Family viewing checks...

[Itsallaguess]

Just wanted to highlight a great film website that will give ratings and descriptions of films based on a 'family-viewing' basis, and I find that it helps give a much more granular idea of the appropriateness of a film than the more general single-rating that films get -

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/

There's an official review of most films, which is often very detailed indeed, and then below that there are often a number of user-reviews too, which give age-related advice based on their own parental experience.

My son is at that 'middling' age, where he wants to watch more 'grown up' films, and I'm often happy to allow that where I'm satisfied that some current red-lines are unlikely to be crossed, and having used a number of these types of sites to help with this sort of decision making and sanity-checks before pressing the 'Play' button, I think the above is probably the best and most consistently useful of the ones I've used in the past.

It also seems to have the largest library of film entries too, so I hope it might be useful for other parents who may have similar dilemmas sometimes..

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[AF62]

I find that it helps give a much more granular idea of the appropriateness of a film than the more general single-rating that films get

The website for the BBFC who assign the ratings gives a full description for every film? https://www.bbfc.co.uk/

For example for Mulan the BBFC site (https://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/mulan-2020) says -

MULAN is an action fantasy war film in which a young woman disguises herself as a man to fight for the Chinese Emperor in a battle against an invading army.

Violence
There are frequent scenes of battle violence. The battle scenes are prolonged and intense and include sight of people fighting with swords and bows and arrows, as well as hand-to-hand combat. Dead bodies are shown lying on the ground in the aftermath of battles. There is occasional sight of blood and injury in the aftermath of violence.

There are infrequent mild sex references and innuendo. There is gender discrimination directed towards the main character, but she challenges and overturns such attitudes which are clearly not condoned by the film as a whole.

That seems as good, if not better, than the Commonesensemedia site (https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie- ... mulan-2020) which is more informal, but being American seems to focus more on sex than violence and says -

Parents need to know that this version of Mulan isn't like Disney's nearly scene-for-scene live-action musical remakes of Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. Directed by Niki Caro and featuring an ethnically Chinese cast, it's an epic martial arts retelling of the original ancient Chinese "Ballad of Mulan." It's much more serious and intense than the animated movie, with fewer gender-bending jokes and no songs or wise-cracking dragon (sorry, Mushu fans). It's also more violent, with both large-scale and one-on-one battle sequences that leave people dead and injured, and a few close calls when main characters seem on the verge of death. Weapons include swords, bows and arrows, knives, and flaming projectiles shot from a catapult (yes, the avalanche scene is still here). Romance is limited to a few lingering looks and one meaningful but brief touching of hands. Mulan (Yifei Liu) strips down to take a bath in a river, showing her bare shoulders and part of her back. Her fellow soldier, a man, is shown shirtless. Fans of the 1998 version should keep their eyes and ears open for several Easter eggs, including a cameo by the original voice of Mulan, Ming-Na Wen. The themes of honor, honesty, and devotion to family and country and the challenging of gender stereotypes will give families plenty to talk about after watching Mulan together.

[Itsallaguess]

The website for the BBFC who assign the ratings gives a full description for every film?

https://www.bbfc.co.uk/

Thanks - I'd seen the bbfc site, and I agree that it's helpful in a similar way, but on the comparisons I'd previously carried out I think I just preferred the more informal descriptions on the commonsensemedia site, as well as the very useful parental feedback that gave their own personal ratings, and often based them on sensible reasons that were well explained.

You're right though, that forewarned is forearmed in these situations sometimes, and the more information we can use to help inform our decisions the better, so it's useful to see a link to the bbfc site as well, thanks.

One thing I can say is that whilst the relatively small number of single-ratings that are currently used might be useful to help avoid confusion, I think there's still a very wide band of stuff that filters between those bands that we might find questionable sometimes...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess