ShareThisA guide to movies from a family perspective:"Leatherheads"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: 8- or 9-year-olds and up, although best for tweens and older.-- What you should know: George Clooney, Renee Zellweger and John Krasinski star in this comedy set in 1925 in the earliest, most raucous days of professional football.-- Language: Less than a dozen curses, some with God's name attached.-- Sexual situations and nudity: Tame; just a couple of kisses exchanged.-- Violence/scary situations: Punches and brawls, both on and off the football field. -- Drug or alcohol use: Beer, whiskey and the alcoholic contents of flasks are consumed."Nim's Island"-- Rated: PG.-- Suitable for: School-age youngsters and up.-- What you should know: Abigail Breslin is an 11-year-old girl who lives alone on a remote island with her scientist father. When he goes missing on an expedition, she has to defend the island from cruise-ship passengers and reach out to the writer of her favorite adventure novels. Gerard Butler and Jodie Foster also star.-- Language: Very tame.-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.-- Violence/scary situations: Breslin's character, Nim, is alone when her home is battered by storms and she fears her father is dead. In fact, he is stranded at sea with sharks circling. Nim, whose mother died years before, scrapes her leg in a fall and fears it may be infected. Foster's character is a bundle of anxieties who hasn't left her home in 16 weeks.-- Drug or alcohol use: Nothing notable."21"-- Rated: PG-13 for violence and sexual content.-- Suitable for: Mature teens and adults.-- What you should know: Jim Sturgess plays a quiet MIT math whiz recruited by a professor (Kevin Spacey) for a secret club of students who scam the casinos in Las Vegas by a card-counting scheme at the blackjack tables.-- Language: Fairly infrequent use of profanity.-- Sexual situations and nudity: Partial nudity in several nightclub-stripper scenes, plus two (clothed) love scenes between Sturgess and co-star Kate Bosworth.-- Violence/scary situations: Several bloody beatings are depicted. Much of the film is suspenseful but not terrifying.-- Drug or alcohol use: Much drinking and smoking take place in the casinos and clubs where the action is set."Never Back Down"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: High-school students and older.-- What you should know: Sean Faris plays an Iowan who moves to Orlando, Fla., with his widowed mother and younger brother and is drawn into underground fighting and mixed martial arts.-- Language: Mild four-letter curses sprinkled throughout.-- Sexual situations and nudity: Teens, including two girls at a wild party, kiss, and girls invariably favor skimpy bikinis.-- Violence/scary situations: A brawl erupts on a football field, there is a flashback to a fatal drunken-driving accident and talk about a deadly shooting. One boy is beaten so severely that he lands in the hospital (but recovers). Other fights, sanctioned and unsanctioned, are bruising, but no one appears to suffer permanent injury.-- Drug or alcohol use: An adult father offers a drink to a teen, and there appears to be beer consumed at a raucous teen bash.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
New films from a family perspective
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