PG-13
Contagion. High-schoolers may find this medical “procedural” thriller fascinating, but it may be too upsetting for some middle-schoolers. It all begins when Beth starts to feel ill while heading back to Chicago from a trip to China. She grows sicker at home and dies in the hospital. Her young son is the next victim. Her husband is in shock. He lost his wife and stepson in something like an hour, though he seems immune to the virus himself. His teenage daughter comes home, and he quarantines her to keep her safe. Meanwhile, the head of the Centers for Disease Control is on high alert, and one of his investigators is tracking how the virus is spreading in the United States while an investigator for the World Health Organization is in China doing the same work. There are food riots, looting and rumors fuelled by a conspiracy-drunk blogger. You can’t take your eyes off “Contagion” — it’s too believable.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The film shows people with the disease having seizures and foaming at the mouth. We see the start of an autopsy, in which someone’s scalp is cut open. The script includes rare profanity, and there is a marital infidelity subplot.
Warrior. This tremendous drama is a rough-edged PG-13 and not for middle-schoolers. High-schoolers who like action movies built upon strong narratives and filled with difficult, full-blooded characters will have a great time. Tommy is a Marine just back from Iraq. Sullen and nearly silent, Tommy wants to box again in a mixed-martial-arts championship called Sparta. He wants his father, Paddy, to train him. We learn that Paddy was a belligerent drunk who beat the Tommy’s mother. There is no forgiveness from Tommy or older brother Brendan. Brendan has money troubles and decides to train for the Sparta event, too, unaware of Tommy’s plans. So the brothers, alienated from each other as well as from their father, are on a collision course.
The bottom line: The fight scenes are tough and occasionally hard to watch, but not R-rated graphic. Characters drink, pop pills and smoke. Alcoholism and its capacity to destroy families is a theme. The language includes midrange profanity and occasional crass sexual slang.
Apollo 18. Teens who love outer space and sci-fi sagas may be drawn to “Apollo 18,” an under-realized film that takes a clever concept and trots, rather than runs, with it. There’s still a fascination to it, though. It’s the early 1970s. Supposedly the last Apollo mission to the moon has ended and the program is finished. We’re not supposed to know about Apollo 18, a mission flown in secret for the Department of Defense. The two astronauts who explore the lunar surface discover a Soviet lander, a dead cosmonaut and something else. The film is supposed to be a “raw” video from the mission — lots of shaky camerawork and back-and-forth radio contact with Houston as the astronauts try to learn why they were sent to this area of the moon.
THE BOTTOM LINE: We see a dead cosmonaut, his skull visible. One astronaut gets a bloody gash below his ribs and seems to develop blood poisoning from it. The dialogue contains occasional midrange profanity and toilet humor. The alien entities that attack the astronauts are more implied than seen, though we get quick glimpses of hard, spider-shaped creatures.
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