Family Film: New movies, including 'Julie and Julia'

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A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"Julie & Julia"

-- Rated: PG-13.

-- Suitable for: Mature tweens and older.

-- What you should know: This is the story of Julia Child and blogger Julie Powell, who cooked her way through "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," co-authored by Child. The movie toggles between Powell in 2002-03 and Child in the late 1940s and '50s, before she became a household name, author and TV star.

-- Language: One f-word and at least a half-dozen milder four-letter curses and one racy remark Child uses while cooking.

-- Sexual situations and nudity: Married couples kiss and are shown about to go to bed or just after.

-- Violence/scary situations: Powell works near Ground Zero and fields a few distressing calls on 9/11, and a couple's inability to have children moves the woman to tears.

-- Drug or alcohol use: Much alcohol is consumed with meals and at parties, all by adults.

"500 Days of Summer"

-- Rated: PG-13

-- Suitable for: Mature high-school students and older

-- What you should know: "500 Days of Summer" follows Tom, a hopeless romantic, and Summer, a free-spirited commitment-phobe, as they fall in and out of love during the year-and-a-half duration of their relationship.

-- Language: Tom and his lowbrow friends curse a couple times, using the f-word or a reference to female genitalia. They also use several pejorative terms to describe the women in their lives, though it is clear that those words are only an angry reaction to the pain of unrequited love. There are a couple of tasteless jokes about homosexuality.

-- Sexual situations and nudity: A few depictions of the moments leading up to sex. In one short, humorous scene, Tom and Summer watch a porn video together and attempt to copy the actors, though they never show anyone actually engaging in sex. Almost every character cracks a joke or two involving sexual innuendo.

-- Violence/scary situations: Tom engages in a quick bar fight that consists of a couple of punches to the face.

-- Drug or alcohol use: Many parts of the movie involve situations where characters drink wine, beer or hard liquor, especially as a post-breakup coping mechanism. There are two scenes where a character gets completely wasted in a karaoke bar.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

-- Rated: PG

-- Suitable for: 10 and up, or younger children familiar with the book.

-- What you should know: The franchise's sixth movie, based on the sixth book, finds 16-year-old Harry, Ron and Hermione dealing with the evil Lord Voledemort's legion of Death Eaters, who are becoming brazen in attacks on wizards and Muggles alike. At Hogwarts school, headmaster Dumbledore has a mission for Harry, while the teen wizard and his friends are in the throes of coming-of-age turmoil. Jim Broadbent joins the all-star cast as Professor Horace Slughorn.

-- Language: None.

-- Sexual situations and nudity: Love and lust are in the air for the teens at Hogwarts. There's suggestive talk and one particularly crass boy, but mostly, passion is expressed with silliness (a smothering, lovestruck girl; a potion that renders Ron goofy). There's also the occasional "snogging" (heavy smooching), and one sweet kiss between Harry and the new girl in his life.

-- Violence/scary situations: The opening scene shows Death Eaters on the loose, destroying a pedestrian bridge in London. Harry and his nemesis, Draco Malfoy, have a wands-out, bloody encounter; a female student is attacked via a curse; and nasty creatures give the audience and Harry a jolt as he and Dumbledore face a fight for their lives. Voldemort appears in flashbacks as his younger self, the creepy Tom Riddle. A home is destroyed, and a beloved character dies.

-- Drug or alcohol use: There is the social and medicinal drinking of beer (not to be confused with butterbeer) and wine.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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