Plot: McIntyre (Peter Reigert) is an ambitious executive with a Knox Oil & Gas, based in Houston, Texas. He is dispatched by Happer (Burt Lancaster), the company’s eccentric billionaire chief executive, to a remote corner of Scotland to acquire a fishing village named Ferness and the land surrounding it for an oil refinery and storage facility.

McIntyre, all business, arrives in Ferness with Danny Oldsen (Peter Capaldi), a Knox employee from Scotland. At first, McIntyre finds it hard to adjust to the pace of Ferness. Gordon Urquhart (Denis Lawson), the local innkeeper and resident accountant, tells him to enjoy the area for a couple of days before they open negotiations. Gordon tells the villagers about the offer from Knox. They are delighted at the prospect of being bought out and begin to debate the relative merits of a Rolls Royce over a Maserati. The only hitch to finalizing the deal is Ben, a reclusive beachcomber who lives in a shack by the shore. He owns several miles of beach and refuses to sell.

Meanwhile, McIntyre sheds his hurried Houston style and comes to enjoy the tranquil rhythms of the village. In a whisky-induced moment, he tells Urquhart that he wants them to swap jobs. Following Happer’s order to “watch the sky,” he is dazzled by the aurora borealis, the Northern Lights, and calls Happer to report.

Happer arrives from Houston. He establishes an instant rapport with Ben, and decides that instead of the refinery, he will create an observatory and marine laboratory — the Happer Institute. McIntyre is sent back to Texas to organize the changes. McIntyre returns to Houston, deeply missing the charm and character of his brief Highland life.

Discussion: McIntyre’s life in Houston is cluttered but empty. He resorts to phoning colleagues seated ten yards away to see if they are free for lunch. he cares a great deal about material things. In Ferness, his expensive watch falls into the water, and he doesn’t miss it. He learns to enjoy collecting shells and examining the night sky.

In a poignant final shot we see McIntyre calling the village’s pay phone.

It rings and rings, but no one answers. The suggestion is that while the village has invaded McIntyre’s soul, he has not had a similar impact in return. McIntyre represented a fleeting interest in lives that run to slower rhythms.

The film is to be noted less for its messages or themes than its magnificent cast of quirky, delightfully observed characters and gorgeous location photography. There is a touch of magic in the story, with a marine biologist who seems to be part mermaid, and a deus ex machina happy ending for most of the characters.

Note: This movie has the feel of a fairy tale, but there are some odd moments that may bother some kids. Happer hires a “therapist” for a bizarre “abuse therapy.” Danny saves a rabbit that is then cooked and served to Danny and McIntyre by Gordon. And the very un-Hollywood resolution, with McIntyre back in Texas by himself, should prompt some discussion of what kids think may happen to him.

Questions for Kids:

· What does McIntyre list as the requirements for an excellent life in Houston? Do the villagers agree with him, since all but Ben are anxious to sell?

· Why does the girl with the punk outfit say that she likes McIntyre?

· Why didn’t Ben want to sell?

· Why, when McIntyre calls the village pay phone at the end of the film, does no one answer?

Connections: Forsyth is also the director of the wonderful “Gregory’s Girl.”

Activities: Find Scotland on a map. Visit a marine study facility like the one they plan to build in Ferness.

Based on William Golding’s award-winning allegorical novel, this is the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a remote island. At first, they operate according to the structure they are used to (“Let’s make a lot of rules!” shouts one of the boys). Ralph, thoughtful and democratic, is selected as their leader. He plans for the long term, keeping a signal fire going. But when no one comes to rescue them, civilization slips further and further away. Jack and his “hunters” take over, becoming more and more savage. They paint themselves and make sacrifices to a mythical “beast,” first the heads of the animals they kill for food, and then one of the boys, killed in a wild ceremonial dance. They murder Ralph’s last follower, a chubby boy called “Piggy,” and they are chasing murderously after Ralph when they are found by rescuers. NOTE: This has some very scary moments, and the overall theme may be particular troubling for some kids.

Teenagers should read the book, by Nobel Prize-winner William Golding. This movie was remade in 1990, in color, with a contemporary setting, and the nationality of the boys changed to American. It has some power, but is not as good as the original.

When a movie’s on-screen explanation about what happens to the characters after it ends contains a typo (“aide” instead of “aid”), we get some idea of why it seems that so little attention was paid to other details like story and character.

The sad thing is that somewhere inside this mess of a movie are a couple of characters we like. “American Pie” alums Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari play Paul and Dora, freshmen at NYU. We see right away what a sweetheart Paul is, at his family’s party celebrating his scholarship. Paul dances with his little sister and slips the money his grandfather urges on him back into his grandfather’s own pocket. And we see right away how nice Dora is, putting ice on Paul’s knee when he falls down the classroom steps. Biggs and Suvari are very appealing and make a great couple. We settle back, waiting for them to find out what we already know, that they’re perfect for each other.

Unfortunately, it’s a frustrating and annoying hour and a half until we get there. The other characters are all tedious and the plot developments are either lame “but I thought”-type misunderstandings or lamer lifts from better movies. Paul has three interchangable and odious roommates who think of college as a four-year party. Dora is desperate for money, so she takes a job as a waitress in a strip club, sleeps in Grand Central Station (after paying a homeless woman to tell her mother that she is sleeping in a dorm). And she’s having an affair with a selfish and egotistical professor (Greg Kinnear).

As the typo indicates, the movie has an unfinished quality, as though someone was trying to create structure through editing that was not there in the script. There are several unnecessary cameos (David Spade, Andy Dick, Everclear) that seem to have been thrown in as an effort to pick things up. A lot of the plot twists and details are so dumb or unbelievable, even within the context of romantic comedy, that they are just distracting. Why would Paul agree to a second party when the first one was such a disaster? Why would he and Dora believe what people they know to be unreliable tell them about each other? Characters do things for the sake of the plot that are completely inconsistent with the rest of their behavior. Some things just make no sense at all. If the whole movie is supposed to take place in the first semester (at the end of the movie they are making plans for Thanksgiving) then Paul wears that thick wool hat when it isn’t even cold out? When did Dora have time to meet and start an affair with the professor? It seems to be well underway when school starts.

Parents should know that the movie has a casual attitude toward drinking and drug use. Paul’s roommates spike girls’ drinks with the “date rape drug,” which is treated as little more than a regrettable prank. Despite the fact that integrity is a key aspect of Paul’s character, Paul and Dora casually steal bread, coffee, and theater seats, and this is portayed as clever and charming. Students also blackmail a professor into giving them good grades.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Paul and Dora evaluate their choices. Why does Paul go along with his ex-roommates’ party plan? Why does he care what they think of him? Why is Dora so wrong about the professor? How do people make friends in college? Paul’s father (Dan Ackroyd) gives him some very good advice, and another of the movie’s many frustrations is waiting for that to be important later in the movie.

People who want to see a better movie about this stage of life should see “Breaking Away” or the syrupy blockbuster “Love Story.”

About eighty percent love and twenty percent basketball, this is a romance about two basketball-loving kids who go one-on-one in both games for almost twenty years before they get it right.

The movie is divided into quarters, like a basketball game. Monica moves next door to Quincy when they are both 11. He is so affronted by her skill at making baskets that he knocks her to the ground — and so impressed that he asks her to be his girl. They kiss for an agreed-upon five seconds, and then break up when they argue over whether he gets to be the boss.

Seven years later, they are seniors in high school, and both star players. Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) are friends, very aware of each other, but awkward at expressing their feelings. He is heavily recruited, but opportunities for girl players are more limited. At the last minute, she gets recruited, too. On the night of the prom, they acknowledge how they feel about each other and become intimate.

At USC, they each face challenges. Quincy learns that the father he respects has not been honest. Monica must deal with a demanding coach and with competition from teammates. They part, and Quincy drops out of school to play professional basketball. In the last quarter, they meet again, for one last chance at love and basketball.

Writer/director Gina Prince-Blythewood has crafted a nice, old-fashioned story. There are a few modern touches, like Monica’s independence in addressing the conflicts between her love for Quincy and her love for basketball, but it is surprisingly traditional in structure and outcome. For example, Quincy is permitted to have had many romantic encounters, but Monica, our heroine, is as hopelessly devoted to her one love as Olivia Newton-John was in “Grease.” And when she sees Quincy again, years after their college break-up, she apologizes to him for leaving him when he was upset so that she could get back to the dorm before her curfew. She says, “I should have been there for you. But I didn’t know how to do that and be all about ball.” There is also a “Star is Born” element as Monica becomes successful as Quincy is having difficulty.

Monica and Quincy must also resolve standard-issue family conflicts. Monica feels unappreciated by her mother (a criminally underused Alfre Woodard), who is happy to be a very traditional housewife and subordinate her life to her family. It turns out that Monica’s mother feels unappreciated too. Quincy’s father, a professional basketball player, turns out to be less than the hero Quincy thought he was. Quincy says to him, “How come you couldn’t be the man you kept trying to make me?” Both must learn to forgive their parents for not being perfect before they can truly become adults.

It is especially nice to see a movie with a primarily black cast that has a genuine feel for the culture but avoids the usual clichés. Monica and Quincy live in an upper middle class neighborhood and each has two loving parents.

Parents should know that the movie has strong sexuality for a PG-13, including descriptions of some sexually aggressive women, a strip basketball game and a scene of Monica and Quincy having sex that has no nudity but is fairly explicit. (It also includes the use of a condom.) A character is accused of fathering a child out of wedlock. Quincy’s father admits that he married Quincy’s mother because she was pregnant. A character gets drunk when she finds out that her husband has been unfaithful. A mother slaps a grown child.

Families who see this movie should talk about how people reconcile the demands of love, family, and career, and why it is that Monica and Quincy had so much trouble telling each other how they felt. Teenagers may also want to talk about the different views Monica and Quincy had of their relationship at different ages, and how the key element linking them through all of them was not basketball but friendship.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy a very different basketball movie, “Hoosiers,” about a 1950’s championship high school team, and a very different romantic movie, “Claudine.”

A message to those of you who might be considering larceny, fraud, or murder — it’s much, much more complicated than it seems. Unfortunately, the people who are not smart enough to figure that out are the people who think that it might make sense to, for example, inject paint into the number balls that they use to select the winning lottery ticket, so that only certain numbers will come up. It turns out that the people in this movie use whatever intelligence they have to think up this idea, leaving none left over for small details like what to do with the people who discover what they’ve done and want a piece of the action.

Inspired by a true story, this is the tale of a Harrisburg, PA television weatherman who conspires with the girl who selects the winning numbers for the state lottery to make sure they will have the winning ticket.

John Travolta plays Russ Richards, a popular local figure with a permanent parking space and roped-off table at his favorite local bistro, Denny’s. He has ambitiously but unwisely invested in a snowmobile franchise. Despite his professional expertise, he did not anticipate that Harrisburg’s uncharacteristically balmy winter would leave him on the brink of bankruptcy. He consults his friend, Gig (Tim Roth), who owns a strip joint. Gig arranges a robbery of the snowmobile showroom, but that goes wrong. So he suggests to Russ that perhaps Russ’s girlfriend Crystal (Lisa Kudrow), who goes on camera in a ball gown each week to select the winning lottery numbers, might just be persuaded to help make sure that the numbers she picks are the ones they pick. It turns out that Crystal is delighted.

Russ and Crystal behave like people who know for sure that they were meant to be rich, and are getting increasingly annoyed that somehow the message never got across. But Russ is a sweet guy at heart, if cowardly and self-centered. What he really loves are the fans. Crystal turns out to be completely ruthless. What she really loves is stuff — as she models her new Italian leather coat she happily announces that she will never again have to wear anything that didn’t come over on a boat. Crystal brings in her weird, hulking, snuffling, fun-doll fan of a cousin (Michael Moore) to be the ostenstible purchaser of the lottery ticket. But when he tells her he wants more of the money, she dispatches him with less interest than she would show in a broken nail.

Director Nora Ephron, best known for writing and directing sparkly romantic comedies like “Sleepless in Seattle,” goes for a darker kind of comedy here. She gets terrific performances from a first-rate cast, especially Bill Pullman as a lazy police officer. But Ephron is a long way from the Coen brothers. She has some sharp insights about the ambitions and strategies of her characters and there are some very funny moments, a sort of “Maltese Falcon” on acid, but ultimately it does not work.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language, nudity, sexual references and situations, assault, murder, shooting, drinking, smoking, and drug use, in addition to the overall theme of larceny and fraud. Some characters are punished, but some are not.

Families who see this movie should talk about why the money is important to the characters and how they calculate their risks. Movies about crime are always in some sense movies about problem-solving, and it is worth pointing out the way that the characters respond to the initial challenge of figuring out a way to sabotage the lottery and to the subsequent problems that they did not anticipate. Families may also want to talk about why people do and do not obey the law and what the consequences are for themselves and society if they don’t.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Fargo,” a darker but more successful comedy about larceny and murder.