This movie should be called “Smart and Smarter.” In addition to the thrilling story, masterful performances, and impeccable technical authenticity, it is a heartening story of the triumph of smart guys with slide rules, a relief in this era of movies about characters who triumph by being dumb. Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks plays real-life astronaut- hero Jim Lovell in this true story of the mission to the moon that almost left three astronauts stranded in space, when an oxygen tank exploded. Even though we know it turned out all right, even though the technical material is dense and the action is confined to a space smaller than an elevator, the tension is breathtaking, as the astronauts and the mission control team in Houston try to think their way back home. Everything from duct tape to the cover of the flight manual to one of the astronaut’s socks is used in this pre-McGuyver story, where mission control asks simply, “What’s good on that ship?” and builds from there.

Because of the technical material and intensity of the story, it is a good idea to prepare younger kids beforehand by telling them what the movie is about, and you may want to reassure them, since it is a true story, that the astronauts did come home all right.

Talk to older kids about the way that Mission Control solves the problems happening thousands of miles away, by re-creating the conditions inside the spaceship. Point out how the adults handle the strain, sometimes losing their tempers or blaming one another (or trying to escape blame), but mostly working very well together. Lovell and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinese) were presented with a very tough problem when exposure to the measles led Mission Control to pull Mattingly from the mission. Lovell tries to insist that Mattingly go along, but ultimately realizes that the good of the mission has to override his feelings of loyalty. Kids may have their own ideas about how this should have been handled.

The legendary “Failure is not an option,” said by Gene Kranz, head of Mission Control, when most people were certain the astronauts would never make it back, is worth discussing. So are the changes since you were your children’s age. Note that everyone in Mission Control is a white male (and they all smoke all the time). They are amazed that a computer is small enough to fit into one room. And you may have to explain why adults who watch the movie laugh when the engineers take out their slide rules — for kids today, they are more exotic than an abacus.

In the all-time best romantic comedy ever, “The Philadelphia Story,” Jimmy Stewart says, “The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.” Not really — the prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is movies like that one, and like “The Runaway Bride.” When people say “they don’t make movies like that anymore,” this is the kind of movie they mean. It is a welcome tribute to the kind of 1930’s screwball romantic comedies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy (“Libeled Lady”), Melvyn Douglas and Irene Dunne (“Theodora Goes Wild”), or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (“Carefree”), and the most delightful romantic confection of the summer.

The stars and director of “Pretty Woman” have reunited and the result is far better than the original, which relied heavily on star power to lend gloss to a story with some bitter undertones. This time, Richard Gere plays Ike Graham, a cynical columnist for USA Today who writes a quick angry column about a small-town woman who has left three grooms at the altar. That woman is Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts). When she writes the paper to point out 15 inaccuracies, he is fired by his editor and former wife (Rita Wilson). So, he goes to investigate Maggie, thinking that he can sell a story about her that will vindicate him and restore his career.

Maggie is getting ready to try another wedding, this time with a local high school coach named Bob. Ike ingratiates himself with the people in Maggie’s Maryland home town, so picturesque that it could have been painted by Norman Rockwell. Maggie’s father (Paul Dooley) obligingly loans Ike the home videos of Maggie’s three previous attempts at making it all the way up the aisle, with a Greatful Dead fan, a scientist, and a man who, following their break-up, became a priest. At first, Ike hopes for another last-minute bolt from the ceremony to make his story, but as he gets to know Maggie, he begins to hope that she won’t go through with it so that he can be fiance number five.

Roberts and Gere create real screen magic together. They are clearly very comfortable with each other and with Garry Marshall, the director (who appears onscreen briefly in a baseball game). Gere displays a previously unsuspected light comic talent that is utterly disarming. Roberts just gets better and better; like the character she plays, she is learning to rise above her “excessively flirtatious energy.” The indispensable Joan Cusack, this generation’s Eve Arden, plays Maggie’s best friend, utterly supportive despite having to live through four different bridesmaid’s dresses. And three cheers for adding a small but genuine dose of psychological insight to give a little bit of substance to the story. Both Ike and Maggie have to learn something about themselves before they can move forward together.

The best moment in “Pretty Women” was when Gere asked Roberts what the fairy tale princess does when the prince rescues her, and she replies, “She rescues him right back.” That theme is carried over into this movie (along with the “tell off the boutique salespeople” scene and actors Hector Elizondo and Larry Miller). Families can use this film to initiate conversations on the importance of being a full person yourself before you are capable of making a commitment to anyone else.

Parents should know that the PG rating comes from brief sexual references (please, someone, no more grandmothers making lusty comments as a source of humor — that was tired back on the TV show “Phyllis”). Also, Maggie’s father has a severe drinking problem which appears to be solved when she develops the courage to confront him about it. Families who enjoy this film should try renting some of the classic romantic comedies listed above, along with “My Man Godfrey,” “Bringing Up Baby,” and “Holiday.”

This movie gets four stars just for coolness. Samuel L. Jackson, the Armani leather coat, and the Oscar-winning theme song are a match made in heaven, and it is just plain summer-popcorn-movie fun to see them all work it together.

This Shaft goes back further than the original Shaft movie to the days of the cool, ironic, been-there, seen-that, but still a man of integrity at heart characters that Humphrey Bogart played in movies like “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep,” and before that to the sagas of knights and quests and damsels in distress. They will always be outsiders, cleaning up the messes of the insiders, and they will always be stronger, smarter, and more loyal than the people they help. They are always too honest to be able to get along with anyone. Even the law enforcers have to cut too many corners and they never pick the right corners to cut.

What made the original “Shaft” so galvanizing was the notion of a black man in this role, a man who wasn’t trying to impress Spencer Tracy or Rod Steiger as Sidney Poitier was doing in mainstream Hollywood movies of that era. He was not trying to get what whites had. He was completely satisfied living within the black world, and he would take on even a white man who threatened it. In movie terms, he was Malcolm X to Poitier’s Martin Luther King. This was deeply threatening, but deeply exciting, too.

And it was new in a way it can never be new again. The challenge was creating a new version that would be just as electrifying although it was released in a different environment.

Director John Singleton, whose “Furious” character in “Boyz N the Hood” shared a lot of Shaft’s outlook, has updated the movie and the character. This is a story about the nephew of the original Shaft (played again in this movie by Richard Roundtree), who is so far from his private detective uncle’s commitment to independence that he is a policeman. But when a corrupt system lets a rich racist murderer jump bail, Shaft throws his badge at the judge like a ninja weapon and goes out on the street to see that justice is done.

The script is uneven and filled with holes, showing evidence of reported on-set disagreements between the producer, director, and star. Reportedly, too, Jeffrey Wright’s performance as drug dealer Peoples Hernandez was so exciting that the movie was reworked to give him more screen time. That is easy to believe, because he is electrifying. That contributes, however, to the difficulty in managing all the plot threads. Efforts to bring the two bad guys together, the Dominican drug dealer and the preppy racist (Christian Bale) may provide some interesting moments, especially when the drug dealer starts networking in a holding cell, asking the preppy for his business card, but it slows the story down.

But Singleton knows that when things waver, all he has to do is cut back to Jackson and the theme song to keep the audience happy, and it works remarkably well.

Parents should know that there is incessant use of the f-word and graphic violence, including self-inflicted ice-pick wounds and lots of punching and shooting. A character is blatantly racist and another is a drug dealer. Especially troubling is a conclusion that is surprisingly supportive of vigilante-style solutions, despite indications that even Shaft believes that this time the system will result in justice.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Shaft knows when to follow the rules and when to break them, and what would happen if someone with a less perfectly honed sense of justice were to break as many rules (and noses) as Shaft does.

People who like this movie might enjoy seeing the original to compare the way that different directors, different times, and different budgets change the way the story is told.

In the future, a race of 9-foot-tall, dreadlocked aliens called Psychlos takes over the earth following a nine-minute battle. A thousand year later, the few remaining humans are hunter-gatherers and the evil Psychlos maintain earth as an outpost for mining. Terl (John Travolta), furious at not being allowed to return to the home planet, decides to use humans to mine gold for him to keep. But one of the humans, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), encourages the others to revolt.

There. Now you know everything you need to know about the movie and I’ve saved you the trouble of trying to sit through it. You might think it can’t be that bad because science fiction movies often have cheeseball dialogue and cardboard performances and as long as the special effects and explosions are good, it does not really matter. You would be wrong. This movie was made due to the ceaseless efforts of its star, John Travolta, and it is the most horrible example of vanity filmmaking since Isaac from “The Love Boat” cast himself as “Othello.”

The movie could be used as an exam for film school students on what not to do.

Acting: John Travolta’s performance as the bad guy in this movie is reminiscent not of his brilliant work in movies like “Get Shorty,” “Face/Off” and “Pulp Fiction” but of his character in “Welcome Back Kotter,” Vinnie Barbarino, trying to act tough. His attempts to sound imperious and sarcastic lack any sense of presence or dignity, and then, to make it worse, he follows them with an attempt at a contemptuous laugh that sounds a cross between Faye Dunaway railing about the wire hangers in “Mommy Dearest” and Dr. Evil in “Austin Powers.” Poor Forrest Whitaker does his best with an idiotic role as Terl’s sidekick and whipping boy. Some other actor struggles underneath the worst make-up job since Dan Ackroyd in “Nothing But Trouble.”

Design and effects: The humans look like a hair band on a bad day. The Psychlos look like a hair band on a really bad day. The sets are dark, dank, and uninspired. The explosions are boring. And it is all much too loud.

Dialogue: At some points, we hear the Psychlos’ dialogue as garbled mush resembling the way the clay people used to talk in the old “Flash Gordon” serials. Unfortunately, at times we hear it in English. “Couldn’t you forget to file the report, as a friend?” “As a friend I could forget to file the report, but fortunately, I’m not your friend.” “While you were still learning to spell your name, I was being trained in how to conquer galaxies!” “Never engage in a criminal activity unless you have a patsy to pin everything on.” And my personal favorite: “Jonnie, I know you don’t believe in fate, but I’ve always known this was your destiny.”

Plot: The plot is not very interesting and completely illogical. Even if we assume that the Psychlos really wanted minerals from the earth, if they were so advanced that they could annihilate the human population in nine minutes, how could it take them more than a thousand years to extract it? Jonnie has to figure out a way to produce gold for Terl while he and his men are really secretly using flight simulators somehow still functioning after a thousand years. This is to enable them to learn to fly fighter jets, also somehow still functioning after a thousand years, kind of like the scene in “Sleeper” when Woody Allen starts up a Volkswagen Bug that had been abandoned for hundreds of years, except not intentionally funny. The audience dissolved in laughter at Jonnie’s solution – just get the gold from Fort Knox, which conveniently had been overlooked during the Psychlo’s thousand-year domination of the planet, and was still intact but ready to be emptied out. Somehow a group of humans who are illiterate and have not even discovered the wheel manage to master thousands of years of literal rocket science in a couple of days, transport over to the Psychlos’ planet and blow it all up with one well-placed bomb. Not since that girl learned how to be a ballerina without leaving the house in “Flowers in the Attic” or Rock Hudson went to medical school really really fast so he could invent an operation to cure Jane Wyman’s blindness in “The Magnificent Obsession” has there been such an example of speed learning.

Halfway through the movie, my son leaned over to whisper, “It’s the movie Ed Wood wanted to make but never had the money for.” He is right – this movie has Wood’s genuine fervor overriding genuine ineptitude.

Parents should know that the movie has a lot of sci-fi violence, with lots of explosions, characters in peril and some gory dismemberment. There are a couple of mild expletives and some mild sexual references. Women are treated as sex objects or taken as hostages.

Families who see the movie should talk about the importance of learning and history (Jonnie is inspired by the Declaration of Independence), and they should contrast the way that the Psychlos use “leverage” (blackmail) to manipulate each other with the teamwork and loyalty shown by the humans. They might also want to compare this movie to some sci-fi classics, like the “Star Wars” movies. Or, they might just want to skip this one and watch those instead.