Movie nights are wonderful for families, but not if you are unprepared for the content in your film of choice.
Do you know why that action flick is rated PG-13? Chick flicks are generally classified as feel-good films, but will you still feel good about your decision to spend two hours watching the film once the credits start rolling?
I understand how challenging it is to find good entertainment in today’s society—and I don’t even have kids to worry about. Our entertainment choices are a stark reflection of our morality. If you can judge a person by the books he reads, how much more can you tell his character by the films he watches in his spare time?
There are many review websites on the internet, but these five are the ones I frequently visit before heading to the movies or Blockbuster.
A ministry of Focus on the Family, Plugged In reviews movies, videos/dvds, television shows, and video games. Reviews are based upon seven areas of criteria: positive elements, spiritual content, sexual content, violent content, crude or profane language, drug and alcohol content, and other negative elements.
As a lover of period drama and British films, it is often difficult to find reviews on these movies. Enter Charity’s Place. I’ve been visiting Charity’s Place for at least eight years, and it remains my favorite destination for costume drama and television reviews. Poke around in the extensive archives long enough and you will even find the review I wrote for The Inheritance.
Screen It’s free website desperately needs a redesign—advertising banners are still promoting The Polar Express—but don’t let that fool you. These people know their movies, as evident by the thousands of films they have reviewed.
Content is reviewed in fifteen different areas: alcohol/drugs, blood/gore, disrespectful/bad attitude, frightening/tense scenes, guns/weapons, imitative behavior, jump scenes, music (scary/tense), music (inappropriate), profanity, sex/nudity, smoking, tense family scenes, topics to talk about, and violence.
If you want a detailed review, this is one of your best options. However, Screen It does list (in detail) the negative aspects of a film, so depending on the movie, this website is not appropriate for children.
Kids-In-Mind does not assign an inscrutable rating based on age like the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), but instead uses three objective ratings for sex/nudity, violence/gore, and profanity on a scale of 0 to 10.
Hard to find films, such as independent and film festival movies, are often reviewed by Kids-In-Mind as well.
One of the neat things about Christian Spotlight on Entertainment is that the website encourages feedback from viewers who have seen the movie. This way, if you do or do not agree with the rating assigned to a film by the MPAA or even the Christian Spotlight staff, you can leave your opinion for the benefit of other would-be movie watchers.
