Holes (2003)

Adapted by Louis Sachar from his own engaging children's book and directed by Andrew Davis (The Fugitive), Holes features wry humor, thrills and vividly bizarre details in a convoluted, almost epic plot in which seemingly unrelated elements are cleverly dovetailed into a satisfying, redemptive climax.

A few things are lost in translation, such the fact that young Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf) is no longer overweight. Yet Holes manages that rare trick of evoking what was special about the book—coming-of-age realism, tongue-in-cheek grotesquerie, fantasy and adventure—and capably navigates the plot's multiple timelines and settings.

Precisely how a story about stolen sneakers and juvenile delinquents digging holes in the hot Texas sun eventually encompasses a tragic frontier romance in the Old West, a 19th-century Latvian curse, a legendary female bank robber and deadly yellow-spotted lizards are discoveries that are among the film's pleasures.

Another pleasure comes from discovering how, despite what seems like Stanley's abysmal luck, there's a deeper benevolence or Providence at work in his story; how chances at redemption come in surprising ways and how curses can be broken. One of Hollywood's most challenging, engaging family films in recent years.

Content advisory: Some menace and violence; two instances of deliberately incurred poisonous reptile bites, one fatal; a subplot involving a fortuneteller pronouncing a curse; some crass language and mild profanity. Teens and up.

What's Up, Doc? (1972)

Released in 2003 on DVD, What's Up, Doc? comes with a featurette on screwball comedies and an informative director's commentary.

More an homage to screwball comedy than a genuine example, What's Up, Doc? is never less than entertaining and sometimes side-splittingly hilarious. The setup, which involves strait-laced musicologist Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) driven to distraction by wacky dame Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand), is clearly modeled on the classic Bringing Up Baby, with Bannister's musical rocks replacing Cary Grant's dinosaur bone as the McGuffin.

Yet where Hepburn's character was merely flighty, Judy Maxwell exists, like Bugs Bunny, in the mode of the trickster archetype, with inscrutable motives, capricious behavior and almost preter-natural abilities, capable of whimsically making Bannister's life a nightmare—or putting things to rights again in a moment.

Hilarious supporting performances include Kenneth Mars as a rival musicologist and Madeline Kahn as Bannister's shrill fiancée. The film's high point is a rollicking chase scene that finds a completely new way to pay off those two clichés of chase-scene comedy, the worker on a tall ladder and the plate-glass window being carried across the street. There's even a sly riposte to the inane tagline of O'Neal's previous film, Love Story (“Love means never having to say you're sorry”).

Content advisory: Romantic complications and a bit of mildly suggestive content; comic menace and slapstick.

Sabrina (1954)

The prologue, with its story-book-like, slightly arch voiceover narration, suggests a charming fairy tale with a satiric subtext. Indeed, this delightful romantic comedy is a sort of Cinderella story, with a chauffeur's daughter (Audrey Hepburn) who is transformed into the belle of the ball and dances with the prince—except that the “prince” is, if not a beast, at least a cad, while the real love interest is more like a frog than a prince.

The romantic complications are feather-light, but there's surprising bite in the intensity of Sabrina's girlish crush on oft-married playboy David Larrabee (William Holden) and in the ambiguous motives of David's hard-nosed older brother, Linus (Humphrey Bogart). For years Sabrina has wistfully spied on David's ways with women and in a despairing moment is even willing to throw her life away over him. When she blossoms, though, David discovers her charms, and she blithely enjoys his attentions despite his known fickleness.

Linus is ruthless enough to prod David to make another marriage that will help the family corporation, and as he gently takes Sabrina off his brother's hands, it's a while before his intentions become fully clear, perhaps even to himself.

In spite of these complications, Sabrina ends the way fairy tales are meant to.

Content advisory: Romantic complications; references to a character's serial marriages; an impulsive suicide attempt. Teens and up.