In “A.I.” we had a real boy, Haley Joel Osment, playing a robot. In this movie, we have computer animated figures playing real people. This is the first computer-animated movie to “star” actors. Instead of giving us glossy surfaced-toys or imaginary ogres, this movie gives us human characters, with pores in their skin and beard stubble, and they are so real that at moments you can forget that they are made up of pixels and not DNA.

Those are usually moments when they are not talking or expressing emotion. The movie’s effects work best when the “actors” are moving, because their movements are based on that oldest of animation techniques, rotoscoping (real actors act out all the movements for the animators). The characters’ movements do not interact with their environments very much, but since this is science fiction and they are sometimes weightless anyway, it is not as much of a distraction as it could have been.

They do less well when it comes to talking and, well, acting. While leading lady Dr. Aki (voice of Ming-Na) may have more facial expressions than some real-life actors (Monica Potter, for example), the very realism of the features underscores the disparity between computer animation and real life. In more standard animation, the conventions allow for a level of exaggeration and omission that allows us to project human-like reactions onto a character like Buzz Lightyear or Simba. But when we see something with so little difference from humans, it just makes clearer how important that difference is. Movie fans might also find it distracting to hear such instantly recognizable voices (James Woods, Ving Rhames, Peri Gilpin, Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland) coming from faces so incongruously different from our associations. The dog Baldwin voiced in “Cats and Dogs” seemed more suited to him than this Ben Affleck-clone of a leading man.

Still, the technology is stunning. The monsters are extraordinary creations, somewhere between dinosaurs, dragons, jellyfish, and squid. A scene with a soaring eagle is breathtaking, genuinely touching. The post apocalyptic-settings are complex and believable. The dialogue is passable, delivered with panache by first-rate talent (Buscemi, as always, is a highlight). The problem is the script, which reads like a Pokemon reject, confusing gibberish about the earth’s spirit that does not do justice to the beliefs of environmentalists or pantheists.

Parents should know that the movie includes brief strong language and extreme prolonged peril, with the violent death of many major characters.

Families who see the movie should talk about whether the vision of the future it portrays could possibly become reality, and about how the discoveries of important scientists have been considered heretical. They may want to talk about the motivation of the General. Was he just acting out of rage at the loss of his family?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the Star Wars – Episode IV, A New Hope… trilogy and might like to see the first major studio science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet to compare the technology and the ideas of that era with ours.

There is nothing more appealing to watch in a movie than one character teaching another, except perhaps when two characters teach each other. This reliable formula is well presented in this fine film about two great writers, one who has not published anything for nearly half a century and one who is 16 years old.

A mysterious character lives in an inner-city high rise. Known to the neighborhood as “The Window,” he has never been seen to leave the apartment, and the local teens are curious about him. Jamal (Rob Brown) accepts a dare to enter the man’s apartment. The man surprises him, and he races out, leaving his backpack behind.

The next day, the backpack is thrown out the window, and Jamal finds that his private journals have been extensively marked up with comments, ending with “Where are you taking me?” Jamal has never shared his writing or his intellectual curiosity with anyone. All his friends know is that he is a good basketball player. Jamal goes back to “The Window” to ask for more comments, and, very slowly, a friendship begins. It turns out that “The Window” is William Forrester, author of one of the greatest books of the 20th century, who has not published a book since the first one won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. He is a recluse, with no communication with the outside world beyond his window, his television, and delivery of groceries by his publisher.

Meanwhile, Jamal’s test scores bring him to the attention of a posh private school, which offers him a full scholarship, though they expect more from him on the basketball court than in the classroom.

Some of the students at the new school are friendly, especially Claire (Anna Paquin). But a teacher named Crawford (F. Murray Abraham) suspects that Jamal’s work is not his own, and when Jamal embarrasses him in class, he accuses Jamal of plagiarism. The only one who can defend him is a man who has not left his apartment in decades.

The strengths of this movie are its themes and its performers. Newcomer Rob Brown is up to the level of the Oscar-winning trio (Connery, Paquin, and Abraham) who appear with him. In addition to the pleasure of seeing Jamal and Forrester spar with each other, teach each other, and support each other, there is the guiltier pleasure of those moments, in which Jamal takes off his Clark Kent/boyz in the hood disguise and lets his Superman intellectual energy and prodigious reading skewer those who dared to have preconceptions about him. There are a couple of scenes that recall that supremely satisfying moment in “Annie Hall” when Woody Allen pulled Marshall McLuhan out from behind a theater sign to refute the man who had been pontificating about McLuhan’s theories. The theme of a character whose true value and genius is not seen by those around him is a recurring theme in stories with a lot of appeal for teens, who often feel that way themselves.

There are also scenes of real loyalty and connection, not just between Jamal and Forrester, but between Jamal and his brother (rapper Busta Rhymes in his best performance yet) and between Jamal and Claire.

The movie’s primary weakness is its climax confrontation, which is artifically constructed and unsatisfyingly unrealistic. Forrester’s explanation of his decision to withdraw from the world and his decision to change is weakly handled. Jamal may be just a little too perfect. And a brief in-joke appearance by a big star is distracting.

Parents should know that the movie has brief strong language and sexual references and situations (Jamal’s neighbors have loud sex on the other side of his bedroom wall). Forrester says that women will have sex with anyone who has written a book. Jamal and Claire take their relationship very slowly and show a lot of respect and concern for each other. Forrester drinks a good bit, and talks about a character who died in a drunk driving accident.

The movie raises a lot of great issues for family discussion. Why do Jamal and Forrester hide their talents? How does the fact that both have lost family members provide an important connection for them? Why is it important for us to find people who can teach us? Why was Crawford so angry, and do you agree with Forrester’s comment about “bitterly disappointed teachers?” What prejudices are revealed by the characters? Do you agree that “people are most afraid of what they don’t understand?” Family members should also talk about Forrester’s advice that the first draft is written with the heart, the second with the head, and might want to try his technique for getting started on writing. They might also like to read some of the books Jamal talks about. And (note the way I started that sentence with “and” per Jamal’s comments on the subject) every teen should read “Catcher in the Rye” by famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger, the inspiration for the Forrester character.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Powder,” about another teen with extraordinary powers and “Field of Dreams,” another movie with a character based on Salinger. Mature teens will also like “Good Will Hunting” (very strong language and sexual situations) by the same director, also about a brilliant young man from a poor community.

Many great horror movies deal with families; that is where we are all most sensitive. This uneven film exploits that vulnerability but is ultimately unsatisfying.

The film opens on a dark and stormy night; Fenton Meiks, (Matthew McConaughey) a troubled-looking young man, has walked into the Texas offices of the FBI. He claims to know the identity of a serial killer, known as “God’s Hands” and he wants to tell his story.

As the story unfolds in flashback, Fenton describes growing up with his widower father (Bill Paxton) and younger brother Adam. It’s a generally happy household; Fenton and Adam are close, and kind to one another, and their father clearly cares for them both. Bill Paxton’s Dad character is convincing as a working-class guy with enough love and discipline to bring up his two boys alone, which makes his subsequent transformation very disturbing.

One night, he gets the boys out of bed to declare that an angel has brought him a vision. They’re living in the End Times, and God has selected the family for a special mission, to seek out and destroy demons, who are moving among humans in the last days. The demons look like ordinary humans, but Dad knows the difference — he says that he receives their names from heaven, and can see their sins at the moment he dispatches them by touching them with his hands. He uses a divinely selected ax and a lead pipe to perform the actual “destruction” of the demons.

Adam, the younger and more pious of the brothers, believes what his father tells him and immediately throws himself into the role of divinely appointed avenger. Fenton, older, keeps his doubts secret until his father actually drags home a bound woman and then executes her in front of his children.

Fenton is horrified, but forced to take an increasingly active role in the “demon” hunting. His initial rebellion against the new family business is handled by his father firmly, but lovingly. His dad has no doubts but realizes how difficult it is for his son to accept his new role in the universe. Nevertheless, as Fenton resists more and more, his father takes increasingly stern action, eventually locking his son in the cellar, to pray for a vision.

The genuinely horrifying premise of this film is undercut by its ham-handed writing, which makes the plot even less plausible. The dialogue is full of wooden homilies like “The truth is pretty unbelievable sometimes,” which Matthew McConaughey’s character drawls just before spilling the beans to the FBI. The dialogue is unintentionally funny at a number of points, especially when Bill Paxton is carefully delivering exposition on his insane plot. What is supposed to be a chilling matter-of-fact tone sounds more like a cold reading of the script.

This is not to say that the film is not frightening. The “destructions” are horrifying. The fact that we do not see the worst leaves the graphic details up to our imaginations. The scenes of Fenton locked in the cellar are extremely harrowing. But the most disturbing aspect of the plot is that the murders take place in front of the young sons, and committed by a beloved father. As Alfred Hitchcock said of the death of a child in an early film of his, “It was an abuse of cinematic power.” For a film as empty as “Frailty,” there is simply no excuse.

Many children will be disturbed by the spectacle of a loving father going crazy and becoming a homicidal maniac, and the consequences for the family. There are a number of shocking and tense moments among all the schlock.

Families seeing this film will want to discuss both Adam and Fenton’s reaction to their father’s revelations. What would you do if your father or mother told you they were commanded by God to kill the guilty? An especially troubling aspect of the movie implies that the father’s visions are real, and that God has actually selected a number of people to kill specific evildoers with an ax. Families of any faith will want to discuss the difference between the movie’s depiction and real-world religion.

Families who enjoyed this film will want to see “Psycho”, “The Brood,” “Carrie” and “Unbreakable”, four excellent films with similar themes.

Every moment, we face a thousand seemingly inconsequential choices that can have the most profound impact on our lives and those around us. In “Frequency,” a fireman gets a message from his son, 30 years in the future, to turn the other way when he is trying to escape an upcoming fire. That night, in 1969, when the father takes another exit from a burning warehouse, we see the policeman in the present as his mind fills up with 20 more years of memories of life with his dad.

As the movie begins, John (James Caviezel), the policeman, is deeply sad in a way that isolates him even from his wife, and we see that this relates to the loss of his father. When he is able to talk to Frank (Dennis Quaid) over his old ham radio, his yearning for a way to express his feelings is truly touching, as is his joy in having had his father alive for 20 more years. But in changing history, John and Frank have set into motion a chain of events that will result in an even deeper tragedy. John finds himself even more bitter and devastated, because his father’s survival left his mother in a location that led to her being the victim of a serial killer.

The story turns into a tense mystery-thriller as the policeman and the fireman, thirty years apart, try to find the killer before he can find John’s mother (Elizabeth Mitchell). As every event in 1969 has ripple effects into 1999, only John can remember all of the parallel strands. Old newspaper clippings change before his eyes and events from 30 years before change the way he sees the world in the present. When his father was killed in a fire, he was so hard to live with that his wife left him. When his father survived but his mother was murdered, he was so unable to open himself up to another person that he never married. Like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” John gets to see how one person can make all the difference.

Caviezel perfectly conveys John’s sense of loss and his integrity, subtly showing us how each set of experiences affected his behavior and his life in a different way. His talks with Frank are very moving. Quaid has his best role since “The Big Easy,” and gets a chance to let us see his enormous charm in the character’s devotion to his family and his job. Mitchell is lovely, warm, and, in a scene with André Braugher as Frank’s policeman friend, as strong and determined as her husband and son.

It does get pretty confusing. This is one of those movies where the audience walks out saying things like, “Wait a minute! You mean when the guy came down the stairs it meant….?” “How did that other guy get there?” But it is good enough that like “The Sixth Sense,” it may attract a lot of second-time viewers just to straighten it all out. Warning, though: it has some of the worst old-age make-up ever.

Parents should know that there are some very tense scenes, with characters in peril, and that there are some grisly shots of dead bodies. A character drinks to anesthetize sorrow. There is a lot of smoking, though the movie makes it clear that smoking leads to lung cancer.

Families who watch this movie should talk about the interconnectedness of everything we do – and don’t do. Talk about the way that John and Frank made their talks about baseball into a way for them to feel close to one another. Watching this movie can be a good opportunity to talk about how we tend to take precious family connections for granted until they are gone, and to ask family members what they would say or ask if they had a chance to talk to someone close to them who has died. It can also be a good opportunity to remind us to say those things now, while we can.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy another drama in which a father and son reach out to each other across the time-space continuum, “Field of Dreams.”

Plot: This is the story of the Birdwells, a loving Quaker family in the midst of the Civil War. Eliza (Dorothy McGuire), a devout woman, is the moral center of the family. Jess (Gary Cooper) is a thoughtful man, not as strict as Eliza on prohibitions like music and racing his horse, but with a strong commitment to his principles. Their children are Joshua (Anthony Perkins), a sensitive young man who opposes violence but feels that he must join the soldiers; Mattie (Phyllis Love), who falls in love with Gord, a neighbor who is a Union soldier; and Young Jess, a boy who is fascinated with the talk of war and battles.

A Union soldier comes to the Quaker prayer meeting to ask the men to join the army. They tell him that they cannot engage in violence under any circumstances. “We are opposed to slavery, but do not think it right to kill one man to free another.” Even when the soldier points out that this means others will be dying to protect their lives and property, no one will support him.

The Confederate army approaches, and Joshua and Enoch, a freed slave who works on the Birdwell’s farm, decide to join the Union. Eliza does everything she can to keep Joshua from going, even telling him that in doing so he will not only reject what he has learned in church but he will reject her, too. Jess says that Joshua has to make up his own mind. “I’m just his father, Eliza. I’m not his conscience. A man’s life ain’t worth a hill of beans unless he lives up to his own conscience. I’ve got to give Josh that chance.” Joshua prays for guidance, and leaves to join the army the next morning. At first Eliza won’t respond, but then she runs after him to wish him well.

As the war gets closer, Jess and Eliza refuse to run away from their farm as others are doing. When Josh’s horse comes back without him, Jess goes looking for him. He finds his good friend Sam mortally wounded by a sniper. When the sniper shoots at Jess, too, Jess takes his gun away, but will not harm him; he tells the sniper, “Go on, get! I’ll not harm thee.” Josh is wounded, and deeply upset because he killed a Confederate soldier. Jess brings him home.

In the meantime, the Confederates ride into the farm, and in keeping with her faith, Eliza welcomes them and gives them all her food. But when one of the soldiers goes after her beloved pet goose, she whacks him with the broom, amusing her children and leaving herself disconcerted and embarassed. Jess and Josh return, and the family goes off to church together, to continue to do their best to match their faith to their times.

Discussion: This is an exceptional depiction of a loving family, particularly for the way that Jess and Eliza work together on resolving their conflicts. They listen to each other with enormous respect and deep affection. Jess does his best to go along with Eliza’s stricter views on observance, because in his heart he believes she is right. Nevertheless, he cannot keep himself from trying to have his horse beat Sam’s as they go to church on Sunday, and he decides to buy an organ knowing that she will object. In fact, he doesn’t even tell her about it. She is shocked when it arrives and says that she forbids it, to which he replies mildly, “When thee asks or suggests, I am like putty in thy hands, but when thee forbids, thee is barking up the wrong tree.” Having said that if the organ goes into the house, she will not stay there, she goes off to sleep in the barn. He does not object — but he goes out there to spend the night with her, and they reconcile and find a way to compromise.

All of this provides a counterpoint to more serious questions of faith and conscience. In the beginning, when the Union soldier asks the Quakers if any of them will join him, one man stands up to say that nothing could ever make him fight. Later, when his barn is burned, he is the first to take up a gun. Even Eliza, able to offer hospitality to the same men who may have just been shooting at her son, finds herself overcome when one of them captures her beloved pet goose.

Jess is willing to admit that the answer is not so simple. All he asks is that “the will of God be revealed to us and we be given the strength to follow his will.” He understands the difficulty of finding the right answer for himself and for Joshua. He resolves it for himself in his treatment of the sniper, and he respects Joshua and the issues involved enough to let Joshua make his own choice.

The movie is a rare one in which someone makes a moral choice through prayer, which many families will find worth emphasizing. Josh, who was able to respond without violence to the thugs at the fair, decides that he cannot benefit from risks taken by others unless he is willing to take them, too. He cries in battle, but he shoots.

The issue of how someone committed to non-violence responds to a violent world is thoughtfully raised by this movie.

Questions for Kids:

· How is the religious service in the movie similar or different from what you have experienced?

· How was the faith of the characters tested in this movie? What did they learn from the test?

· How should people who are opposed to violence respond to violence when it is directed against them? When it is directed against others?

Connections: The screenplay was written by Michael Wilson, who received no screen credit because he was blacklisted during the Red Scare. His involvement makes the issues of conscience raised in the book even more poignant. The book on which the movie is based, by Jessamyn West (a Quaker, and a cousin of Richard Nixon) is well worth reading. Cooper faces some of the same issues (and has a Society of Friends bride) in “High Noon.” “Shenandoah,” with Jimmy Stewart as the father of a large family who tries to keep his sons out of the Civil War, raises some of the same themes without the religious context. It later became a successful Broadway musical.