The Movies

Hanging Up

$16.1 million | 1 week in release | $16.1 million to date

PLOT Three socialite sisters reunite on the phone when they discover their self-destructive father is about to die.

MESSAGE Selfishness can ruin a happy family and break relatives apart.

CAUTION Rated PG-13 for bad language and sexual situations.

$16.1 million | 1 week in release | $16.1 million to date

PLOT A suburban dentist discovers his neighbor is a hit man hiding from the Mob.

MESSAGE Messing with the Mafia will make you sorry.

CAUTION Rated R for bad language, violence, and nudity.

$14.8 million | 2 weeks in release | $31.5 million to date

PLOT Rules were meant to be broken, especially if you get out of school.

CAUTION Rated PG for bad language and action scenes.

$14 million | 1 week in release | $14 million to date

PLOT The survivors of a crashed spaceship fight nasty aliens on a desolate planet.

MESSAGE If you don't work together, nasty space monsters will kill you.

CAUTION Rated R for violence, gore, bad language.

$10.5 million | 2 weeks in release | $22.3 million to date

PLOT Nobody will bounce with Tigger, so he goes off of in search of his family tree.

MESSAGE Who needs blood relatives when your real family is in the Hundred Acre Wood?

CAUTION None, rated G.

Can a dying father's illness bring together his three grown-up daughters? That's the subject of Hanging Up (Columbia; rated PG-13 for bad language and sexual situations), a semi-autobiographical story from writers Delia and Nora Ephron. Walter Matthau is an alcoholic showbiz dad whose illness gets his girls, played by Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan, and Lisa Kudrow, constantly in touch with one another by phone. The dad's disintegration with booze and illness takes him from beloved father to family pariah and back again-a dark twist on Mr. Matthau's standard Cranky Codger persona. What develops is an amazingly upbeat, yet often sad look at a broken socialite family. Critics blasted this film as a family drama shot through Martha Stewart-colored lenses, since the actresses and sets are always pretty and polished. Yet at some points, the movie seems to question the usual Hollywood glorification of stylish people. The eldest daughter turns her dad's pain into a PR stunt and refuses to have anything in her life that won't support her fetish for self-promotion. And the mom (Cloris Leachman) has long ago run off, turning against motherhood and pushing her husband on the road to self-destruction. But the Ephons refused to push the envelope any farther.