Most thrillers have audiences asking themselves what the characters will do next. This one will have them asking themselves what they might do in this situation, because it is a movie about how close all of us are to abandoning the thin veneer of civilization and breaking all the rules to lash out at each other. This is a harsh thriller about two men whose moral bearings are dislodged by a cataclysmic accident.

Ben Affleck plays Gavin Banek, a successful Manhattan attorney involved in a bitter contest over the control of a charitable foundation. On his way to court, he literally runs into Doyle Gipson, (Samuel L. Jackson), an insurance agent with a desperate plan to keep his estranged wife from leaving town with his children. Gavin, in a hurry, tries to pay the damages up front with a blank check. Doyle, wanting to straighten out his life, wants to swap insurance numbers. Haste and anxiety boil over into anger, and the confrontation leaves Doyle stranded without a ride.

The chance meeting has serious consequences for both characters. Doyle was on his way to family court. He is a recovering alcoholic, who is trying to start a new life. He is on his way to court to show his ex- wife and sons that he is buying a house, so that they will not move to Oregon. The plan is a surprise, to be delivered at the custody hearing he was en route to, when he collided with Gavin.

Gavin reaches court in time but without a crucial document, left at the scene of the accident with Doyle. Events quickly escalate out of control. Without the document, Gavin and his legal partners (one his father-in-law), are vulnerable to charges of fraud; Doyle, because of the accident, arrives late to family court and loses visitation rights with his children.

They confront each other again, but Doyle is too angry about losing his case to give Gavin the file. Gavin lies to the partners about the file to buy time, while Doyle goes into a bar to have a drink. Each blames the other for his troubles and wants revenge. What follows is a battle of wits, with each character striking at the other with all of his available resources, culminating in a second highway crash.

“Changing Lanes” is an explicit allegory about how the flaws of good people can bring them to the brink of murder. Both Gavin and Doyle are appealing, seemingly decent characters. But Gavin lacks the maturity to take full responsibility for his actions, while Doyle’s rage — an even more profound addiction than his alcoholism — overwhelms his good sense.

They both hover at the point of forgiveness, but neither is willing to let go of their self-righteous indignation and make mature choices. The characters along the way each present them with choices, each representing a world view that Gavin and Doyle must adopt or reject. Sidney Pollack (best known as a director) is outstanding as Gavin’s corrupt boss and there are other strong supporting performances by Toni Collette, William Hurt, and Amanda Peet.

Parents should know that this film involves a lot of realistic emotional violence which can be upsetting. A family is separated by the alcoholism of a parent, and there is an extremely harrowing scene of a father being forcibly removed from his son’s school. There is also a later confrontation between the father and mother where the father is told he’ll never see the children again. The physical violence in the film is brief and mild by modern standards, but realistic. There are religious references (the movie takes place on Good Friday) that some families will find awkward or heavy-handed.

Families who see this movie should talk about the characters’ conflicting impulses to forgive and to get revenge. What finally convinces Doyle to give the file back? What did his friend mean when he told Doyle “Alcohol was never really your drug of choice?” Why was Gavin unwilling to go to Texas to do his pro-bono work, and what do you make of his final speech to his father-in law? In a way, this is a movie about the way people do and don’t listen to each other and how that makes us feel. Where do we see that theme most clearly? Why was Gavin able to ignore the reality of his situation? Was the end of the film realistic? Parents will want to discuss safe driving habits with their teens after seeing this film as well.

Families who enjoyed this movie might also want to look at “Panic Room,” which also deals with divorced families and with emotions running out of control.

In honor of the 2012 Olympics in London, this 1981 classic and winner of the Oscar for Best Picture has been reissued.

This is the true story of two athletes who raced in the 1924 Olympics, one a privileged Jewish student at Cambridge (Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams), the other a missionary from Scotland (Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell). Wonderfully evocative of the time and place, with superb performances, the movie shows us the source of the runners’ determination, for one a need to prove his worth to himself and the society that discriminates against him, for the other, a way of connecting to God.

The movie begins with the memorial service for Harold Abrahams, and then goes back to his first day at Cambridge, just after World War I. A speaker reminds the entering class that they must achieve for themselves and for those who were lost in the war. Abrahams is a bit arrogant, but finds friends and impresses the whole university by being the first to meet a long-term challenge and race all the way around the quad within the twelve strokes of the clock at noon.

Liddell is deeply committed to missionary work. But when his sister asks him to give up running so that he can go with her, he explains that “I believe God made me for a purpose. He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.”

Abrahams is devastated when he loses to Liddell, saying he won’t race unless he can win. But his girlfriend reminds him that he can’t win unless he races. Both Abrahams and Liddell make the Olympic team. There is a crisis when Liddell’s event is scheduled for a Sunday, because he will not run on the Sabbath. But Lord Lindsay (Nigel Havers) graciously allows Liddell his place in a different event, “just for the pleasure of seeing you run,” and both Liddell and Abrahams win.

Both of the athletes must make difficult choices with a great deal of opposition. One uses a coach (who isn’t even English), in defiance of tradition and expectations. The other resists the urging of his sister, the person he loves most, who wants him to quit racing and defies the Prince of Wales, who wants him to race on the Sabbath.

One of the themes of the movie is the problems that the Jewish athlete has dealing with the prejudice of society. The other athlete has to confront the conflict between the dictates of his religion and the requirements of the sport (including the entreaties of the heir to the throne) when he is asked to compete on the Sabbath.

Families who watch this movie should talk about these questions: Why was running so important to these men? Was it different for different athletes? Why does Harold Abrahams think of quitting when he loses to Liddell? Have you ever felt that way? What did you do? Why doesn’t Eric’s sister want him to race? Why does he race despite her objections? Why don’t the teachers at Harold Abraham’s school think it is appropriate to have a coach? Would anyone think that today?

This movie deservedly won the Oscars for best picture, screenplay, costume design, and music.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy a two-part made for television miniseries called “The First Olympics — Athens 1896,” about the American team entering the first modern Olympics in 1896. It features Louis Jourdan (of “Gigi”), David Caruso (of the original cast of television’s “NYPD Blue”) and David Ogden Stiers (of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”). While it does not have the resonance and meaning (or the production values) of “Chariots of Fire,” it is heartwarming, funny, exciting, and a lovely period piece. Not currently available on video, it usually shows up on television around the time of Olympic competitions. An extremely silly movie about the first modern Olympics is “It Happened in Athens,” with Jayne Mansfield and real-life Olympic athlete Bob Mathias.

“Miracle on Ice,” another made for television movie, is the true story of the 1980 U.S. hockey team, which astonished the world at the Olympics in Lake Placid. Yet another Olympic made for television movie, “The Golden Moment,” is the story of a romance between a Soviet gymnast and an American athlete. Its primary charm is the fact that it takes place at an Olympics in which, in real life, the U.S. never competed — that was the year the U.S. protested the Soviet invasion of Afganistan by boycotting the Moscow Olympics.

See also “Cool Runnings” about the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team, “The Bob Mathias Story,” with the real-life decathalon champion playing himself, “The Jesse Owens Story,” with Dorian Harewood as the legendary athlete, and “Babe” with Susan Clark as Babe Deidrickson Zaharias.

On the silly side, try “Animalympics,” an animated spoof of the Olympics with some comical moments, and the very funny “Million Dollar Legs,” with W.C. Fields as the President of Klopstockia, a country entering the Olympics.

And of course Bud Greenspan’s documentaries about the Olympics are always worth watching, for the stories and the personalities as much as for the athletic achievements.

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.