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Guys, get over it and buy the tickets to ''The Jane Austen Book Club.'' You'll like it, and she'll love you for it.

In these days of the big action-adventure blockbusters, most movies seem to be aimed at the under-30 demographic. Our picks will lead you to movies that appeal to our generation: movies with real characters, plots with some degree of social significance and movies for which style means more than just an assault on our senses. And – maybe, maybe – we'll throw in just a little bit of nostalgia.

Our Picks:

"The Jane Austen Book Club"

This movie is about six women and one man who belong to an "all Jane and nothing but Jane" book club. So what kind of man joins an all-female Jane Austen Book Club? If he's straight and single, a very smart man. And how do you make a movie about a book club, and why would you want to?

Don't let the title fool you. The book club is a clever device for pulling a group of women (and one guy) together to tell their stories – and there's as much if not more drama going on in the lives of these characters than in the novels they're reading. Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) is told by her husband (Jimmy Smits) of 20-plus years that their marriage is over because he's "been seeing someone at the office." French teacher Prudie learns from her husband that their long planned Paris vacation is postponed because of a business trip. The disappointment pushes her deeper into Austen-like fantasies about other men.

With each character, drama quickly arises. Their life dramas make contemporary Jane Austen plot lines. These are real characters that we can all relate to. Like the Karen Joy Fowler novel that this movie is based on, knowledge of Jane Austen is not needed to enjoy this movie.

Why Did We Chose this Movie? Anybody who read the best-selling novel thought: "This book would make a good movie." And it did. Director Robin Swicord's adaptation does not disappoint. Variety, the entertainment industry trade journal, predicts that word-of-mouth buzz could make this movie a "sleeper hit" if only guys can get past the title and go see it, too. Guys, get over it and buy the tickets. You'll like the movie, and she'll love you for it. Opens September 21 in select theaters.

"Across The Universe"

What happens when The Lion King: The Musical meets The Beatles? If that combination sounds even a bit intriguing, then check out Across the Universe, opening in New York City on September 14 and September 21 for the rest of us.

Across the Universe is a curious but fascinating movie, one that is better experienced than described. In fact, a New York Times writer couldn't quite decide if it's "a jukebox musical, a rock opera or a long playing music video." The movie's charm comes from being all of the above and none of the above.

The story line is about a young man who leaves his native Liverpool for America in search of his brother. On arrival, he gets caught up in all the turmoil of the '60s, from the Greenwich Village scene to the riot-torn streets of Detroit, and falls in love with an American girl whose brother is about to be drafted. The unique twist to this movie is that it uses the words of 31 Beatles songs to move the story.

Why Did We Pick this Movie? Because it's a movie for boomers by a boomer. Director Julie Taymor is one of the most visually (and musically) creative filmmakers at work today, and one of the few Boomer females actually directing movies. Taymor's greatest claim to fame is as the creator and director of The Lion King: The Musical.

But what attracts us the most is her life story: a high schoool exchange student to Sri Lanka and India, Taymor went to a famous mime school in Paris before enrolling at the prestigious Oberlin College in 1970, majoring in mythology and folklore. After graduation, she received a Thomas Watson Fellowship to study pre-Bunraku puppetry on a Japanese island. She is truly a child of the '60s, which makes Across the Universe such an engrossing movie.

"3:10 to Yuma"

Boomers: It is your patriotic duty to see 3:10 to Yuma – even if one of its major characters is an Australian. Because in doing so, you will help preserve and protect a vital American species constantly on the verge of extinction – the western. You'll not only do your duty, you'll be thoroughly entertained as well.

Most of us boomers remember how important the western was to American culture. Up until the end of the American studio era in the late 1950s, over 50 percent of all movies made were westerns. As late as 1960, westerns were the highest rated shows on television (remember going to somebody's house with color TV to watch Bonanza?). For a multitude of reasons, a western movie today is about as rare as a bald eagle, and worth preserving for the same reasons: They are rich with iconic figures that help us confront our history as a nation.

Christian Bale plays a down-on-his-luck rancher with a troubled family. He is about to lose his farm just as the approaching railroad is on the verge of bringing prosperity to the area. To raise enough money to pay off his debts, he volunteers for the deadly mission of helping transport a murderous stagecoach robber (Russell Crowe) to a prison train (the "3:10 to Yuma" of the movie's title) that will take the murderer to justice at the end of a legal rope. The ensuing road trip brings encounters with renegade Apaches and a grizzled bounty hunter turned Pinkerton agent, played by Peter Fonda.

Why Did We Pick This Movie? Besides wanting to save the western genre from extinction, this is an engaging, entertaining movie with a witty and often humorous script. And because the classic westerns stand out as more character than action-driven (Stagecoach, Shane, The Searchers) and this movie comes from that mold. Although I've never been a Russell Crowe fan, he turns in a fantastic performance as Ben Wade, a psychologically complex, cold-blooded killer who quotes the Bible and is a pretty decent sketch artist. And by the movie's end, he reveals himself to be a man of ethics and ideals as well. Opens nationwide September 7.

"Death Sentence"

It's everybody's nightmare – a sudden, brutal inexplicable act of violence on an innocent person. The big question always looms out there -- what do you do if it happens to a member of your own family? And what happens when the justice system fails to deliver?

Death Sentence follows Nick Hume, played by Kevin Bacon, a quiet exec who must confront this question when his family's quiet life is devastated by a gangland initiation. When the guilty party goes free on a legal technicality, he decides to take matters into his own hands. Be warned – this movie has scenes of brutal violence, as might be expected from director James Wan (Saw).

Why did we pick this movie? Because actor Kevin Bacon is the kind of actor with an eye for good scripts (Mystic River) and a willingness to take challenging, controversial roles (Woodsman). Also, because while you may not agree with the movie's take on things, it does raise the issues of vigilantism and American society's relentless need for revenge. Opens Nationwide August 31.

"Mr. Bean's Holiday"

It's a movie with a single letter, no number (G) rating. It's a movie with virtually no dialogue. It's a movie where no one can remember the star's name – even though he's in nearly every shot of the film. But more important, it's a movie that's hilarious from start to finish. Boomers: Don't be turned off by the G rating – the humor in this film is worthy of all age groups.

British actor Rowan Atkinson invented his character for a television series that ran from 1990-1995, followed by the successful movie Bean in 1997. It took Atkinson 10 years to bring Bean back to the big screen, but it was worth the wait.

Mr. Bean's Holiday takes the classic form of the road movie, with Bean's winning raffle ticket allowing him to escape cold, dreary England for a visit to Cannes and the sunny French Riviera. And of course, it's timed to coincide with the Cannes Film Festival, the glamour capital of the world. Along the way he teams up with a young boy separated from his Russian movie director father because of Bean's train station antics, while the police mistakenly believe that he has abducted the boy. And since every movie has to have an attractive young female, Bean and his young friend are picked up by an aspiring actress motoring to Cannes for the premiere of her movie debut – a one-minute-of-fame role that explains why she isn't getting the red carpet treatment.

The movie builds to a dramatic crescendo and an ending that pulls everything together on the beaches of Cannes and in the Film Festival's Palace of Cinema. Not only does Bean's road trip come to an end, so does a sub-plot, the journey to Cannes of an arrogant, pretentious filmmaker played by Willem Dafoe. Dafoe has a film premiere at the Festival, the same film in which Bean's actress travel companion has a bit role. And here's where Atkinson's comic touch moves into savage satire. Dafoe's film, playing on the screen while Bean engages in slapstick projection booth antics, will be recognized by the Cannes Festival world as a brutal satire of Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny, said to be the worst and most pretentious movie ever shown at Cannes. Since Brown Bunny played at the 2003 Cannes Festival, the same year that Atkinson's Johnny English didn't, there probably isn't a coincidence at work.

Why Did We Pick This Movie? Because it's a work of inspired comic genius. Even if the very British Bean isn't exactly your cup of tea, you'll be laughing with the rest of the crowd from beginning to end.

 

"Becoming Jane"

OK, her novels are classics of English literature, and fodder for more movies and TV adaptations than can be counted. But to make a movie about Jane Austen, that "old maid" who died young (at age 41) and, given the times, probably died a virgin? You've got to be kidding.

Wrong. Only someone with no imagination would come to that conclusion. Remember how Immortal Beloved (with Gary Oldman as Beethoven) conducted a fascinating posthumous investigation into Beethoven's secret love affair, hoping to find the source of his creative inspiration? It's a great movie that still plays on cable repeats.

Becoming Jane employs – and rather successfully – the same device. Searching for clues to the inspiration for Austen's five great romantic novels, the movie dramatizes (with a lot of license) Austen's relationship with a charming (read that as meaning rascal) Irish lawyer Tom Lefroy. Needless to say, you won't encounter Jane Austen as a sour old Victorian in this movie.

Why did we pick this movie? Let's say the public reason is because we like well-done biopics. But the real reason? Because it stars Anne Hathaway, that gorgeous knockout from The Devil Wears Prada who is emerging as a very talented actress. What an inspired bit of casting, even if she isn't British. And maybe that means you can get your husband or boyfriend to come with you after all.

David B. Hinton, Ph.D. has a Masters degree in film history and criticism from the University of Iowa. He is the author of The Films of Leni Riefenstahl and Celluloid Ivy: Higher Education at the Movies from 1960-1990. Dr. Hinton taught film history at Vanderbilt University for nine years.