Tired of exposing yourself to smut? Seeing a movie preview that looks cute, so you take the kids and you’re shocked by what you see? I want to share with you two links that I really enjoy using when making decisions into what movies I see. If you have any other sources please add them!
I do not use these resources for EVERY movie I see, but I am a wimp, so I will use them to see how scary the movie may be. I also use it in deciding if I am going to take a child.
The first one is http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/ Christian Spotlight on Entertainment. This website reviews all films and gives it a moral rating and a movie making quality rating. A movie could have a moral rating of offensive and still receive 5 out of 5 movie stars. On the other hand a movie can have an excellent moral rating and receive 3 out of 5 stars for quality. The reviewers try not to give any spoilers and if they do they are pretty good about giving spoiler alerts. This is a Christian based site so there are links to Biblical answers for main questions that the movie brings up. It also allows people to write in their opinion and give it a positive, negative or neutral rating. Just beware there are some people out there who are VERY EASILY offended by the smallest thing! I am a Christian and was reading some negative comments on some movies and I could not believe what upsets other people.
The other site I like is http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ Kids in Mind. This site has a 1-10 rating scale with 10 being the highest. They give ratings on; sex and nudity, violence and gore, and profanity. This website DOES GIVE a lot away. I LOVE Johnny Depp and I LOVE the musical Sweeny Todd, but I do not like gore. Knowing that the movie would be far gorier then a theatrical production I chose to go to this site to see exactly what type of gore there is. SPOILER: here is an example of what I read “A woman is pushed into a large oven, she screams and thrashes, and we see her engulfed in flames (her hair is burned away and we see her flesh begin to burn).” If you do choose to use this site it does give everything away.
Both sites offer suggestion topics and messages of the movie.
Even though I won't be taking kids to the movies, I like these websites. They're a great way of knowing what to expect. I really liked the Christian one because even if they rated something as being offensive, they didn't let that factor into their decision on whether or not it was a good movie.