Family Home Theater

Grade:  B+
Entire family:  No
2013, 10 episodes (440 min.), Color
Unrated (would be PG-13 for graphic violence)
Fox
Aspect ratio:  1.78:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD 5.1
Bonus features:  C+
Trailer

The Bible: The Epic Miniseries carries a blue-and-white Dove symbol on its back cover, but it’s awfully tiny and doesn’t actually say “Family Approved.” After watching this popular HISTORY Channel series, I know why. If it were a motion picture, The Bible would have to be rated at least PG-13 for the incredible amount of graphic violence it depicts. The cameras capture throat slitting, beheadings, stonings, beatings, and the same kind of sword slashing, stabbing and hacking (with splattering blood) that we get in a movie like 300.

1 Samuel 17: 51 tells how David took Goliath’s sword and killed him, then cut off his head. But reading it is one thing; seeing him holding up the head like a trophy is another. If you read the Bible there’s an awful lot of fighting and killing, but it’s pretty matter-of-fact. 2 Samuel 8:5 tells us “David slew twenty-two thousand men of the Syrians” and verse 13 adds that he won a name for himself in battle and upon his return “slew eighteen thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt.” But train the camera on battle after battle, and . . . well, you get the picture.

That’s the first thing that strikes you about this series. The second is that the production values, the casting, the writing—even the segues that help span huge chunks of the book that had to be omitted—are all quite good. The CGI effects are terrific in this big-screen quality production. In fact, the only thing that reminds you it’s television are annoying “Previously on” and “Next on” montages that bookend each episode and run excessively long. But at least you can skip over those.  More

Grade:  A-
Entire family:  No
2012, 150 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for intense war violence, carnage, and brief strong language
DreamWorks SKG
Aspect ratio:  2.40:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD MA 7.1
Bonus features:  C-
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
Trailer

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is both a sprawling character study and a behind-the-scenes story of how the United States came to abolish slavery. Rated PG-13, the film contains really just three scenes that are too graphic for younger children:  the opening Civil War battle sequence, which is extremely violent; a scene mid-point where Robert Lincoln refuses to go inside a hospital with his father, but witnesses something far worse than wounded soldiers outside; and a scene near the end when Lincoln rides a horse through a battlefield filled with dead soldiers.

If you shield young ones from those scenes, and maybe plug their ears for the punch line of a story involving a picture of George Washington hanging in a bathroom, they’d be able to watch Lincoln—though I can’t imagine any of them lasting very long. For one thing, Lincoln is two and a half hours long, and that’s enough to challenge the attention span of even the most dedicated young history buff. Lincoln is also a slow-moving dialogue- and character-driven film that’s as leisurely paced and deliberate as our 16^th President reportedly was in everything. Meanwhile, the parts that adults will find most interesting—the backdoor politicking, bribery, threats, and coercion that were used to gain a voting majority—will be too complicated for young children to grasp. More

Grade:  B
Entire family:  No
2012, 98 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for some violent images, sexual content, and thematic material
Fox
Aspect ratio:  2.40:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD MA 5.1
Bonus features:  B
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy, UV
Trailer

Given the notorious content of Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller best known for its shower-scene murder, you’d think that a film about the making of Psycho wouldn’t make for family viewing. But there are two Hitchcocks, really.

First, there’s the one who’s taught in film classes. Hitchcock directed 67 films, most of them suspenseful dramas like Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, or The Man Who Knew Too Much—all of which, by the way, are still suitable for older children.

A different Hitchcock greeted TV audiences from 1955 to 1962 with “Good Evening” and deliberately played a slightly caricatured or campy version of himself as the host of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The anthology series contained almost as much tongue-in-cheek humor or black comedy as suspense or scares, and the portly Master of Suspense appeared to be having a great time. This Hitchcock was a ham who delighted in posturing and who made horror and the supernatural campy fun.

It’s the second, more playful and caricatured Hitchcock that we get from screenwriter John J. McLaughlin (Black Swan) and director Sacha Gervasi (Anvil: The Story of Anvil) in Hitchcock, a film that caused more than a few critics to snub their noses at Anthony Hopkins’ performance for being “scenery chewing.” More