Plot: The story takes place among the small-time underworld characters of New York. Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) runs a “floating crap game” (held in a different place each time) that provides entertainment and bankrolls for many members of the community. His problem is that he can’t find a place to have the next game. The only place available wants $1000 up front, and he does not have it. Furthermore, his (very) long- term fianceé, Adelaide (Vivian Blaine), a showgirl, is so distressed over his failure to marry her that she has developed a psychosomatic cold.

Trying to get the money he needs, Nathan makes a bet with Sky (as in willing to bet sky-high) Masterson (Marlon Brando). After Brando brags that he can get any “doll” to go out with him, Nathan challenges him to ask Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons), the local mission worker. Sky persuades Sarah to go to Havana for dinner, and, after he spikes her drink with liquor, they have a wonderful time, and she starts to fall in love with him.

When they get back, however, she finds that the crap game was held in the mission, and feels betrayed. In order to persuade her that his intentions are honorable, Sky rolls the dice in the crap game against the “souls” of the other players, and when he wins, they must all go to a meeting at the mission, the two couples get married, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Discussion: This musical classic, based on the stories of Damon Runyon, is a lot of fun, despite the fact that two of the leads are not singers and none of them can dance. But Brando and Simmons do surprisingly well, especially in the scenes set in Havana, and the movie is brash and splashy enough to be thoroughly entertaining.

Themes worth discussing include honesty in relationships and in competition (Harry the Horse cheats and threatens the other players) and how people decide whether to align themselves with (or between) the two extremes presented by the mission workers and the grifters and gamblers. Questions for Kids:

· Adelaide says she has developed a cold from waiting for Nathan to marry her.

· How do people get physically sick from unhappiness or worry?

· What is the meaning of Sky’s father’s advice about the deck of cards? Is that good advice?

· Who changes the most in this movie? How can you tell?

Connections: Other movies based on Runyon’s colorful characters include “Little Miss Marker” (three versions, one called “Sorrowful Jones,” but the best one has the original title and stars Shirley Temple), “Lady for a Day” (remade with Bette Davis as “Pocketful of Miracles”), “The Lemon Drop Kid” (also filmed twice, with the Bob Hope version the better one), and a very sad movie starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda called “The Big Street.”

Activities: Kids who like this movie may enjoy reading (or having read aloud to them) some of Damon Runyon’s stories, especially “Butch Minds the Baby.”

This is a dreadful movie. Shakespeare is multi-facted enough to stand up to almost every possible kind of interpretation and adaptation. Almost. This version, using much of the original language but set in modern-day New York, is so poorly produced and directed that there would be serious doubt that the cast speaks English if it were not made up of such well- known and accomplished actors. So we have to blame the director since most of the time, it sounds as though they are repeating nonsense syllables that they have memorized. Diane Venora as Gertrude and Liev Shreiber as Laertes are the only ones who have moments of connection to the material. What we get from the others instead is tricks of juxtaposition, Elizabethan language amidst 21st century technology.

Remember the “to be or not to be” speech? Ethan Hawke, who wears an idiotic knitted ski cap through much of the movie and mopes around like a teenager who has been grounded, recites that speech while walking through the aisles at Blockbuster. He leaves the “get thee to a nunnery” speech for Ophelia on her answering machine. Polonius (Bill Murray) soliloquizes to a security camera. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report back to Gertrude and Claudius by speakerphone and Hamlet lets them know he’s coming home by fax. And the play “to catch the conscience of the king” is a video Hamlet screens for his horrified family.

Teen fans of the performers who want to see this movie should go. Even in a monotone, the language and story are worthwhile, and it may inspire them to look at one of the better versions (especially those starring Mel Gibson and Laurence Olivier) on video. Families whose teenagers see this movie should talk about how to respond to injustice, the importance of communication, and how different performers and different times lead to different interpretations of the classics.

Families who enjoy this movie should see some of the other filmed versions, including the ones with Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branaugh, and Laurence Olivier.

There’s a line in “Splash” that I thought of when I watched this movie. Tom Hanks plays a sweet guy who falls in love with a girl who turns out to be a mermaid. Utterly deflated when he finds out the truth, he says, “I don’t understand. All my life I’ve been waiting for someone, and when I find her — she’s a fish!”

The charm of that comment is that it is a metaphor for the way many people feel when they fall in love and have to grapple with the high-wire balancing act between intimacy and independence. That is certainly true of Ruby (Marisa Tomei) in “Happy Accidents.” She and her friends keep a box of pictures of former boyfriends (called “The Ex Files”), as they try to sort through the weirdos and creeps. They tell themselves that they aren’t even looking for Prince Charming anymore, just someone who is not too crazy and will be nice to them.

Ruby meets Sam Deed (Vincent D’Onofrio) and at first he seems too good to be true. He may have some quirks, like being scared of dogs, taking sea-sickness medicine on land, and being oddly unfamiliar with some of the basic facts of daily life. He is sweet and tender and crazy about Ruby, and that seems enough for a while, until she has that Tom Hanks moment. Sam’s not a fish, but he’s something almost as outlandish. He is a time traveller, born 400 years from now, when Iowa is on the ocean, and he has come back in time to be with Ruby because he saw her picture in an antique store.

Is he crazy? Is he sick? Is he really from the future? And, most important, does that mean he can’t be her boyfriend?

This is a tangy romantic comedy that plays sly games of its own with time as the story unfolds. While it is not quite up to the writer/director’s previous “Next Stop Wonderland,” it is a charming love story and a lot of fun. Tomei and D’Onofrio are terrific, as are Holland Taylor as Ruby’s therapist, Tovah Feldshuh as her mother, and Anthony Michael Hall as himself.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language, sexual references and situations (not explicit), drinking (including references to alcoholism), smoking, and drug use. A character is in peril and there is a scary accident.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we look at the risks of falling in love and how to get close to someone without losing ourselves.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Next Stop Wonderland and When Harry Met Sally.

“Hardball” is a softball, and this umpire calls it out at first base.

Keanu Reeves plays a compulsive gambler named Conor O’Neill who owes a lot of money to various thugs. A childhood friend offers to pay him $500 a week if he will take over the friend’s responsibility to coach a baseball team in Chicago’s Cabrini Green, one of the nation’s most dangerous housing projects. You know where it goes from there because you’ve seen it in “The Bad News Bears” and “The Mighty Ducks” and dozens of clones. That is not always a bad thing – there’s always room for another story of underdogs and redemption. But this one never delivers on any of the opportunities that formula creates. There’s a nine-member team and we barely get to know any of them except for two inevitable cliches — the fat kid and the cute little kid who talks a lot. Reeves can be terrific in a part that suits his range, but the blankness that works well for him in dumb parts (“Bill and Ted”) and silent parts (“Speed,” “The Matrix”) does not give him enough to work with when he is supposed to be struggling with his compulsion to gamble or angry with himself for getting into trouble. Reeves gets no help from the script, which makes him behave in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner and does not have a single memorable line of dialogue. We don’t want to be told that he and the kids come to care for each other in a movie like this – we want to be shown. And there is not one moment of practice, teaching skills (baseball or otherwise), or conversation to make us believe it.

The movie makes the most of the audience’s inherent commitment to the storyline. We want those kids to make it, and we want Conor to make it, too. The other reason to watch is yet another quietly arresting performance by Diane Lane, who brings a delicacy and complexity to every moment she is on screen.

The script is strictly by-the-numbers, but there is a timely plot twist concerning a player with a forged birth certificate. One of the movie’s most wrenching scenes shows him after he is kicked off the team, wearing gang colors and warning his former teammates with a meaningful glance to get away quickly.

Parents should know that the movie includes very strong language, including many four-letter words used by children. The boys are surrounded by drug use and gang violence. They can identify the weapon by the sound of the shooting and take it for granted that they must sit on the floor to be out of the way of gunfire that might come in the window. One child is badly beaten and another is killed.

I have to say something here about the MPAA’s rating system. This film was originally intended to be released as an R, due to the language used by the children. The producers argued that it was an authentic portrayal of the way that people in that environment speak. Protests during the filming, and, more significantly, marketing concerns about whether the audience really wanted an R-rated movie about a little league team, led them to cut some of the worst language to obtain a PG-13 rating. This shows again the absurdity of the MPAA’s standards because the movie still has some material, including the gang shooting of a child, that is far more likely to be upsetting to younger audiences than a few four-letter words.

Families who see this movie should talk about how the children helped Conor realize that he needed to make some changes. Why was it important that Conor made a rule that the players could not insult each other? What did Conor learn from G-Baby? What do you think will happen to the members of the team when they get too old to play in the league?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy The Sandlot and Angels in the Outfield. They might also like To Sir, with Love.

Prepare for the final movie in the Harry Potter series by watching the first one again:

I loved it. And I can’t wait to see it again.

Based of course on the international sensation, the book by J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” is filled with visual splendor, valiant heroes, spectacular special effects, and irresistible characters. It is only fair to say that it is truly magical.

Fanatical fans of the books (in other words, just about everyone who has read them) should take a deep breath and prepare themselves to be thrilled. But first they have to remember that no movie could possibly fit in all of the endlessly inventive details author J.K. Rowling includes or match the imagination of readers who have their own ideas about what Harry’s famous lightning-bolt scar looks like or how Professor McGonagall turns into a cat. Move all of that over into a safe storage part of your brain and settle back with those who are brand new to the story to enjoy the way that screenwriter Steven Kloves, production designer Stuart Craig, and director Chris Columbus have brought their vision of the story to the screen. Even these days, when a six year old can tell the difference between stop-motion and computer graphics, there are movies like this one to remind us of our sense of wonder and show us how purely entertaining a movie can be.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), of course, is the orphan who lives with the odious Dursleys, his aunt, uncle, and cousin. They make him sleep in a closet under the stairs and never show him any attention or affection. On his 11th birthday, he receives a mysterious letter, but his uncle destroys it before he can read it. Letters keep coming, and the Dursleys take Harry to a remote lighthouse to keep him from getting them. Finally one is delivered to the lighthouse in the very large person of Hagrid, a huge, bearded man with a weakness for scary-looking creatures. It turns out that the letters were coming from Hogwarts, a boarding school for young witches and wizards, and Harry is expected for the fall term.

Hagrid takes Harry to buy his school supplies in Diagon Alley, a small corner of London that like so much of the magic world exists near but apart from the world of the muggles (humans). We are thus treated to one of the most imaginative and engaging settings ever committed to film, mixing the London of Dickens and Peter Pan with sheer, bewitching fantasy. A winding street that looks like it is hundreds of years old holds a bank run by gnomes, a store where the wand picks the wizard, and a pub filled with an assortment of curious characters.

Then it’s off to the train station, where the Hogwarts Express leaves from Track 9 ¾. On the train, Harry meets his future best friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) and gets to try delicacies like chocolate frogs (they really hop) and Bertie Bott’s Everyflavor Beans (and they do mean EVERY FLAVOR).

And then things really get exciting, with classes in potions and “defense against the dark arts,” a sport called Quidditch (a sort of flying soccer/basketball), a mysterious trap door guarded by a three-headed dog named Fluffy, a baby dragon named Norbert, some information about Harry’s family and history, and some important lessons in loyalty and courage.

The settings manage to be sensationally imaginative and yet at the same time so clearly believable and lived-in and just plain right that you’ll think you could find them yourself, if you could get to Track 9 ¾. The adult actors are simply and completely perfect. Richard Harris turns in his all-time best performance as headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Maggie Smith (whose on-screen teaching roles extend from “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” to “Sister Act”) brings just the right tone of dry asperity to Professor McGonagall, and Robbie Coltrane is a giant with a heart to match as Hagrid (for me, the most astounding special effect of all was the understated way the movie made him look as though he was 10 feet tall). Alan Rickman provides shivers as potions master Professor Snape, and the brief glimpse of Julie Walters (an Oscar nominee for last year’s “Billy Elliott”) as Ron’s mother made me wish for much more. The kids are all just fine, though mostly just called upon to look either astonished or resolute.

A terrific book is now a terrific movie. Every family should enjoy them both.

Parents should know that the movie is very intense and has some scary moments, including children in peril. Children are hurt, but not seriously. There are some tense moments and some gross moments. A ghost character shows how he got the name “Nearly Headless Nick.” There are characters of many races, but all major characters are white. Female characters are strong and capable.

Families who see this movie should talk about what made the books so popular with children all over the world. Why did Dumbledore leave Harry with the Dursleys? Why did Harry decide not to be friends with Draco? Harry showed both good and bad judgment – when? How can you tell? What do you think are some of the other flavors in Everyflavor Beans?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy The Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

DVD notes — this is one of the most splendid DVDs ever issued, with an entire second disk of marvelous extras including deleted scenes, a tour of Hogwarts, and CD-ROM treats.