Christian Movie Reviews
Christian movie reviews are popular with the churchgoing crowd, especially those seeking to protect their friends and family from the potential evils of a godless Hollywood. Most Christian movie review sites offer a rating on the film’s overall quality, as well as some manner of system to determine a picture’s moral worth. In case you’re wondering, here are a few elements that can quickly cause a film to gain a negative rating at a Christian review site:
- Sexual Content – Nudity, pre-marital sex, donkey punching, etc.
- Foul Language - Sh*t, fu*k, godda*n, etc. Taking the Lord’s name in vain is especially bad.
- Violence – If it doesn’t involve Christ getting flogged for two hours in a Mel Gibson movie, then it’s probably going to be frowned upon.
Some Christian review sites will give a negative grade at the drop of a hat, while others tend to be a bit more open-minded. It’s all a matter of preference, and I certainly can’t begrudge people of faith having movie review sites that cater to their needs and beliefs. In order to help readers find the site that’s best-suited for them, I’ve listed a few available options. Whether you’re looking for the faithful or the irreverent, something below should catch your eye.
Christian Spotlight on Entertainment – Offers a Christian take on movies, plus the latest entertainment news for the faithful. Besides movie reviews and morality ratings, the site also features a daily prayer focus that asks Christians to pray for certain entertainers who’ve went astray. When I viewed the site, the individuals singled out for prayer were director Terrence Malick and Rush Limbaugh. Fatty needs all the help he can get, while no amount of prayer will erase the stinker that was The Thin Red Line.
In her review of 500 Days of Summer, Christian critic Thaisha Geiger gives the film a “Moral Rating” of “Offensive.” This is due to 22 instances of cursing, drinking, and the depiction of pre-marital sex. While she appears to like the film in general, Geiger hesitates to recommend the film based on the depiction of love without the presence of God.
I also couldn’t resist taking a look at the review for The Hangover. Critic Ethan Samuel Rodgers labeled it “Extremely Offensive,” and took it to task for its chronic cursing, nudity, and depiction of every other vice under the sun. He wouldn’t even go into detail about the “deeply disturbing photographs” shown during the film’s credits.
Movieguide - The mission of Movieguide is simple: it’s “dedicated to transforming the culture by redeeming the values of the mass media of entertaining according to biblical principles.” Both DVDs and new movie releases are reviewed, and each is given a quality and content rating. The quality rating determines how good the overall film is (based on one to four stars), while the content rating show how offensive the film may be to Christians. This latter rating goes from +4 to -4, with the negative value indicating a movie filled with violence, nudity or profanity.
The film Up in the Air, for example, received a quality rating of 4 stars, while content rating was a -3 for more than 25 obscenities, moderate sex, and partial or brief nudity. On the other hand, A Life That Matters, a film about five people whose lives are turned around by the bible, received a +4 content and 4 stars for quality.
Basically, any movie which promotes Christian values will get a high rating, while those on the opposite end of the spectrum will not (at least in regards to content).
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Movie Reviews – Dedicated to providing the Catholic public with movie reviews on all the latest films. A spiritual eye is also cast towards DVD releases and family films. Their classification system places movies into the following categories:
A-I General Patronage
A-II Adults and Adolescents
A-III Adults
L Limited Adult Audience (contains content that many adults would find troubling)
O Morally Offensive
Films without a positive religious message still get penalized, but it’s been my experience that the reviews on this site are more balanced than others offering Christian movie reviews. A recent review of Nine, for example, rates the film Morally Offensive for repeated depictions of pre-marital sex and criticism of the Catholic church, but it doesn’t seem obsessed with delivering a sermon or keeping people away from the theatre. It presents the facts and allows readers the opportunity to make up their own minds.
If you’re looking for Christian movie reviews that don’t launch into hysterics, this is the site I’d recommend.
The Official True Christian Guide to the Movies – Meant as a parody of sites like those listed above, this inflammatory destination offers plenty of movie reviews by the congregation of the fictional Landover Baptist Church, a place where the “unsaved are not welcome.” Prior to each screening, Deacon Bob even checks each film reel for traces of microscopic demons. Here are a few examples of the satirical goodness contained within:
The review for Bill Maher’s Religulous comes with a flyer which can be printed out. Among the reasons listed for not seeing this film, “Any fool knows that you don’t need ‘facts’ when you have Jesus!”
In the review for Superman Returns, it’s mentioned that “we only believe in one flying superhero, and He doesn’t wear a skimpy bikini.”
The supposedly Christian movie review for Elf proclaims, “When that big queer elf’s head popped up on my TV screen, I thought the homos had taken over the world!”
Also recommended:
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I agree with this. I have the same views.