Shiloh is the film of the novel of the same name. However, before armchair historians click this one into their shopping baskets, be advised that the novel in this case is not Shelby Foote's meditation on one of the more ghastly battles of the US Civil War, but Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's heartwarming homily to a boy and his dog. The good news is that people who buy this Shiloh in error might be pleasantly surprised: though it is, principally, a movie aimed at children, and one which employs the standard good-kids-versus-bad-adults dynamic, it is also deftly written, beautifully acted, and wholly commendable in its refusal to patronise its target audience.

Shiloh the film is about Shiloh the preternaturally adorable beagle pup, who flees the violent tyranny of backwoods hunter Jud (Scott Wilson) for the love of local child Marty (Blake Heron). Jud wants the dog back, and Marty plots to keep him, despite the initial objections of his parents. It all ends much the way you'd expect it would, but it takes some startling detours getting there--unusually for a children's film, Shiloh dares to display adults and moral choices as complicated things, and the result is a film that children will most certainly enjoy, and no parent will resent sitting through.

On the DVD: Shiloh on disc has English, French and Dutch soundtracks, plus subtitles in all three languages. Extras include interviews with the cast and crew and the author of the novel that inspired the film, as well as a speech by film critic Roger Ebert taken from something called The Overlooked Film Festival, in which he argues for the inclusion of Shiloh in the pantheon of cinematic greats. There's also an interesting curiosity: a television advertisement by the American Library Association, in which Shiloh is the example used to demonstrate to children the joys of reading. --Andrew Mueller

This tearjerker by Australian filmmaker Scott Hicks is a surprising story about real-life classical pianist David Helfgott, an Australian who rose to international prominence at a very young age in the 1950s and 1960s, and suffered a psychological collapse after enduring years of abuse from his father (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Hicks has three very fine actors portraying Helfgott at different stages of his life, including the adorably wry and goofy Noah Taylor (Flirting), who takes up the character's teen years, and Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush, giving a great performance playing the musician as a schizophrenic adult. Despite the Helfgotts' compromised psychological health, Shine is hardly a depressing experience. If anything, the story is really about how long one person's life can take to make glorious sense of itself. Sir John Gielgud, in golden form, plays Helfgott's teacher. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

The past catches up with a ruthlessly ambitious boxing promoter.

Based on a novel by Susan Isaacs, Shining Through is uncomfortably close to Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious. This World War II drama concerns a love affair between a spy (Michael Douglas) and a secretary (Melanie Griffith) that goes south when duty turns him cold and pushes her into dangerous, behind-the-lines intelligence work. Liam Neeson plays the gentleman Nazi unwittingly providing Griffith with cover as domestic help. The best parts of the film are the twists and turns in the romance (Douglas is very good at playing a character who can turn off all feeling at will) at the beginning; the German scenes are less compelling despite such high stakes for the heroine. The climax--taking us back to Notorious whether it wants to or not--is quite gripping, largely due to Douglas's performance.--Tom Keogh