimmy Stewart.

The big surprise ending of “Unbreakable” is what a disappointment it is.

The writer/director of “The Sixth Sense” begins with many of the same elements — Bruce Willis, a Philadelphia setting, a strained marriage, a child who is grappling with some big issues, elements of the supernatural, and a twist at the end. Once again, he creates a haunting and portentous mood with subdued performances, somber hues, and fluid camera movements. But unlike “The Sixth Sense,” in which a surprise at the end kicked the entire movie into a higher gear (and inspired audiences to go see it again to help them unravel it), this one has an ending that inspired hoots and boos at the screening I attended. In particular, the “what happens after the movie ends” description that come up on the screen just before the credits is the worst I have ever seen.

Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, a security guard who seems disconnected from his own life, unable to remember very much about his past and unwilling to connect to his wife and child. When he is the only survivor of a train crash, walking away without a single injury, bruise, or scratch, he is contacted by Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a comic art dealer who has a congenital bone disease. Price has bones that break easily; Dunn has bones that never break. Price believes there must be a connection, and that he must help Dunn find his destiny.

Comic book themes of good and evil, hero and enemy, strength and vulnerability, thesis and antithesis, and destiny and choice appear throughout the movie. Several times, characters see something upside down at first, and then have to turn it around to see it clearly. Price helps Dunn realize that he is more than a security guard. He is a protector. When Dunn begins to use his gifts, he begins to lose the sadness that has always engulfed him. When he tells his wife he had a nightmare, he is not referring to the murderer he has just battled but to a past in which he was able to sense tragedy around him but was not aware that he had the ability to protect people from it.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of violence. Although most of it is offscreen, its themes, including sexual assault, murder of the parents of two children, and genocide, may be especially disturbing. A child uses a gun. There is a brief vulgar reference and an implication of date rape.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we find our “place in the world,” and the importance of recognizing our special gifts so that we can make the best use of them. If members of the family enjoy comic books, they may want to talk about the tradition of pictoral story-telling, the themes of hero and arch-villain and what makes them so enduring. We often think of good guys and bad guys as opposites, but we should also think about what they have in common.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The Sixth Sense” and a better teaming of Willis and Jackson in “Die Hard: With a Vengeance.”

Plot: “Once upon a time there was a plaid overnight bag,” this movie begins. But actually there are four, identical on the outside, but with very different contents. One contains a set of rare rocks on their way to being presented at a conference of musicologists. One contains a very valuable collection of jewelry. One contains top secret government documents. The last one contains nothing more than a change of clothes. All four bags converge in a large hotel to provide the framework for an affectionate valentine to the classic screwball comedies of the 1930s. Like “Bringing Up Baby,” this centers on a madcap young woman (Barbra Streisand), Judy Maxwell, who decides to show her appreciation for a shy professor in spectacles (Ryan O’Neal), Howard Bannister, by disrupting his life as much as is humanly possible and then some. The attempts by a spy to steal the bag with the documents and a thief to steal the bag with the jewels help to make things a bit more complicated.

Professor Bannister is at the hotel to present his findings about the musical qualities of rocks used by ancient societies as primitive instruments. He is accompanied by his stuffy and overbearing fiancée, Eunice (Madeline Kahn). He hopes to get a research grant from wealthy Mr. Larabee, who will be attending the conference. Judy, who came to the hotel to cadge a free meal, is drawn to Howard, and stays on to be near him. She impersonates Eunice at the opening dinner, utterly captivating Larabee. She then proceeds, as Howard says, to “bring havoc and chaos to everyone,” including the destruction of a hotel room (and Howard’s engagement), and a wildly funny car chase through the streets of San Francisco, before it all gets straightened out.

Discussion: This movie is a lot of fun, but it does not come close to meeting the standards of the movies it is trying to emulate. The main flaw is that Judy and Howard (and the actors who portray them) are simply not as appealing as their prototypes in classics like “Bringing Up Baby.” For example, as we meet Judy, she is stealing a meal from a hotel, something which may have had more appeal in the “anti- establishment” early 1970s, but which now seems less than charming. The big laugh line at the end of the movie, a poke at O’Neal’s overwhelmingly successful previous movie, “Love Story,” will not mean anything to today’s kids.

Questions for Kids:

· What do you think about the way Judy behaved? Did she ever think ahead, or did she just do what seemed right at the moment?

· Eunice tells Howard that she does not want romance because she wants something stronger — trust. What is the point of view of the movie about that? How can you tell?

· Which is the funniest part of the movie? Were there any parts that were supposed to be funny that you did not think were funny? Why?

Connections: See “Bringing Up Baby” and compare it. Some of the other classic screwball comedies are “My Man Godfrey” and “The Lady Eve.”