The Movies

U-571

$20.3 million 1 week in release $20.3 million to date

PLOT WWII submarine drama about a crew trying to grab a top-secret coding device from a Nazi submarine.

MESSAGE War takes ordinary men and makes them do amazing things.

CAUTION Rated PG-13 for violence and bad language.

$8.4 million 1 week in release $8.4 million to date

PLOT Sports drama (co-produced by Spike Lee) about a boy and girl who grow up together loving basketball and fall in love as adults.

MESSAGE Women can play sports with as much determination and drive as men.

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

PLOT A Marine colonel faces a court-martial when a mission to save an ambassador results in civilian deaths.

MESSAGE There's a big gray area between combat and murder.

CAUTION Rated R for bad language and war violence.

$7.4 million 2 weeks in release $22.2 million to date

PLOT The heavily sanitized story of a spoiled party animal who gets sent to a rehab clinic and decides to go clean and sober.

MESSAGE Recovery works-but only for 30 percent of addicts.

CAUTION Rated PG-13 for bad language, sexual situations, drinking, and drug use.

Ben Stiller, Edward Norton / Edward Norton / Touchstone Pictures

PLOT Melodramatic comedy about a priest and a rabbi in love with the same woman.

MESSAGE What you believe doesn't matter; just have faith in something and in the people you love.

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

Wish you could go back in time? Wish you could prevent some disaster that happened in the past? That's the story of Frequency (New Line Cinema; rated PG-13 for bad language and violence), which is like Back to the Future for grownups. A cop (James Caviezel) finds his father's old ham radio setup and discovers that he can talk to his dad (Dennis Quaid) in the past. So the son warns the dad of the fire that killed him 30 years before-and the dad heeds the warning and doesn't die. So the future is irrevocably changed and everything from relationships to the family's furniture has been rearranged. Then both the son in the present and the father in the past must deal with a threat that results from the father not dying. Frequency is science fiction, but it plays much like classic suspense drama and develops its characters into more than comic-book figures or symbols. The film is full of surprises that keep the audience wondering right to the end. Time travel has been portrayed so many ways that trying to figure out what happens with the idea this time is part of the fun.