Charlie’s Angels” manages to fulfill the middle-school-age fantasies of both boys and girls and to make it clear that it does not take itself too seriously. The result is a lot of silly popcorn fun. This is the kind of movie where the action sequences may be sped up, but the heroines’ hair is always in slow motion, a sort of “Josie and the Pussycats” crossed with “Mission Impossible.”

The angels are three fabulously gorgeous, often scantily-clad women who are as brilliant as they are beautiful, and who can kick-box five guys at a time. They work as detectives, solving cases brought to them by the mysterious Charlie, who communicates with them only by speakerhone. Dylan (co-producer Drew Barrymore), Alex (Lucy Liu), and Natalie (Cameron Diaz) are so technologically adept that they can tug a few wires and make a fast food drive-through speaker sound like an MP3 track. They will stop in the middle of tracking a suspect to give each other flirting pointers and stop in the middle of a life-or-death kickboxing fight to take a phone call from a boyfriend.

Charlie’s latest client is a software firm whose programming genius, Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell), has been kidnapped. His voice identification program, if combined with global positioning technology, could be used to track anyone, even Charlie. So the angels are off to the rescue.

Just as in the old television show, this requires many costume changes — the angels go undercover as belly dancers, a race car pit crew, corporate consultants, and lederhosen-clad messengers. It also involves placing the angels in jeopardy every 17 minutes or so. But these angels don’t use guns. They take on bad guys with their wits and their feet.

The angels have so much fun that it is impossible not to enjoy them. The fight scenes were staged by the same person who did “The Matrix,” and the angels get a huge charge out of their suspended-air kicks and chops. A soundtrack of cheesy 1970’s music (“Brandy,” “You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’,”Heaven Must be Missing an Angel”) and sly digs like an airline passenger disgusted by the prospect of watching “T.J. Hooker: The Movie” keep things light-hearted. The angels are all terrific, especially Cameron Diaz, whose pure pleasure in doing horrible retro disco dances lights up an entire room. Bill Murray has some good moments as their sidekick, Bosley.

Parents should know that in addition to a lot of “action-style” violence (very little blood), the movie has drinking, smoking, and some profanity and innuendo. One of the angels is shown waking up after a one-night-stand, clearly intending never to see the guy again. She later has a sexual encounter that turns out to have been a mistake.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Dylan’s absent father affected her life, especially her decision to work for a man who would never meet her. Knox, too, was affected by an absent father. Why don’t the angels want the men in their lives to know what they do? What would happen if they told them? Even movies as essentially silly as this one can also provide good lessons in problem-solving and ethics. How do they break down the problem of getting access to the GPS software into solvable pieces? Why won’t the angels give Knox access to the GPS software? Families may also want to talk about the way that the angels use their looks as well as their brains and muscles. In some ways, a beautiful woman is impossible to miss, but in other ways she is invisible, because she is not perceived as a threat. And when they dress up in German costume and pretend to be delivering a telegram, their obvious enjoyment shows that they are the ones exploiting the befuddled recipient rather than the other way around.

Families who enjoy this movie should watch the original television show in reruns or on video as well as other television classics like “Honey West,” “Get Christy Love!” and “Police Woman.

This is an old-fashioned WWII movie, with gallant heroes and vile bad guys, romantic longing and fabulous 1940’s clothes, heartbreaking betrayal and even more heartbreaking loyalty, odious collaborators and valiant resistance fighters, a purse containing both lipstick and a cyanide pill, and characters who are idealists and cynics, sometimes both at once.

This is the kind of movie that used to star actresses like Maureen O’Hara, the kind they mean when they ask why no one makes those kinds of movies any more. And this is the kind of movie that starts with an exquisitely gloved woman riding on a train, looking out the window at the countryside and thinking to herself, “It all seemed so simple then,” while, as the wheels turn, we go back into the past to see what brought her to that point.

Cate Blanchett plays Charlotte Gray, a Scottish woman working in London who is recruited to assist the French resistance. The pilot she loves has been shot down over France, and she has some hope that if she gets there, she will be able to find him. Charlotte is brave, smart, highly principled, and well trained. But nothing can prepare her for the reality of being behind enemy lines, the relentlessness of it and the agony of the moral compromises and all-around physical and emotional grubbiness.

Charlotte, now under cover as Dominique, a Parisian whose husband is a prisoner of war, hands over the package she has been sent to deliver, only to see her contact captured with its contents. She becomes the housekeeper to a testy old man (the magnificent Michael Gambon of “Gosford Park”) who lives in a crumbling mansion. She cares for two young Jewish boys who are hiding out there because their parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. And she helps to blow up a German train, delivers messages from Britain (once with tragic consequences), and tries to find out what has happened to her pilot.

Parents should know that the movie has brutal wartime violence and wrenching emotional scenes, including children in peril and the deaths of important characters. There is some strong language and a non-graphic sexual situation. Characters smoke and drink. The issue of Nazi anti- Semitism is frankly portrayed. The female main character is brave, smart, and heroic.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we can never know what we will do until we are fully tested, which is why stories and movies about war are as much about our internal challenges as about our historical ones. An RAF pilot tells Charlotte, “war makes us into people we didn’t know we were.” How is that good, how is it bad, and how is it both? Why did Charlotte make the choice she did? Why did Julien make the choice he did? Why did the schoolmaster make the choice he did? Does war present different choices to us than peacetime, or just the same ones more starkly?

One of the most touching moments in the movie is a small act of generosity that Charlotte risks her life to perform. Families should talk about how, when it seems that nothing can be done to solve a problem, we can sometimes make great contributions with small kindnesses. Charlotte asks, “Can you forgive yourself if you’ve been part of something terrible but didn’t know?” and is answered, “Otherwise what use are you to anyone?” It is worth talking about how we learn when to forgive ourselves.

Families who enjoy this movie will also appreciate other WWII movies about the resistance effort, including To Have and Have Not, Lucie Aubrac, “The Two of Us,” a French movie about a Jewish boy who is hidden by a French farmer, and the documentary about French complicity with the Nazis, The Sorrow and the Pity.

Chicken Run” has arrived to the joy and relief of the many fans of Nick Parks’ Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit short films. In his studio’s first feature-length movie, a brave chicken plots an escape from a small Yorkshire chicken farm.

The stern and angry Mrs. Tweedy (voice of Miranda Richardson) and her brow-beaten (should we say hen-pecked?) husband have bullied their hens into producing eggs, but now they have set up a fierce-looking machine that turns chickens into chicken pies. Ginger (voice of Julia Sawalha) is a smart, brave, loyal chicken who will not leave unless she can take the others with her. When an American circus rooster named Rocky (voice of Mel Gibson) arrives, Ginger gets him to agree to teach the chickens to fly over the fence, so they can find a place where they can live in freedom.

Parks is a master at creating a world that is enchantingly believable. The farm seems to be set in the 1950’s, and every detail, down to the last nail in the last board on the hen house wall, looks exactly as it should. Though his painstaking process produces only a few seconds of film footage each day, every frame is filled with vivid personalities who seem to be moving in real time, each creating an instantly recognizable character. One look at Mrs. Tweedy’s formidable Wellington boots marching into the hen yard for inspection, and we know everything about her. The chickens are highly individual, completely believable, and wildly funny, whether doing Tae-Bo-like exercises for increasing wing power or a celebratory Lindy hop. But I admit that my favorite characters are two forager/thief rats who are so completely charming that it is impossible to imagine anyone objecting to their stealing.

The movie also features Parks’ special talents for creating deliciously malevolent machines and split-second action sequences. Ginger and Rocky fall into the chicken pie machine for a scene that combines Rube Goldberg complexity of gears and operations with the breath-catching near misses of Indiana Jones.

Three cheers for producer Dreamworks, who let Parks be Parks and didn’t focus-group him into making something more linear and accessible. What that means, though, is that the movie does not have some of what both adults and kids expect in a G-rated movie. This is not a musical in which the heroine sits down 15 minutes into the story to sing about her dreams or adorable sidekicks provide comic relief.

This is not a script with jokes that children will necessarily understand. Indeed, given that most of the parents of today’s school-age children were born 20 years after the 1950’s, there are several jokes parents may not understand, like a pointed reference to the delay in the US entry into World War II and a couple of witty tributes to the classic movie, “The Great Escape.” The movie has a decidedly British point of view, with a wonderful range of accents that will be much more meaningful (and understandable) to English children than they are to Americans. Parks is like Bugs Bunny creator Chuck Jones, who, when asked whether he made cartoons for adults or children, replied, “I make them for myself and my friends.” But, as with Bugs Bunny, kids will enjoy the world created by this movie, and will rejoice in the chickens’ adventures.

Parents should know that although the movie is rated G, it may be too scary or hard to follow for children under 6 or 7. A minor character is killed off-screen and characters are in peril throughout the movie.

Families who see this movie should talk about why it was hard for Rocky to tell the truth, and even to understand what telling the truth meant, as when he said, “I didn’t lie to them, dollface. I just omitted certain truths,” and when he tells Ginger that if they want the chickens to perform they have to tell them what they want to hear. Talk, too, about Ginger’s perseverance in the face of “million to one” odds, and her refusal to escape without her friends, and about the importance of leadership and teamwork. Ask kids why Ginger had a dream of freedom that some of the other chickens could not even imagine, and what it meant to say that “the fences aren’t just around the farm – they’re up here on your head.”

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Parks’ Wallace and Gromit videos: “The Wrong Trousers,” “A Grand Day Out,” and “A Close Shave.

This choice little fairy tale even begins with “once upon a time.”

It takes place in rural France, in a “quaint little village whose villagers believed in tranquility.” They have “learned not to ask for more.” The village is all but untouched by the outside world, and they seem to like it that way. A young priest sings an Elvis Presley song and it as though he is a visitor from a time machine.

The town is overseen by the Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), the mayor. He acts as a sort of moral policeman, making sure that everyone is keeping to the straight and (very) narrow. Into this paragon of rectitude and abstemiousness the wind blow a mysterious red-cloaked mother and daughter.

Vianne (Juliette Binoche, Oscar-winner for “The English Patient”) and Anouk (Victoire Thivisol) open up a chocolate shop. The Comte takes it as an affront to his authority. How dare they! In the middle of Lent! He does his best to keep customers away. But the chocolate is luscious and Vianne always seems to know just what people need. She knows how to add a touch of chili pepper to hot chocolate for spice and she has an uncanny way of giving everyone the kind of chocolate they cannot resist. She gives her chocolate to her grumpy landlord Amande (Judi Dench, Oscar-winner for “Shakespeare in Love”). She gives some to Josephine (Lena Olin), a woman who is considered a little crazy by the town, but who behaves that way to protect herself from her abusive husband. The chocolate — and Vianne’s warm heart — help both women to bloom. Vianne takes Josephine in and helps Amande get together with her estranged family.

Then the Compte is affronted further when a group of itinerants dock their houseboats in the town. Vianne becomes friendly with Roux (Johnny Depp) and this is too much for the Compte and his sidekick, Josephine’s husband Serge. Both the Compte and Vianne have to confront near disaster and their own fears. The young priest has to find a way to speak from his own heart and his own faith, to become a true spiritual leader for the community.

This whimsical little story is as delicious as its chocolates, with a terrific score and lots of great issues for family discussion.

Parents should know that Vianne never married her daughter’s father, and that in a flashback we see that she and her own mother left her father to wander. Vianne gives some chocolates to one woman to use as an aphrodisiac, and we see the gleam in her husband’s eye as he watches her, after he eats them. Later, a dog who eats some of the chocolates is similarly inspired (brief shot of dogs having sex). There are mild sexual situations with brief and inexplicit nudity. There is some social drinking and a scary fire (no one hurt). A character dies peacefully.

Families should talk about why the Compte is so threatened by Vianne and her chocolates. He seems to feel that his efforts to keep himself and others from feeling joy and passion will help him avoid sadness (and dishonor) from the desertion of his wife. Why do Vianne and Roux wander? Why is there one person whose favorite she can not guess? What is the significance of Anouk’s imaginary friend? Why is Armande’s daughter so angry with her? What do you think about the priest’s conclusion that we are judged by what we do and those we embrace rather than by what we stay away from and those we exclude? Families might also want to talk about what some of the names mean in English. For example, reynaud means fox and roux is the base that holds a soufflé together.

Families who enjoy this movie should enjoy some of their own favorite chocolates together. Some family members will also enjoy Like Water for Chocolate, another movie about a woman whose food has some magical properties (mature material).

The classic fairy tale by Charles Perrault is lovingly and imaginatively brought to life in this animated Disney version, also a classic. Cinderella, a sweet, docile, and beautiful girl forced to act as a servant for her mean stepmother and stepsisters, goes to the ball with the help of her fairy godmother. But her godmother warns that the beautiful coach and gown will only last until midnight. Cinderella meets the Prince at the ball, and they share a romantic dance. But when the clock begins to strike midnight, she runs away, leaving behind one of her glass slippers. The Prince declares he will marry the girl whose foot fits that slipper. He finds her, and they live happily ever after.

Disney expanded the simple story with vivid and endearing characters and memorable songs. The animation is gorgeously detailed and inventive. In one musical number, as the stepsisters squawk their way through their singing lesson in another room, Cinderella sings sweetly as she scrubs the floor, reflected in dozens of soap bubbles.

When Cinderella asks if she can go to the ball, her stepmother tells her she can, if she can make an appropriate dress. She then keeps Cinderella much too busy to have time to make the dress. But Cinderella’s friends, the mice and birds, make one for her in another delightful musical number. As the fairy godmother sings “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo,” she transforms a pumpkin into a coach, the mice into horses, the horse into a coachman, and finally, Cinderella’s rags into a magnificent ballgown. The scene when the Duke comes looking for the girl whose foot will fit the glass slipper is very suspenseful and highly satisfying.

While the story has enduring appeal, many people are troubled by the passive heroine, who meekly accepts her abusive situation and waits to be rescued, first by her godmother and then by the Prince. It is worth discussing, with both boys and girls, what some of her alternatives could have been (“If you were Cinderella, would you do what that mean lady told you?”), and making sure that they have some exposure to stories with heroines who save themselves. A superb book called Ella, Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine has an ingenious explanation for the heroine’s obedience.

In today’s world of blended families, it might also be worth discussing that not all step-parents and siblings are mean. Even children who are living with intact families of origin may need to hear this so that they will not worry about their friends.

Families who see this movie should talk about these questions: Why does Cinderella do what her stepmother says? What could she have done instead? Why is the King so worried about whether the Prince will get married? If you had a fairy godmother, what would you like her to do for you? Or would you like to be a fairy godmother? Whose wish would you grant?

This story has been told many times, and families might enjoy seeing sme of the other versions, including “Cinderfella,” with Jerry Lewis as the title character and Ed Wynn as his fairy godfather. The made-for- television musical version starring Leslie Ann Warren, with songs by Rogers and Hammerstein, and the remake with Brandi and Whitney Houston are available on video and well worth watching. Drew Barrymore’s revisionist “Ever After” gives us a spirited Cinderella who rescues herself.

Children might be amused to hear the rumor that Cinderella’s most famous accessory is the result of a mistake. It is often reported that in the original French story, her slipper was made of fur. But a mistranslation in the first English version described it as glass, and it has stayed that way ever since. But in reality, while there have been many versions of the story over the years, the best-known early written version, by Charles Perrault, did describe her slippers as glass. Other versions have her wearing gold slippers or a ring that fits only the true Cinderella.