Admit it: Some film adaptations of beloved young adult and kid novels are so good, even us stuffy adult types love 'em. Come on, your inner tween wants to come out and play!
The final adventure in the Harry Potter film series follows Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) as they prepare for a final battle with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), who is determined to destroy Harry once and for all. In order to defeat the powerful wizard, they must find and destroy Voldemort's last and m...
Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Col...
A young girl walks through a secret door and discovers a parallel reality that is eerily similar to the life she already knows, yet deeply unsettling in a number of ways, in director Henry Selick's animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's international best-seller. Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones (voice of Dakota Fanning) is fearlessly courageous, an...
Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Keith David, Jo...
A boy's best friend is his robot in this animated adventure from Brad Bird, best known for his TV work on such series as The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and The Critic. Set in 1957, The Iron Giant focuses on Hogarth (voice of Eli Marienthal), an imaginative nine-year-old boy who daydreams of alien invasions and doing battle with Communist agents...
Jennifer Aniston, Vin Diesel
Ann Brashares' best-selling novel for young adults comes to the big screen in this engaging comedy drama. Carmen (America Ferrera), Bridget (Blake Lively), Lena (Alexis Bledel), and Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) are four teenage girls who have been close friends since they were babies (and even before -- their mothers all knew each other from attending ...
Bradley Whitford, Nancy Travis, Rachel Ticotin, America Ferrera, Mike Vogel, ...
Wolfgang Petersen adapted Michael Ende's children's story for this charming fantasy film that spawned several sequels. Bastian (Barret Oliver) is dealing with his mother's recent death. His father (Gerald McRaney) is an imperious sort who continually lambastes Bastian for daydreaming and falling behind in school. On top of his father's badgering...
Promoted as a family musical by Paramount Pictures, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is more of a black comedy, perversely faithful to the spirit of Roald Dahl's original book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Enigmatic candy manufacturer Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) stages a contest by hiding five golden tickets in five of his scrumptious ca...
Gene Wilder, Aubrey Woods, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum
A young girl embarks on a perilous journey to rescue her best friend and fight the forces of darkness in director Chris Weitz's adaptation of the first installment of author Philip Pullman's best-selling fantasy trilogy. Screen newcomer Dakota Blue Richards stars as young heroine Lyra Belacqua, Casino Royale star Daniel Craig appears as Lyra's r...
Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Freddie Highmore, Ian Mckellen, Dakota Blue Rich...
The adventure continues as producer/director Andrew Adamson teams with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to tell the tale of the dashing Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) -- who sets out to defeat a tyrannical king who has overtaken Narnia and secure his rightful place on the throne. One year has passed since the events of The Chron...
Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell
A high-strung mom and her punky daughter learn what it's like to walk in each other's shoes -- literally -- in Disney's second update of their 1977 teen fantasy comedy. The new-millennium Freaky Friday has disgruntled teen Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) living, sans father, with her uptight therapist-author mom Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and bratty b...
Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Harold Gould, Chad Michael Murray, Mark Harmon
Long resistant to film adaptations of her Mary Poppins books, P.L. Travers finally succumbed to the entreaties of Walt Disney, and the result is often considered the finest of Disney's personally supervised films. The Travers stories are bundled together to tell the story of the Edwardian-era British Banks family: the banker father (David Tomlin...
Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns, Hermione Baddele...
Young wizard-in-training Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) returns to Hogwarts for his fifth year of studies, only to find that the magical community seems to be in a curious state of denial about his recent encounter with the sinister Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) in the fifth installment of the popular fantasy film series based on the best-sell...
Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Melling, Emma Watson, Jason Boyd, Rupert Grint
A kid who hates ants finds himself living among the six-legged critters in this computer-animated comedy-adventure. Lucas Nickle (voice of Zach Tyler Eisen) is a ten-year-old boy whose family has just moved to a new town, and Lucas isn't enjoying it much -- he hasn't made any friends yet, his big sister ignores him, his parents (voices of Larry ...
Regina King, Alan Cumming, Cheri Oteri, Julia Roberts, Lily Tomlin, Meryl Str...
A nanny reveals ways of making children behave that are much more effective than a time-out in this fantasy comedy based on the "Nurse Matilda" books for children by Christianna Brand. Near the dawn of the twentieth century, Mr. Brown (Colin Firth) is a widower who must tend to his business as an undertaker while looking after his brood of seven...
Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Angela Lansbury, Kelly Macdonald, Derek Jacobi, P...
A young boy's discovery of a gigantic peach triggers an eventful journey across the sea in this strikingly designed and surprisingly twisted animated adventure. A live-action framing device establishes the dark yet fanciful mood one might expect from an adaptation of a Roald Dahl story, as young British lad James (Paul Terry) is orphaned by the ...
Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Jane Leeves, Joanna Lumley, Miriam Margoyles,...