I’m not sure how movies became the theme on the blog lately, but I love the topic of movies, so hey! We are going with it. My big movie list of faith based/inspirational movies is coming soon. Not promising when I’ll post it. I’m doing just a little more research for it first.
Today I thought I’d share some places for you to check out reviews and places you can find basic information on certain movies, so that you can make intelligent decisions about choosing a movie for your family or for a group to watch.
Finding the Family Friendliness of Movies
Okay, let’s get right into it. Shall we? I’m going to list six websites where you can dig for information. Really though, the best thing you can ever do to prepare to see a movie as a family or with a group is to preview it yourself first, but to get to the point of what movies you want to watch and preview, you do have to do some research first. I hope this list of resources can help with that.
1. IMDB
Those letters stand for the International Movie Data Base. I love IMDB and have used it since they came online and their site was very small. What I loved in the beginning was that I could look up movies that starred my favorite actors. I use my IMDB app on my phone every time I watch a movie or tv show. I like looking up actors to see what else they are in. Or maybe an actor looks familiar and I want to see where I’ve seen them before. Or maybe I want to know what year the movie or tv show I’m watching came out.
What I like most about IMDB is that they have all type of movies. They are pretty comprehensive and don’t cover just a few genres, but the good, bad, and ugly. It’s not a website you surf around. It’s a search it site.
One thing you can do at IMDB besides looking up general information on movies is that you can look at their “Parental Guide” for each movie. Some movies are pretty much lacking information, but that’s what great about it. Even if you just have one of their free accounts, YOU can contribute to the reviews, ratings, and the parental guides.
“Parental Guides” on IMDB are found by scrolling down past the general movie information on a movie page down to “Storyline”. You then click on “view content advisory”.
2. Plugged In
The Plugged In website is part of Focus on the Family. You can find all kinds of useful information from a Christian perspective on movies, tv, music, games, and books. The reviews are not submitted ones from the public, but written from the FOF writers and reviewers. They look at things a little more in depth than typical reviews. I do like the Christian perspective of this site, but I would never use it as a stand alone opinion. I always like the opinions of more than just one person on a movie, so I would use this site along with reading other reviews elsewhere from real people.
3. Common Sense
This is probably the most well known movie review website to find family friendly and appropriateness of movies. What they offer for movies is good. It’s just I find they need a larger database, because so many of the movies I look up there don’t have any information on them. They do however usually have the most current movies reviewed and rated for family friendliness. What’s great about the Common Sense website is that they allow parent reviews and kid reviews, so you can see the input from both perspectives.
4. The Dove Foundation
You have all probably heard of the Dove Awards in the Christian realm, but did you know you can go to their website and check out reviews and all kinds of movie info? Their website has grown a lot and they offer a lot more movie titles to search out than they used to, so if you haven’t been in a while, check it out again. The movie “content description”s for their movie pages are pretty thorough.
5. Movie Guide
Movie Guide is kind of like IMDB in that it has movies of all genres, and is a basic movie info site, but they have a little chart beside each movie on their movie info pages with an overview of the basics (language, violence, sex, and nudity). So you can quickly judge the content of a movie as to whether it’s one you want to investigate further.
6. Letterboxd
Okay, this is not a basic review website, but I’m listing it here because Letterboxd has a lot of members and most are real movie buffs who want to give their opinion on the movies they have seen, so many of the reviews are heartfelt and thorough.
Letterboxd is more of a social platform. It’s for film lovers. I have an account there and this is my daughter’s favorite place to read reviews. If you watch a lot of movies, you will love this website because you can mark what you have seen, what you want to see, and keep track of that, but you can also make movie lists, which is quite fun.
There are other movie and review sites out there, these are just the ones I feel have the most to offer when it comes to sorting through what to watch. I think you have to check more than one source if you really want to find out more about a particular movie.
And as a side note here. I have heard some Christians say that all the movie reviews everywhere are skewed and they are all from worldly views. Well! If you never take the time to review the movies you watch, then don’t complain. As Christians, we need to be letting our voice be heard. There are so many places we CAN review our movies. We can review at Amazon, IMDB, Letterboxd, and so many other places. So, please! When you watch a movie, review it! The world needs more perspectives from movie goers and movie watchers.
We have all of these streaming options at our fingertips and most of those have some way of giving reviews, even if you have to go on their website on a computer to do it. We have to take those extra steps if we want our voices heard.
Okay, that is my rant for today on giving reviews. I know I don’t review enough either. My daughter is always on my case after we watch a movie.
“Mom, did you go review that movie yet?”
Thanks for stopping in. It’s been fun talking movies with you again.
Creative blessings,
Julia
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. So thanks for checking out the below Amazon products. See my advertising policy here.
A big thanks to those of you who visit my Amazon product links. This helps me pay for my website hosting, so I appreciate it!
