film

A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"The Time Traveler's Wife"

-- Rated: PG-13.

-- Suitable for: Mature teens and older.

-- What you should know: Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana star in an adaptation of the Audrey Niffenegger book about a woman and a man who involuntarily travels through time.

Like a good discussion in school, "The Class" will generate debate and argument. Based on an autobiographical novel by Francois Begaudeau, who also stars in the film, "The Class" tells the story of a teacher and his students in a Parisian inner-city junior-high school.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes food is just food onscreen.

Other times, it's a key ingredient for cinematic success, a telling substitute or symbol, or a perfect prop for characters who meet to eat in movies as different as "Oliver!," "Tom Jones," "Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?," "Diner" and "The Bread, My Sweet."

A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"Julie & Julia"

-- Rated: PG-13.

-- Suitable for: Mature tweens and older.

"BAD LIEUTENANT." (1992. NC-17. LIONSGATE. $19.98.)

A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"500 Days of Summer"

-- Rated: PG-13

-- Suitable for: Mature high-school students and older

-- What you should know: "500 Days of Summer" follows Tom, a hopeless romantic, and Summer, a free-spirited commitment-phobe, as they fall in and out of love during the year-and-a-half duration of their relationship.

Aviva Kempner, 62, makes documentaries about unsung Jewish heroes. The New York filmmaker had a critical hit in 1998 with "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg," about the player often described as baseball's first Jewish superstar.

Everything you know about "Life on Mars" is wrong. Or, to put it another way, if all you know about "Life on Mars" is that it was a recently canceled ABC-TV series starring Jason O'Mara and Harvey Keitel, you're in for a treat.

Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) lives for this stuff. And could easily die for it, too.
He is the leader of an American bomb squad in 2004 Baghdad, a man with steely nerves who looks like he's preparing for a space walk when he puts on an 80-pound protective suit and bubble helmet but instead strides into the heart of detonation darkness.

"MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 XV." (VARIOUS DATES. NOT RATED. SHOUT! FACTORY. $59.99. FOUR DISCS.)

There's so much to absorb from this wacky 6-1/2-hour set of shows from this long-running (11 seasons) TV series, in which a man and his robot pals, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, are forced to watch terrible, low-budget movies. They respond with sardonic wisecracks and glib asides.