Ages 10 and up
Brave (99 min., PG) The second half of this Pixar animation about a medieval Scottish princess becomes violent and intense, with a bear fight, fisticuffs, swordplay, and dagger use. Children under 10 may well get upset.
Katy Perry: Part of Me (97 min., PG) A 3-D documentary about the music star in concert and on tour. Perry and her entourage are never shown behaving badly. There is toilet humor.
The middle ground
The Amazing Spider-Man (136 min., PG-13) Spidey, a.k.a. Peter Parker, is back. Kids and other civilians seem endangered in the climactic action sequence. The film includes head-banging fights, and early on Peter endures harsh bullying. While not graphic, his uncle’s death is upsetting. The script features rare strong language and mild sexual innuendo.
Beasts of the Southern Wild (91 min., PG-13) A 6-year-old named Hushpuppy lives with her father on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. A hurricane hits. She and her dad argue, and he screams at her and threatens her when he’s drunk. The storm and flooding are harrowing to watch, as are imaginary buffalo-like beasts, all threatening and endangering Hushpuppy and her friends.
Madea’s Witness Protection (114 min., PG-13) Tyler Perry strikes again, with his popular elderly woman title character. The film features crude toilet humor, bawdy sexual innuendo, and comic drug references
People Like Us (115 min., PG-13) A family drama starring Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Themes about parental abandonment, infidelity, and alcoholism underlie the story. The script contains midrange profanity, particularly the S-word, occasional nonsexual use of the F-word, mild sexual innuendo, and toilet humor. A precocious child makes a crude remark about child molestation, though no such thing occurs in the movie.
R-rated
Magic Mike (110 min., R) Channing Tatum and Alex Pettyfer as male strippers: Need we say more? The movie boasts sexual explicitness, near-nudity, strong profanity, and drug use. Beyond all that, there’s the atmosphere of sexual objectification and sex without emotion.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (101 min. R) The R reflects strong profanity and crude sexual slang, as well as drug use by people who decide to try heroin or cocaine. One character is shot dead by a hit man he hired to do himself in. One startling scene shows a suicide jumper hitting a windshield. Sexual situations and promiscuity are implied.
Ted (100 min., R) Mark Wahlberg owns the world’s foulest-mouthed teddy bear (voiced by writer-director Seth MacFarlane). The steaming profanity, drug use, crude sexual language, and graphic sexual behavior (mostly Ted’s) earn the R rating with honors. Throw in deliberately tasteless ethnic and racial jokes, homophobic humor, fat insults, toplessness, and backview nudity. The only thing missing is graphic violence, unless you count torn teddy bear parts.
To Rome With Love (102 min, R) Having succeeded so well last year with Paris, Woody Allen turns to the Eternal City. A couple of sexual references earn the film its rating, unusual for an Allen film. In addition to the language, betrayal and infidelity figure in one of the film’s three parallel narratives.
Savages (127 min., R) Two Southern California pot growers stand up to a Mexican drug cartel in Oliver Stone’s latest venture. You name it, it’s here: graphically bloody point-blank gun violence; explicit sex scenes with near-nudity; drug use; strong profanity; dubious morality on all sides of the equation.