film

A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"17 Again"

-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Ideally, tweens and older moviegoers. Some mature material may go over the heads of younger patrons.

Moms and daughters, dads and sons, grandpas and grandsons, wealthy invalids and their lawyers, and adults and their adolescent selves have all done the old switcheroo, courtesy of the movies. The new comedy "17 Again," starring Zac Efron and Matthew Perry, is the latest to dabble in this device.
Others in the genre:

Turns out there's more to Zac Efron than the grinning, vacant marionette from the "High School Musical" series.
In "17 Again," Efron shows he can carry a film on his own, with minimal help from flashy dance numbers. He's got personality and screen presence, and enough range to half convince you his character is a slimmer, younger version of Matthew Perry.

Every movie John Cazale appeared in was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, and three of them -- "The Godfather," "The Godfather: Part II" and "The Deer Hunter" -- won the top prize. Collectively, his five films earned 40 Academy Award nominations.

Reviewing "The Reader" in The New Yorker last December, Anthony Lane described the film as "pernicious" and "a low-grade musing on atrocity, garnished with erotic titillation." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times was equally contemptuous of the film, calling it "another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us

A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"The Haunting in Connecticut"

-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Mature teens and up.

Some fun factoids about "Hannah Montana: The Movie" and star Miley Cyrus:

-- What director Peter Chelsom knew about Hannah beforehand: Zilch, but he immediately got up to speed.
-- New songs performed by Miley/Hannah in the movie: 12.
-- Filming time in Tennessee: 10 weeks.

"Doubt," the excellent movie that John Patrick Shanley adapted and directed from his Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play, works on many levels. Like the play, the film is set in 1964 in a Catholic church in the Bronx.

"Adventureland" is the thunder that follows the "Superbad" lightning.
The director of both insightful comedies, Greg Mottola, has wasted little time establishing himself as an expert on making you laugh with and at desperate, post-adolescent virgins in their strained quests for love.

Considering that it was one of the epochal events in world history, the French Revolution has been somewhat neglected by filmmakers.