ShareThisA guide to movies from a family perspective:"Kung Fu Panda"-- Rated: PG.-- Suitable for: Preschoolers and older children who can sit through a 90-minute movie.-- What you should know: A klutzy panda, working in his family's noodle shop, is unexpectedly chosen to be the next dragon warrior in this action-packed, colorfully animated film with the voices of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie.-- Language: None.-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.-- Violence/scary situations: An evil snow leopard, with glowing eyes, escapes from a dark, spooky prison. Lots of martial-arts mayhem, including a number of nasty fights. An elderly character, whose time has come, disappears into a swirl of peach blossoms.-- Drug or alcohol use: None."You Don't Mess With the Zohan"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: Mature high-school students and older.-- What you should know: Adam Sandler stars in this comedy as a top Israeli commando who fakes his death so he can move to America and become a hairdresser. This pushes the rating with its sexual situations and nudity, making it inappropriate for tweens and younger moviegoers.-- Language: A dozen or so profanities, most relatively mild, along with a derogatory Yiddish word for a homosexual.-- Sexual situations and nudity: Naked backsides are shown, more than once, and there is evidence or references to male potency, erections, sexual liaisons and couplings either interrupted or played out behind closed doors.-- Violence/scary situations: Characters are kicked into walls, pushed from balconies and chased. People fire weapons, vandals deface buildings and set them on fire, a limo ride makes a passenger vomit and characters talk about building a bomb, all for comic effect.-- Drug or alcohol use: Nothing notable."Sex and the City"-- Rated: R.-- Unlike the TBS television version of "Sex and the City," which has the profanity, nudity and sex edited out, the big-screen version is rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity and language. It features adult couplings and nudity, a man showering and mature language, discussions and situations."Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: 9- or 10-year-olds and up, keeping in mind the violence described below.-- What you should know: This is the fourth movie starring Harrison Ford as archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones. He is joined by a young sidekick, played by Shia LaBeouf, in a story set during the Cold War in 1957. The movie's rating is for adventure violence and scary images.-- Language: Pretty clean, with a handful of mild expletives.-- Sexual situations and nudity: A couple of kisses are exchanged.-- Violence/scary situations: Lots of both. People are gunned down, kidnapped or held captive, and plenty of punches exchanged. An atomic blast levels blocks of a neighborhood, empty except for one interloper who survives. Chase scenes are lengthy and perilous, and there are skeletons, armies of ants and references to UFOs and alien remains. Characters sink into something like quicksand, mind games are played and a person's eyes burst into flames.-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults drink wine and when LaBeouf's character tries to grab a beer, Indy stops him. Another adult has an almost-empty bottle of booze that he apparently consumed."Son of Rambow"-- Rated: PG-13.-- Suitable for: 9- or 10-year-olds and up but probably best for tweens and older moviegoers.-- What you should know: Inspired by "First Blood" and Rambo, a school bully decides to make a movie and enlists an unlikely collaborator, a boy who belongs to a religious sect that forbids movies, TV or music but who has an overactive imagination. The story is set in England in the 1980s.-- Language: A dozen or so uses of mild expletives or "Jesus Christ."-- Sexual situations and nudity: Couples kiss.-- Violence/scary situations: One of the boys recounts the sudden death of his father, from an aneurysm. There is also bullying, tussles, accidents (including one that appears to be deadly or very serious), shoplifting and scary stunts involving the making of the movie. A child imagines an evil scarecrow coming to life, two boys cut their hands so they can become blood brothers and there are very brief clips from the real Sylvester Stallone movie.-- Drug or alcohol use: One of the boys occasionally smokes a cigarette and a movie theater is filled with smokers.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
New films from a family perspective
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