Little Children

Little Children shines through its flaws to deliver some of this season's most adult entertainment, a chilly send-up of an America we can all see out our windows or through our video screens.

Little Children is a superb adaptation, which is, nevertheless, slightly let down by too much exposition that comes from a desire to give too many characters meaningful time on screen.

That a movie can inspire smirks in the same scene where a potential predator is seen scuba diving in the community swimming pool underneath hundreds of young children is one of the most notable feats of any modern motion picture.

Playing up her sturdiness, her furry dark brows and the wiry unruliness of her old-gold hair, Winslet is the best Emma Bovary I've seen-even if she's named Sarah, not Emma.