ShareThisA guide to movies from a family perspective:
"Dear John"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Teens and up.
-- What you should know: Channing Tatum, a tween and teen favorite from such movies as "Step Up," stars alongside Amanda Seyfried in this movie version of Nicholas Sparks' book. Tatum plays a soldier and Seyfried a college student and they fall in love during his leave and correspond by mail.
-- Language: A couple of uses of "Jesus" and a few very mild expletives.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Passionate kisses are exchanged and, in a discreet but unmistakable scene, a couple have sex.
-- Violence/scary situations: A nose is broken in brief fisticuffs and a reference is made to a long-ago drunken knife fight. Characters grow ill and die and soldiers are in harm's way. Shots of the 9/11 attacks on New York are shown on TV.
-- Drug or alcohol use: College students and adults consume beer, wine and other alcoholic drinks.
"When in Rome"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Tweens and older.
-- What you should know: Kristen Bell plays a New York museum curator who removes coins from a fountain in Rome, causing the men who tossed them to fall madly in love with her. Josh Duhamel co-stars.
-- Language: About a half-dozen mild expletives.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Couples kiss. A newlywed apparently wearing nothing but an apron gets cozy with her husband, but it's discreet.
-- Violence/scary situations: Lots of pratfalls and accidents, played for laughs, and talk about being struck by lightning and a one-time lover of Pablo Picasso who committed suicide.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults drink wine, champagne or beer, and Bell's character drowns her sorrows by guzzling from the bottle.
"Extraordinary Measures"
-- Rated: PG.
-- Suitable for: Teens and up.
-- What you should know: Inspired by a real family, this is the story of a race against time to develop a treatment for a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Pompe disease. Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell star.
-- Language: About a dozen mild expletives plus a couple of uses of profanity.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: A married couple canoodling on a couch are interrupted by the early-morning appearance of a nurse.
-- Violence/scary situations: A disease that has no treatment or cure threatens to claim two of the three children from the family that is the film's focus. Another family shares word, by phone, that a child has died.
-- Drug or alcohol use: A scene is set in a bar and adults mainly drink beer.
"The Lovely Bones"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Mature high-school students and older, especially if familiar with the Alice Sebold novel.
-- What you should know: Peter Jackson of "The Lord of the Rings" fame directs this adaptation about a 14-year-old (Saoirse Ronan) who is murdered and dismembered and who watches her family and killer from a special-effects-heavy depiction of the afterlife.
-- Language: Generally tame, except for a single use of "Jesus Christ."
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Adults and teens briefly kiss or are shown in an intimate setting. On a more disturbing note, moviegoers may assume that a series of young female murder victims have been sexually abused, but that is not spelled out in the movie.
-- Violence/scary situations: A boy turns blue after swallowing part of a twig. A girl is lured to her death and we later see bloody evidence that she was dismembered. Other murder victims appear. A girl risks her safety and possibly life looking for clues to a killer. Adults explode in anger, some misplaced violence lands someone in the hospital and an accident proves fatal.
-- Drug or alcohol use: A grandmother has a fondness for smoking and drinking.
"Leap Year"
-- Rated: PG.
-- Suitable for: Tweens and up.
-- What you should know: Amy Adams plays a Boston resident who decides to fly to Ireland to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day. Her travel plans go awry, throwing her into close quarters with an Irish pub owner played by Matthew Goode. Cast also includes Adam Scott and, in an extended cameo, John Lithgow.
-- Language: A couple of uses of "Christ" or "Jesus" and a few very mild expletives.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: Passionate kisses are exchanged, and characters appear in underwear or towels after showering, but it's all pretty modest.
-- Violence/scary situations: A turbulent plane flight, a car accident in which no passengers are involved, someone is conked in the head and fists fly in a barroom brawl.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults drink wine, beer or champagne and a few get drunk.
"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"
-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Teens and up.
-- What you should know: Terry Gilliam directs Heath Ledger in his final performance. After Ledger died, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped into this fantastical morality tale, set in the present day, to finish the film.
-- Language: A couple of uses of profanity and less than a dozen mild expletives.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: A woman uses very long hair to hide her apparent nudity, some kisses are exchanged and propositions made.
-- Violence/scary situations: The devil appears to collect on a long-ago debt that involves a teen-age girl. Forces of good and evil vie for strangers' souls, and there are some disturbing images involving men being hanged and a demon snake, along with explosions, exchange of punches, destruction of a building and use of children as victims of a nefarious scheme.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults either drink or talk about being drunk.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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