Movies

Uma Thurman’s character Eliza Welch doesn’t fit the typical New York mom stereotypes. She’s not a sanctimommy (although a blogger calls her one) with a holier-than-thou attitude, organically stocked pantry and belief that chocolate is an addictive drug. Nor is she a hire-a-village (nannies, tutors, life coaches) type. And that’s refreshing.

Eliza is simply another harried parent trying to make it through the day with all the pieces of her family intact. Motherhood takes us through “a day in the life of Eliza” as the SAHM blogs, gets ready for her daughter’s birthday party, navigates playground politics, wades through her cluttered apartments and tries to find a parking spot, a few sample sale bargains and her identity. Oh, yeah - she’s also attempting to land a new writing gig to help her return to some semblance of her pre-kids self. In a nutshell, although she sports a series of beyond-horrendous moo moos, Eliza is a woman with whom many of us can identify. Thurman has some touching moments with ER alum Anthony Edwards, who plays her onscreen DH. And Minnie Driver has comedic kick as Thurman’s BFF. But the standout scene belongs to newcomer Arjun Gupta as the easy-on-the-eye, Indian messenger who delivers so much more than just an envelope (not what you’re thinking!). Spoiler alert: It’s one hell of a dance scene.

Motherhood manages to hit the high and low notes of parenting, plus many in between, sans the saccharin and nary a housekeeper in sight.

Motherhood opens today in NY, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco and Boston.

Why are so many kids’ movies so scary? Forget about Disney until your child is at least five or extremely stoic. Even Pixar’s gentler flicks are filled with horrors: mother fish who swim away and never come back (Finding Nemo), scary neighbors who like to make hideous creatures from toys (Toy Story). Watching a movie’s no fun if it results in nightmares for days afterwards.

The Scholastic Storybook Treasures collection is much sweeter stuff. These animated and live-action versions of classic tales are a thrill for kids whose parents have read them the book versions of tales like Strega Nona, Where the Wild Things Are, and Good Night, Gorilla. The stories are gentle enough for toddlers, but lively enough for preschoolers, and even grade schoolers. They come in many collections: James Marshall fairytales, scary stories for Halloween, stories about trains, buses, and cars. But once you get hooked on them, you’re going to want to shell out for the big kahuna: 100 stories collected into 16 oh-so-worth-it DVDs, or 881 glorious minutes when you can allow your child to watch something without having your finger hovering over the fast-forward button on your DVD player.

Scholastic Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics (Scholastic Video Collection), $89.99

For every woman who squirmed her way through the anti-feminist messages in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Ponyo is sweet relief. Based loosely on the same Hans Christian Andersen tale, Ponyo is a goldfish princess whose fierce determination to be with the human Sosuke causes a tsunami. Ponyo must then restore the balance between humankind and nature, saving Sosuke’s small fishing village.

The girl-power themes are many: Ponyo herself is a strong female character, while her mother the ocean queen is both powerful and kind. Most important of all, Ponyo is the center of the story, making a hero’s journey and not just fighting for her man.

Helmed by Hayao Miyazaki, this film is aimed at a younger audience than his Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle. Kids as young as five will be able to appreciate the gentle fable, and the violence is subdued enough that all but the most sensitive won’t be frightened.

Ponyo is in theaters nationwide.

Watching a movie with a young child can be a dicey proposition. What can seem like a harmless kid flick can contain scenes of animal torture (The Secret of Nimh, Babe: Pig in the City) or snuffing (Bambi), the death of parents (practically every Disney flick ever made), and a host of other horrors. If you have a sensitive kid, you’ll want to know in advance what you’re going to see.

That’s where Commonsense Media comes in. Like a Consumer Reports for kids’ media, Commonsense rates movies, games, books, music, TV shows, and websites for parents. What might give parents pause? What age is it intended for? What might parents want to discuss with kids? Commonsense flags anything that might be worrisome, including violence, sex, cursing, and consumerism.

Parents can look up particular movies or games by name or age group, or get ideas for what to consume from Commonsense’s lists of recommended media picks.

Pictured: Rodents are sucked down a vent to their deaths in The Secret of NIHM.

The age of modern parenthood has brought us a lot to be thankful for on a superficial level: Baby Einstein videos, the Diaper Genie (and successors), and strollers that come in colors other than black, gray and navy. But perhaps the mother of all inventions is the portable DVD player, guaranteed to provide Junior with hours of entertainment on planes, trains and in automobiles. Here are some new DVDs to give your player a workout this summer and beyond.

He lives in pineapple under the sea and just celebrated his 10th anniversary. He is, of course, SpongeBob. In the title episode (a new one) “To Squarepants or Not to Squarepants,” SpongeBob has shrunk his last pair of square pants and can’t find any additional pairs in the local stores. (Guess they don’t have Google in Bikini Bottom.) Will anyone recognize America’s most famous sponge without his pants? This DVD contains eight episodes in all.

The sassy 6-and-3/4-year-old, who can accessorize like no celebrity pig since Kermit’s gal pal, Miss Piggy, makes her full-length DVD debut. Olivia contains one new episode plus three others new to DVD (eight episodes total). See how our attention-loving heroine reacts when she’s cast as “Cow #2″ in the school play after Francine gets the lead.

Never have buttons seemed so scary. This Tim Burton-esque film isn’t for every kid. In this stop-action, animated movie, Coraline, dissatisfied with her life, enters an alternate universe with an Other Mother and Other Father, who at first appear to be model parents. But all is not as it seems. Hence, the movie’s tagline: Be careful what you wish for. Not for the child who is easily spooked. Three-D version available.

Coming soon …

Newsflash: Each train is finally getting its own voice! (It’s about time.) Thomas, Percy, et al. help save new friend Hiro from the scrapyard in this animated movie. Special DVD features include a Thomas & Spencer racing game and a Thomas & Friends Bedroom Makeover. (Coming 9/8)

British icons Wallace and Gromit long ago catapulted themselves into in an elite category of children’s entertainment - the much-sought-after realm of cross-generational appeal. Translation: you’ll actually enjoy their films. In Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death, a British Academy Award winner for Short Animation, W & G open a bakery called Top Bun. But their timing’s not so great. A murderer is targeting all the bakers in town. Gromit must discover the identity of the Cereal Killer before BFF Wallace becomes his next victim. This is the dynamic duo’s first, new half-hour adventure since 2005.(Coming 9/22)

Once you’ve watched the Pixar oeuvre, and recycled all your favorite childhood movies, what’s left to watch that’s worth watching? A whole bunch of movies from the ’80s and ’90s that you probably missed, that’s what. One 1995 gem is The Indian In the Cupboard, an adaptation of the fantastic children’s fantasy novel by Lynne Reid Banks. In both, a boy named Omri receives a secondhand cupboard and a plastic Native American doll for his birthday. He discovers that an old key fits in the cupboard’s lock, and that when he puts the Native American doll in, it comes to life and turns into a Iroquois warrior named Little Bear.

But Little Bear is no storybook Indian, and his creator is thrown into turmoil. What debt does he owe Little Bear for bringing him to life in a world of giants? How can he keep Little Bear safe and happy in a dangerous world, and keep the secret of his magical cupboard to himself when he’s the youngest in a family of pushy, nosy brothers? The young actor who plays Omri, Hal Scardino, is wonderfully natural and his conflicts gripping and real. And Native American rapper Litefoot, who plays Little Bear, is dignified and shown respect, and gets to debunk some Native American stereotypes (for instance, he doesn’t live in a teepee and he’s never heard of a cowboy).

The Indian in the Cupboard is great for kids aged 7 and up; there are some realistic scenes of another brought-to-life small Native American dying that may cause younger kids some pause, but there’s little else to offend.

As far as adults are concerned, there are three types of children’s movies: those you sleep through or work the BlackBerry, those you tolerate and those you actually enjoy. When the movie is by legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, you can bet the film is going to fall into that last category.

Miyazaki, who brought us the Academy-Award winning Spririted Away plus other gems, including Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Sky, now introduces PONYO to the U.S. The top film in Japan in 2008, PONYO was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid and tells the story of an overzealous goldfish (Ponyo), her quest to become human and the special friendship she develops with the five-year-old boy who discovers her in his Japanese coastal town. The English-language cast includes Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey and Betty White. Noah Cyrus (younger sister of Miley) voices the title character and Frankie Jonas (”The Bonus Jonas” related to you know who) the five-year-old boy Sosuke who befriends Ponyo. Visually captivating, much of the movie takes place underwater with the ocean depicted as a living presence. In fact, as with his other films, Miyazaki manages to weave in an ecological component reflective of his commitment to preserving the Earth. Pretty deep for a kids’ movie.

Hey, there’s a reason this film has grossed more than $165 million worldwide so far.

PONYO opens this Friday, August 14th.

View PONYO trailer at disney.go.com.

Photo credit: Walt Disney Studios

The new Harry Potter movie roared into theaters last week and parents who love the idea of The Boy Who Taught Them All to Read duly went to see it with the little ones. And discovered that this latest entry is dark, indeed, with the death of a major character, violence galore, scary CGI characters sure to cause nightmares, etc. etc. As the character of Harry Potter has aged in the series, so has the complexity and maturity level of the books and the movies. Unlike the first, rather lighthearted Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is not for kids under age 12.

Instead, take the whole family to see Up, a Pixar flick that’s been in the theaters a while but is still hanging on in most markets. Like Harry Potter, it’s a fantasy with eye candy galore. But it’s a lot less scary and a lot more heartwarming; you’ll be in tears by the end of the first, wordless montage of scenes of a long, childless marriage. Up has some intense airborne scenes, but is largely sweet, funny, and enormously heartwarming. It’s great for kids age 5 and up. And it has talking dogs!

Harry Potter is all fine and well, but it’s not nearly as easy for girls to find themselves in pages of his books. The main character’s a boy, his best friend’s a boy, most of the glory and adventures are experienced by the boys, while the main female character, Hermione, is often relegated to background and library searches. In The Worst Witch series, a set of six books written by Jill Murphy starting in 1974, the girls are at the center of the action.

Both the books and the later British TV series based on the books are set at Miss Cackle’s Academy, a girls’ boarding school in a stone castle atop a mountain where the girls learn the basics of broom-riding, spells, and transformation. The main character, Mildred Hubble, is a good-hearted but clumsy young witch-in-training who makes many missteps yet always makes things right in the end.

It’s said that The Worst Witch was the inspiration for the Potter books, and once you see the TV series you’ll find it easy to believe. The setting and costumes are similar, and the same lighthearted tone prevails. But The Worst Witch is both tamer (conflicts tend to resolve around misdeeds like stealing food for a midnight feast instead of life-and-death showdowns) and more fun. Both boys and girls will enjoy the series, but it’s tailor-made for girls aged 5 to 10, who will love the combination of magic and social interactions in a girlie microcosm.

The TV series is available on DVD in sets of about seven episodes each. Start with the first set of episodes, which introduces Mildred, her rival, snotty Ethel Hallow, and the other characters as Mildred struggles through her first day at Miss Cackle’s, hoping to become a real witch.

The Worst Witch, $28

Despite their iconic reputation, a lot of Disney movies are too much for very little or sensitive kids. Parents are often offed, brooms transform themselves into menacing imps, and don’t even try watching Pinocchio with a kid under 7 because when the donkey-transformation scene comes on, you’re going to have one traumatized little sprout hiding behind you.

Barbie and the Diamond Castle, a direct-to-DVD 2008 film, is gentler stuff. It’s good for little ones 6 and under, but parents won’t mind watching too. The non-obnoxious plot concerns a pair of best friends who find a magic mirror and enchanted gems that lead them to a hidden castle that they must protect from an evil sorceress. There’s a dragon and a showdown, but it’s not too intense; and some songs that are actually not half bad. The story’s lesson, that loyalty and courage can triumph over evil, and that you gotta stick with your girlfriends, won’t make you gag (though it may make you smirk over the unintentional homoerotic subtext). And little girls go gaga over the princessy costumes, and femmie fantasy aspects of the story. Get this: The best friends live together in a cabin in the woods and work as flower sellers. I can hear the “Squeeee!” from here.

Barbie and the Diamond Castle, $11.49