Over the years, once my kids were old enough to appreciate the stories, we would occasionally do movie nights at the house. I chose things they would like that were broadcast differently (like Blazing Saddles, which is really dumbed down for TV) but also things like 2001 and others.

The first time I did this was with a film that was the first DVD we bought that we could play on a nice computer monitor and watch like a movie, that was Chicken Run, a Nick Parks claymation film. I wanted them to understand more about the context, so I waited a few weeks and recorded another film, then we did movie night with Stalag 17. At first they fussed, it was black and white, but soon got into the story with the duplicitous Peter Graves versus William Holden. As soon as the movie was over I turned on Chicken Run, and as it starts, you get an aerial view of the long narrow chicken coops and it then zeroes in on Ginger's coop, number 17. I heard a double "ohhhh!" from the kids at that moment, and they watched it again with new understanding.

Some films are considered light entertainment, like Dirty Dancing, but actually it has an important B-plot when Penny gets an illegal abortion and is hurt in the process. We had a conversation about this as one of the reasons why legal abortion is so important - it wasn't a forced conversation. I probably explained to them what was happening at that part of the film.

Good films do more than entertain, they can teach. (I was talking to my 30-year-old son last night about noir films, and asked if he'd seen Double Jeopardy, one of the best of the best of noir out there. "You probably had us watch it," was his answer.) Chances are he'll be looking it up on our shared Netflix account this week.