This “Formula” is missing some key ingredients – like plot, characters, and dialogue.

Here is what it does have: the undeniably cool Samuel L. Jackson (who co-produced) in a kilt, fending off attackers with golf clubs and one funny joke. Unfortunately, it also has Samuel L. Jackson fending off some other attackers by inducing what I will tactfully call severe intestinal distress. And the joke is stolen from “Pulp Fiction,” in a much better scene featuring, um, let me think, yes, Samuel L. Jackson. It also has lots and lots of violence, with many people getting shot or blown up. And there are, oh, about 20 or 30 words in the script that are not profane, though none profane or otherwise that are particularly witty or memorable. It has kilt jokes, though none that are particularly original or memorable, plus I can’t figure out why so many people who live in England which is right next door to Scotland seem never to have seen a kilt before or at least know what it is called.

Jackson plays Elmo McElroy, a pharmacist by training who never got his license because of a drug conviction. So, he spent 30 years cooking up concoctions for a very mean drug dealer (played by rock star Meat Loaf) who not only speaks of himself in the third person but when doing so actually calls himself “The Lizard.” McElroy has an idea for one last big deal to buy his freedom. All he has to do is blow up all of his current customers and sell his latest invention, a drug 51 times more powerful than any ever invented before while avoiding the beautiful assassin who is trying to kill him.

Director Ronny Yu brings out the tired old Hong Kong camera tricks. Every other scene is either sped up or slowed down. He wastes the talented Robert Carlyle and Emily Mortimer. They play characters who have different motivations and even different personalities from scene to scene. They do whatever moves the story forward, which means whatever will cause the most destruction.

Parents should know that the movie has extreme graphic violence and non-stop profanity. The language used includes many exceptionally vivid British swear words, the literal meaning of which may not be familiar to some viewers. The characters are drug dealers (who generally themselves do not use drugs), and there is a generally lax attitude toward substance abuse of all kinds. There is one sex scene that is moderately explicit and brief non-sexual nudity.

Families who see this movie should talk about how McElroy developed the plan that would allow him to achieve his dream (which is not fully revealed until the credit sequence). Why was that dream so important to him? Speaking of dreams, they might like to talk about what it was about this material that made Samuel L. Jackson want to produce and star in it.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the far better “The Transporter” and Jackson version of “Shaft.”

This third in Ice Cube’s “Friday” series has something to offend everyone, with highly politically incorrect jokes in just about every category. On the other hand, it is better than the last one, and I have to admit that at the screening I attended, the audience loved it. I’ll even admit that I laughed a few times, too.

This time, it is the morning of December 24, and Craig (Ice Cube) and his cousin Day-Day (Mike Epps) are asleep in their apartment when a burglar disguised as Santa Claus breaks in and steals all of their Christmas presents and the stereo speakers where Day-Day hid their rent money. Their mean landlady and her just-out-of-prison son want that money by the end of the day, so Craig and Day-Day take jobs as security guards at a seedy little strip mall and then have a rent party, which all leads to various encounters with colorful characters.

This is a comedy with no aspirations for anything other than a forgettable good time, so it is unfair to expect it to make sense or respect the dignity of its characters. But I still think it is worth noting that unlike comedy predecessors from Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin through Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Steve Martin, and Jim Carrey, all of whom created humor by their failed attempts to fit into the accepted of society, this movie and all of its characters share an unstated assumption that traditional notions of success are barely relevant and even a little depressing.

All comedy is subversive, but this unrelenting bleak insistence on opting out of any opportunity for finding meaning in relationships or work just becomes sad. It is especially disconcerting coming from Ice Cube, whose own life is in sharp contrast. Although the subject matter of his early work with the rap group NWA was very anti-establishment, no one has worked harder within the rules to achieve the most traditional forms of success in producing, writing, and starring in movies. Ice Cube is a fine actor and has appeared in first-class films like “Boyz N the Hood,” “Three Kings,” and his own recent unexpected hit, “Barbershop.”

Parents should know that this movie has extremely strong language, including the n-word. If the movie had been made by whites, it would have been justifiably excoriated for its offensive racial stereotypes. It is racist, sexist, homophobic, and extremely vulgar. In the mall, there is a clothing store called “Pimp’s and Ho’s.” Everyone loves smoking pot, even the police. Everyone lies, cheats, and steals. A character has a threesome. There are nasty jokes about homosexual rape.

Families who see this movie should talk about how the members of the family in this movie do – and don’t – communicate and take care of each other.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the original “Friday,” and the much better “Barbershop.”

Somewhere on the continuum between complexity and incoherence lies the latest film from Steven Soderbergh. After big-time Hollywood critical and box office success with the glossy, classy “Erin Brockovich,” “Traffic,” and “Oceans 11,” Soderbergh has returned to his indie roots to make a small, messy, improvised, non-linear film that recalls his earliest success with “sex, lies, and videotape.” Indeed, he has described the new film, “Full Frontal,” as a thematic sequel.

Like the earlier film, “Full Frontal” is filled with intimate conversations about love, sex, boundaries, longing, and voyeurism. Both films revolve around two sisters, one married, one single, with some strains in their relationship.

But this film is less a story than a series of moments, variations on the themes rather than a narrative. Digital and analog images alternate as we go into and out of a movie within a movie, even a movie within a movie within a movie, performed by actors playing actors.

Several different stories overlap and intersect. Catherine Keener plays Alice, a human resources director unhappily married to Carl (David Hyde Pierce), who writes for a magazine. Alice’s sister, Linda (Mary McCormack) is a masseuse who is currently carrying out an online flirtation with Brian (Rainn Wilson), Carl’s co-author. Both Linda and Brian have not been entirely truthful about themselves, and they are planning to meet in Tucson.

Linda is having an affair with Calvin (Blair Underwood), an actor who is currently playing the part of an actor named Nicholas who is playing the part of a sidekick to a detective played by Brad Pitt (playing himself). In his movie, Nicholas becomes romantically involved with a journalist named Catherine (Julia Roberts in a very unfortunate wig, except when she appears as Francesca, the actress playing Catherine) who happens to work for the same magazine that Alice’s husband Carl works for in what sort of passes for real life in “Full Frontal,” at least as compared to the Nicholas/Catherine movie within a movie or the shlocky cop story with Brad Pitt and Calvin that is the movie within the movie within the movie. Two characters have written a play called “The Sound and the Fuhrer” featuring a high strung and narcissistic actor (brilliantly played by Nicky Katt) as a Hitler who uses a cell phone and breaks up with his girlfriend by explaining that he just needs to “swim in Lake Me for a while.” Then it starts to get confusing.

Themes and images flicker through several levels, like a David Lynch movie with less voluptuous imagery. On one level, a secret letter in a red envelope contains a note ending a marriage. In another story, a secret letter in a red envelope contains a note starting an affair. Alice is firing employees at her company, asking them bizarre questions and tossing an inflated globe at them, as her husband, Carl, is asking bizarre questions of co-workers and getting fired from the magazine. We see Alice in bed with Calvin, who, as the character Nicholas explains to the journalist interviewing him that black men in movies never get to do sex scenes. Alice is turning 41 just as Gus (David Duchovney) the producer of the movie starring Calvin and Francesca, is turning 40, with a party that many of the characters in the movie are invited to attend. In the end, just as one set of fictions are abandoned in favor of reality, a fiction at a deeper level is revealed.

The movie has many wonderful moments and many marvelous lines. But it does not have the improvisational brilliance of the Christopher Guest movies and comes off more like an actor’s studio workshop than a film. The whole is less than the sum of its parts, but some of those parts are remarkably vivid and intriguing.

Parents should know that, as the title indicates, this movie includes explicit nudity, explicit and varied sexual references and situations, and very strong language. A character dies, apparently from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Characters drink and smoke and eat hash brownies. There are tense emotional scenes. Parents may want to see the film themselves before deciding whether it is appropriate for teen viewing.

Families who see the movie should talk about why Soderburgh told the story this way and what a movie they would make with their friends and families would be like.

Viewers who enjoy this movie will enjoy two other movies about making movies and the line between fantasy and reality, The Stunt Man and Day for Night. They may also want to compare this to sex, lies, and videotape.

It’s even bigger, better, funnier, and more exciting than the first one. “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” is pure magic.

Our favorite characters are all back and better than ever, from the odious Dursleys at Harry’s home on Privet Drive to the denizens of Hogwarts School: Nearly Headless Nick, Professors Snape, McGonagall, and Sprout, Headmaster Dumbledore, gamekeeper Hagrid, and of course our heroes, Harry, Ron, and Hermione. And there are some magnificent additions, especially Jason Isaacs, coolly cruel as Lucius Malfoy, father of Harry’s foe Draco, and Kenneth Branaugh, wildly funny as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart. Those who are looking for a meticulous realization of a beloved book and those who come to the theater knowing only the first movie – or even with no knowledge of Harry Potter at all – will find this chapter a thrilling, eye-filling, and utterly satisfying experience.

The success of the first movie has made it possible for the producers and directors to relax a little with this one. And the children have had a chance to become more comfortable on screen and just grow up a little bit, so they are able to bring more depth and subtlety to their acting.

As this episode begins, Harry is at home, longing to return to Hogwarts, even after he gets a warning from an odd little creature named Dobby, a “house elf” servant who tells him that someone is trying to harm him. Harry visits the Weasleys, and when he and Ron miss the train to Hogwarts, they fly there in an enchanted car, resulting some serious scoldings at school and, in the movie’s funniest moment, one from Ron’s mother, delivered via a piece of mail called a howler.

At Hogwarts, there are new classes and new challenges. Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy, is now his opponent on the Quidditch field. Harry is the only one who can hear a strange voice echoing through the halls. And he is in the wrong place at the wrong time when some very bad and scary things happen. It seems that there is a chamber of secrets that has not been opened for 50 years. Somewhere in that chamber is a dangerous creature, just waiting for the right person to let it out. Many people suspect that Harry is that person, and he wonders if they are right. The two adults Harry trusts most, Hagrid and Dumbledore, are removed from the school, and if someone does not stop the creature, Hogwarts may be closed for good.

As always, it will take Hermione’s research skills, Ron’s courage, and Harry’s heart to save the day.

And, as always, there is a wealth of detail and delight to entrance viewers so much that they will leave wanting more, even after a running time of 2 hours and 40 minutes. Every frame is filled with wonder, especially Diagon Alley and the moving photos and portraits.

Parents should know that the characters spend a lot of time in extreme peril. There are scary creatures, including lots of spiders (one huge) and an enormous snake that can kill anyone who looks in its eyes. Though it appears that some characters have been hurt or killed, all the good guys are ultimately fine. Children who are not familiar with the story, however, may be upset. There are also some gross moments when Ron’s spell backfires and he spits up slugs and when another misapplied spell leaves Harry without any bones in his forearm. Some children will have heard that the actor who plays Dumbledore, Richard Harris, has died, and will want to know what will happen to the character.

Like heroes in many epic stories, Harry struggles with the notion of his destiny and wonders how much is left to him to decide. Families who see this movie should talk about Harry’s fears that he is like the worst villain in the wizard world, Valdemort. What makes him like Voldemort? What makes him different? Draco and his father are concerned with “pure blood.” Who in history might have inspired that? What real-life events might have inspired the character of Dobby? And why doesn’t Hermione hug Ron when she hugs Harry? Families will want to discuss Dumbeldore’s comment that it is not our abilities that show what we are but our choices.

Families who enjoy this movie should see the first one. And of course, they should read all four Harry Potter books!

“Hey Arnold! The Movie” is as unimaginative as its title and far too long at 74 minutes. Hard core fans of the television series (if there are any) will enjoy seeing the characters on the big screen, but anyone else, particularly those who’ve seen a movie or two, are going to be bored with the characters, the animation, and the utterly predictable chain of events.

“Hey Arnold!” finds its football-headed hero with a heart of gold in a save-the-neighborhood situation. A big bad wolf industrialist named Scheck (voiced by Paul Sorvino) wants to turn Arnold’s happy suburb into a “mall-plex.” Most of the adults reluctantly sell their homes, but Arnold arranges benefits does research on how to save the town, undiscouraged by Scheck’s constant attempts to crush him and the pessimism of everyone else. He eventually finds out about a Boston Tea Party-esque event that occurred in his town during the revolutionary war and works to get the town saved as a historical landmark.

There’s nothing remotely new or exiting about the plot, and nearly all of the situations are annoyingly dumb. Kids may enjoy seeing Arnold save the day, but adults will snooze through it, due to a storyline everyone’s seen before, animation that is below the “Fat Albert” level, and characters that range from uninteresting to unappealing. There are some amusing voice cameos from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Christopher Lloyd, as well as timely references to Men in Black II and The Hulk. And if anyone these days comes close to being Mel Blanc, its Dan Castellaneta (“The Simpsons”), who gives wildly different characters such genuine personality that one would never guess that they come from the same guy. If only those voices had a better script.

Parent should know that “Hey Arnold!” is just violent enough to get a PG rating, but there’s really nothing that most kids over six can’t handle. More disturbing are the stereotyped characters, from Arnold’s best friend/token black kid Gerald to Arnold’s grandparents to a one-legged bus driver.

Families can discuss what exactly it is that keeps Arnold so positive during such stressful times, and why his neighbor Helga (who looks and acts almost exactly like Rugrats’ Angelica) feels the need to hide her crush on Arnold by being mean to him.

Families who like this movie will probably enjoy the other Nickelodeon films, from the animated Rugrats, Doug’s 1st Movie and Jimmy Neutron to the live-action Snow Day and Harriet the Spy.