Christians Are Putting Faith in Movie-Rating Web Sites

Movies are an important diversion in Juneau, Alaska, especially during the long, dark winter.

So when Hona Burkholder, a 26-year-old youth pastor at that city’s Auke Bay Bible Church, wasn’t sure whether “We Were Soldiers,” a film about the Vietnam War, was worth the trudge to one of the town’s two theaters, he didn’t take any chances.

Burkholder sat down at his computer, signed on to the Internet and went to Christiancritic.com. There, he sought the advice of the site’s founder, Michael Elliott, an Orlando, Fla., businessman and former actor who devotes his free time to divining “Christian parables” from commercial movies. Recalling the old saying about there being “no atheists in foxholes,” Elliott gave the movie 31/2 stars out of a possible four.

“This incredibly honest and graphically violent film about a nearly forgotten Vietnam battle brings us as close to hellish conditions as we should ever want to get,” he wrote. “Asking God for deliverance from such a place is not only reasonable, it often seemed to be the only option at hand.”

That was exactly the information Burkholder was looking for.

“Mike’s rating reassured me that I could comfortably attend and recommend ‘We Were Soldiers’ to parents who felt that their child would benefit from a realistic picture of the horror of Vietnam,” he said, via e-mail.

“I use Christian Web review sites for the same reason people watched ‘Siskel and Ebert’ for so many years: to make an informed choice before I plunk down $8 for a movie,” Burkholder says.

“Michael’s site provides you with a good overview of content in the movie so you can make a decision. I like Michael because he doesn’t eliminate the value of movies just because they are rated ‘R’ or aren’t ‘Christian.’ He leaves it up to each person to make their own decision. Plus, he does a real good job of seeing the teachable moments in movies. Even if a movie is rotten, he provides food for thought to the viewer.”

Elliott’s is one of about three dozen Web sites that offer movie reviews to millions of believers who would like to go to the movies without being shocked or offended. These sites started showing up in the mid-’90s, and their popularity is more evidence of a decision on the part of evangelical Christians to engage popular culture--albeit selectively--rather than to reject it wholesale as decadent and evil, says David Bruce, founder of Hollywoodjesus.com.

“Movies are the common language of our culture,” Bruce says. And Christians don’t want to be left out of the conversation. “We can no longer say, ‘Don’t see this, don’t watch that.’ We can’t do that--it’s all around us.”

Although evangelicals don’t want to be left out of the culture, they don’t want to be seduced and corrupted by it either.

“They want to encounter it before they criticize it,” says the Rev. Skip Parvin, pastor of Tuskawilla United Methodist Church and former editor of the magazines Reel to Real: Making the Most of Movies With Youth, and Reel Faith: Where Meaning Meets the Movies. “One of the tendencies of Christianity has been to criticize the culture without encountering it.”

When Kimberly Sapp’s father decided that she shouldn’t see the movie “Rush Hour 2,” the 14-year-old recalls, “I was very disappointed, but I had to trust my dad because I knew it was the best decision.”

Religious Families

Are Movie Fans Too

Movie fans dominate the Sapps’ Winter Springs, Fla., household. Ellen likes romantic comedies and anything based on the work of novelist Jane Austen. Her four children, ranging in age from 11 to 17, prefer suspense and action films. The family’s biggest movie fan is Dad, a 45-year-old marketing consultant who keeps 30 soundtrack CDs in his car.

“I love movies,” says Brent Sapp. “I love everything about them. I’m a filmaholic.”

But as evangelical Christians, the Sapps don’t want to be put off by what they see on the screen, including extreme violence, coarse language, nudity and sexual situations. So before Brent and Ellen head out for a date, or drop their teens at the neighborhood multiplex, they consult Screenit.com, a values-based Web site that rates and analyzes commercial films.

Screenit.com provides a comprehensive appraisal of films, with an overall rating on a 10-point scale. It also offers a grid listing such categories as: alcohol/drugs, blood/gore, disrespectful/bad attitude, guns/weapons, violence, sex/nudity and profanity. For profanity, the exact words are listed--with asterisks for some letters.

“For parents who are concerned about what they and their kids see, it’s a valuable tool,” he says. “It helps you to establish your own guidelines as to what you will or will not see. It makes you make a choice.”

Like many aspects of life in the Information Age, Christian and morality-based movie criticism has now entered cyberspace, providing detailed guidance to tens of millions of believers. Hollywood has taken notice.

Jonathan Bock, a consultant who helps studios such as Warner Bros., Universal and Disney market their movies to what he calls “religious America,” acknowledges the importance of the family-values Web sites.

“In the aggregate,” he says, “they can be very effective at getting the word out to their audience, and they can make a difference. They can take a marginally successful movie--like ‘The Rookie’--and make it successful.”

In 1934, the Legion of Decency, affiliated with the Catholic Church, was formed. For decades it wielded considerable influence among moviegoers and led to the establishment of a production code initiated by the film producers. The Legion was abandoned in 1976 and later replaced by a new Catholic rating system.

Meanwhile, in 1966 the Motion Picture Assn. of America developed its own rating system, which has been revamped over the years. However, many parents consider the MPAA ratings too vague, despite recent efforts by the association to make it more specific.

Similarly, previews shown in theaters don’t always reflect the true content of films, parents say.

They also contend that the toughest calls come with movies containing objectionable elements yet worthwhile themes, films such as “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List.” Here, the sites can be particularly helpful in determining the “tipping point” of such a movie--when a film’s positive, redemptive theme may be so compromised by sex, language or violence that it should be avoided.

However, not all evangelicals think that going to commercial movies is critical to life.

“Any illicit sex or any profanity” in a film disqualifies it from consideration in terms of teaching morality and decency, says Randall Murphree, of the American Family Assn. in Mississippi.

“We realize that’s a strong stand, one that many consider unreasonable in today’s culture,” says Murphree, who edits the organization’s journal. “I personally think it is not irrational at all. I have not been inside a movie theater--except to see Christian films--in almost seven years. What have I missed? I have missed out on all the immoral sexual content, the use of God’s name in vain and the gratuitous violence replete in so many of today’s Hollywood-style hits.”

News of the screening sites has spread as much through prayer groups as by the Internet. Still, the screening sites do not offer all the answers. Some parents say there are films that may be appropriate for their teens--but only if they are watched with their parents, either at the theater or on video or DVD at home.

“What Christian Web users are looking for is a means of engaging the stories that have moved them to tears,” says Robert Johnston, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. “They’re looking for ways to continue the dialogue beyond the cineplex.”

Elliott, the Orlando businessman, had just such a feeling after seeing “The Man in the Iron Mask” several years ago. He noticed “how many biblical principles were being displayed” in the movie.

“It struck me that I could use the things I was seeing as an application for what I was teaching in our home fellowship,” he recalls, wondering if it would be possible “to watch a secular project with the aim toward gaining the spiritual benefit. So I challenged myself.”

That challenge led Elliott, 46, to write his first film review. His take on “The Man in the Iron Mask,” in turn, led to his Web site, subtitled “Christian Parables.”

Elliott’s site, which promises reviews “of biblical proportions,” focuses on the films’ themes rather than objectionable elements.

“A film can be edifying,” he says, philosophically, “even if the filmmaker didn’t intend it to be.”

Mark Pinsky is a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, a Tribune company.