ShareThisA guide to movies from a family perspective:
"My Life in Ruins"
-- Rating: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Mature tweens and up, although its target seems to be older audiences.
-- What you should know: Nia Vardalos from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" plays an American reluctantly working as a tour guide in Greece. She has lost her mojo but finds it after a memorable tour, where she falls in love and begins to see beyond the stereotypes she assigns passengers.
-- Language: About a half-dozen mild four-letter words.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: A woman announces a sexual dry spell, a man advises her to have more sex, characters kiss and are shown after a sexual interlude, and a man jokes about a prescription pill that allows him to share his bed with two women.
-- Violence/scary situations: A bus mishap looks worse than it is, and, in a separate incident, a person falls ill and lands in the hospital.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Some visitors almost always have a beer can in their hands, and characters down shots or other alcohol.
"Up"
-- Rating: PG.
-- Suitable for: Children 4 or 5 and older.
-- What you should know: This is the 10th movie from Pixar and it's a little more than 90 minutes (nowhere near as long as "Cars"). It's about a widower who ties thousands of balloons to his house and sails away to South America, unaware that a boy has accidentally stowed away.
-- Language: Nothing notable.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.
-- Violence/scary situations: A wordless sequence early on conveys a couple's inability to have children and the elderly wife's illness and death. Adults will understand what is happening, but children may not. "Up" has lots of cartoonish peril, including a strike to the head that leads to an arrest, stormy skies while flying, scary dogs, attempts to kill, hurt or capture people and creatures, and a fall we presume is fatal (the result is not shown).
-- Drug or alcohol use: None.
"Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"
-- Rated: PG.
-- Suitable for: School-age and older children who can sit attentively through a 105-minute movie.
-- What you should know: This is the sequel to the 2006 hit with Ben Stiller as a night watchman at a museum. This time, he has a new job, but is in Washington trying to keep old and new exhibits that have come alive from wreaking havoc.
-- Language: Two stronger versions of "darn."
-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.
-- Violence/scary situations: Cartoonish, from slaps to the face to the throwing of spears, perilous plane rides and death threats -- a miniature man is held captive in a sandy hourglass.
-- Drug or alcohol use: None.
"Terminator Salvation"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Teens and older.
-- What you should know: This is the fourth film in the franchise that quietly launched in 1984 with director-writer James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Most of the movie is set in 2018, after nuclear war has decimated the landscape, and Christian Bale takes over as John Connor, humanity's hope.
-- Language: About a half-dozen mild expletives.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Almost none, other than a couple of kisses and a naked cyborg discreetly photographed.
-- Violence/scary situations: Pretty much from beginning to end, from a Death Row prisoner being executed to a devastated world with killer machines of all sizes and shapes and lots of noisy explosions, fireballs, crashes, shootings, fights and at least one impaling.
-- Drug or alcohol use: None.
"Angels & Demons"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Mature teens and older.
-- What you should know: Tom Hanks returns as Robert Langdon and reunites with director Ron Howard for another movie based on a Dan Brown novel. This time, Langdon is caught in the aftermath of the kidnapping of four cardinals in Rome, the theft of antimatter and news that an ancient group called the Illuminati has resurfaced at the Vatican.
-- Language: A handful of mild four-letter words.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.
-- Violence/scary situations: This is where the movie earns its rating. A man is killed and his eyeball sliced out, and others are kidnapped, murdered, set on fire, poisoned, killed in an explosion, targeted for drowning, shot to death and branded with a red-hot iron. A sense of peril prevails throughout.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Nothing notable.
"Star Trek"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Moviegoers 9 or 10 and older.
-- What you should know: This sci-fi adventure explains how the core characters came to be. It introduces Kirk as a newborn and then rebellious boy in Iowa, and Spock as a scorned child on his home planet. They quickly turn into young men played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. In addition to introducing them on their first big mission, the movie shows how other key characters joined the crew.
-- Language: Nine or so mild four-letter words, the sort sometimes heard on TV, plus stronger versions of "butt" or "nonsense."
-- Sexual situations and nudity: A woman is shown in childbirth, a couple canoodle on a bed and others are shown kissing.
-- Violence/scary situations: Characters, including a father, die offscreen or on-, and there are lots of violent fights, explosions, risky maneuvers, near-death moments and scenes of peril.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Characters are shown drinking beer, and a scene set in a bar touches off a brawl.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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