The Gathering Storm (2002)

Albert Finney is Winston Churchill in this well-made HBO biopic — not the unshakeable wartime prime minister of the first half of the 1940s but the lesser-known Churchill of the late 1930s, a washed-up, unpopular Member of Parliament nattering on in the House of Commons about views on India and Germany shared at the time by few in his party or outside it. A diehard imperialist loath to accept the loss of British imperial power, Churchill was behind the curve on India but ahead of it on Germany, recognizing the nascent imperialist threat of the Nazi religion-ideology others missed.

The Gathering Storm is as much about Churchill's personal life as his political trajectory — sometimes to excess, since the political side is usually more interesting. The warts-and-all portrait includes his loving but sometimes strained marriage, financial troubles and hard drinking habits, depression, amateur painting and bricklaying, and habit of absent-mindedly losing himself in rehearsing or dictating speeches while in the bathtub or dressing and undressing.

Despite ending eight months prior to the natural climax of the prime ministership, The Gathering Storm is an interesting and informative look at the years leading up to Churchill's key role in WWII.

Content advisory: Sporadic crude language, minor profanity, and an instance of obscenity; brief incidental nudity; an ambiguous death that might be suicide. For adult viewers.

Superman: The Movie (1978)

A classic tribute to an American pop-culture icon, Superman: The Movie is the first great comic-book movie and a nostalgic ode to a more innocent time.

Combining epic, portentous 2001-style sci-fi mythmaking and “Batman”-style camp, Superman embraces both the Christological resonances implicit in the Superman myth and the over-the-top cartoon villainy of Gene Hack-man's Lex Luthor and his buffoon-ish henchman Otis.

The film is largely concerned with establishing the fundamental constants of the Superman mythos: his escape as an infant from the doomed planet Krypton; his all-American upbringing by a Kansas farm couple; his move to the big city and a great metropolitan newspaper; the dual relationship that develops between him and Lois Lane; his vulnerability to kryptonite.

Superman's debut in Metropolis is handled with whimsy, excitement and nostalgia; a simple sight gag — Clark (Christopher Reeve) looking bemused at a kiosk-style payphone — suggests how much has changed since stories of Superman were first told.

John Williams' swashbuckling score completes the grand experience.

Content advisory: Recurring peril and action violence; disaster mayhem; minor profanity and suggestive dialogue. For teens and adults.

Friendly Persuasion (1956)

William Wyler's popular adaptation of Jessamyn West's tales of Quaker life is a warm, gently satiric portrait of a family of the “friendly persuasion,” living in the shadow of the Civil War. Gary Cooper plays Jess Birdwell, a less than entirely devout Quaker farmer whose pious wife, Eliza, (Dorothy McGuire) is a minister at their local “meetinghouse.”

Scenes of the silent, unstructured Quaker meetings are contrasted, without comment or judgment, to the boisterous singing of the local Methodist church; but the film is largely an account of the compromises the Birdwells are and aren't willing to make as their principles are repeatedly put to the test. One of the best vignettes concerns an impasse between Jess and Eliza over the shocking purchase of an organ and the delightful way the conflict is finally resolved.

The film's main weakness is the way it handles the theme that most interested the director, the conflict between Quaker pacifism and non-violence and the practical necessities of wartime.

Here the film becomes muddled and does justice neither to Quakerism nor to just-war principles. In spite of this, the film's warm affection for its subjects makes it worthwhile viewing.

Content advisory: Depictions of Quaker piety (and lack thereof); tense family situations; mild romantic moments; scenes of wartime violence. Might be inappropriate for some children.