To be released April 23

Let's hope you have a big-screen TV. And high-def would help, too. This film - about a family swept up in the 2004 tsunami while they are visiting Thailand - has a you-are-there immediacy and impact. You quake as the first mammoth waves crests over a resort building. You gasp for air as the camera takes you underwater; the accompanying quiet, except for soft bubbling, is downright eerie. Naomi Watts conveys terror and then a mother's physical and psychic pain as she searches for her husband and two of her sons. Watts absolutely deserved the Oscar nomination she received. I was moved, too, by the utterly natural performances of the three young actors playing her sons - Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast. None had even an ounce of child-actor artifice about them.

- KRISTINA DORSEY