ShareThisA guide to movies from a family perspective:"Speed Racer"-- Rated: PG.-- Suitable for: Ages 7 and up.-- What you should know: Based on the Japanese-animated 1960s cartoon, Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) tears up the track in his Mach 5 race car, rendered by glittering, colorful computer-generated effects.-- Language: More "jeepers" and "cool beans," but a few mild expletives creep in along with a boy giving the bad guy the middle finger.-- Sexual situations and nudity: Not much. Speed and girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) don't even get a full kiss until the end of the film, and Speed's little brother warns the audience for the sake of "more cootie-sensitive viewers."-- Violence/scary situations: Cars hang from and eventually topple over cliffs; cars crash and explode, although the occupants survive thanks to Kwiksave Foam, which encases them in a rubber ball as they're ejected from the vehicle; a bad guy beats a racer and threatens him with flesh-eating piranhas; ninjas attack the heroes.-- Drug or alcohol use: Negligible."What Happens in Vegas"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: Teens and older.-- What you should know: Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher play New York strangers who go to Vegas to nurse their wounds and end up drunk and married. Plans for a quickie divorce go awry when he wins $3 million.-- Language: Characters almost use the f-word a couple of times, and other milder expletives are employed.-- Sexual situations and nudity: A quick montage of a couple ends with a woman in bed the next morning. Adults are shown in their underwear, some of it skimpy.-- Violence/scary situations: Punches are thrown and fruit tossed, and hotel guests overreact when they find themselves sharing a room with strangers.-- Drug or alcohol use: You name it -- champagne, beer, shots -- and it's consumed, often to excess."Iron Man"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: 9- or 10-year-olds, due to scary material.-- What you should know: This movie skews slightly older than the first "Spider-Man," particularly because it's about a man rather than a teen-ager. Robert Downey Jr. plays the comic-book character Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who constructs his alter ego, Iron Man.-- Language: A handful of expletives, including at least one use of God's name.-- Sexual situations and nudity: Stark is a ladies' man who invites a woman back to his home. We watch them kiss and see the woman in his bed the next morning and then wandering around in a man's shirt.-- Violence/scary situations: This is where the movie earns its rating. Stark is kidnapped amid a fiery display and held captive and tortured (dunked in water, forced to undergo surgery) overseas. A minor character is shot to death, another person appears to die and there are explosions, fires, falls, chases and deadly exchanges of weapons. Tony and many others are put in potentially fatal danger.-- Drug or alcohol use: A fair amount of everything, from champagne to martinis and sake, is ordered or consumed."Made of Honor"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: Mature high-school students and older.-- What you should know: Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan play decade-long best friends. When she goes to Scotland and returns with a fiance in tow, he agrees to be her "maid of honor," even as he realizes he's in love with her.-- Language: One f-word, at least one use of "Christ" and a half-dozen milder curses.-- Sexual situations and nudity: Lots. References to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, a college-age lothario, unmarried couples in bed, premarital negotiations about frequency of sex, a man's presumed bedroom prowess and racy sex toys.-- Violence/scary situations: A waiter and a customer collide and there are some punches and pratfalls.-- Drug or alcohol use: Plenty of alcohol served, consumed or, in one case, regurgitated."Blindsight"-- Rated: PG.-- Suitable for: Tweens and older.-- What you should know: Six blind Tibetan teens attempt to scale the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mount Everest with a group that includes Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to reach the summit of Everest, in 2001. Their story is remarkable and inspirational.-- Language: Mild.-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.-- Violence/scary situations: One 19-year-old has cigarette burns (not shown) on his skin, the apparent result of a couple who made a deal with his father and forced him to beg for money on the street. It's disturbing to hear attitudes about the blind in Tibet and when some of the climbers fall ill (although everyone recovers). References also are made to Weihenmayer losing his mother and his sight as a teen-ager.-- Drug or alcohol use: Nothing notable."Baby Mama"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: Older teens and adults.-- What you should know: Tina Fey's character, who can't have kids herself, hires Amy Poehler's character to be her surrogate mother, but they're a yin-and-yang odd couple when they have to live together.-- Language: Some crude language and periodic use of relatively mild profanity.-- Sexual situations and nudity: None, but sexual situations are implicit throughout.-- Violence/scary situations: None.-- Drug or alcohol use: Drugs are referred to, but there is no on-screen use.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
New films from a family perspective
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
