1.White House Down. This was an awesome one for family movie night. It’s from 2013 and has Jamie Foxx playing the President of the United States and Channing Tatum playing a Capitol Policeman who wants to be a Secret Service Agent. He and his daughter are at the Whitehouse when he is rejected in his interview to be an agent. While they are on a tour, some terrorists take over and it’s up to him to save the President. There’s so much great action in this movie. Even though I saw it years ago, I had forgotten how good it is. It’s rated PG-13 for high intensity action , violence (lots of bloodshed) and foul language (you can read the parent guide here).
2. Solo: A Star Wars Story. To be honest, we hadn’t intended for this to be a family movie night–originally we were going to let the boys choose their own movie to watch and Super Rockstar and I were going to choose one just for us. However, when we found out this was their selection, we both decided we would like to see it too. Again, it’s one we’ve seen before, but I had forgotten how good it is. It is the origin story of Han Solo and throughout the movie he is joined by Chewbacca and has his first encounter with Lando — we even get to learn how he ended up winning the Millenium Falcon. There are many other enjoyable characters (I just love Lando’s robot, L3). It’s rated PG-13. There’s a lot of high intensity action, many fight scenes and some foul language (you can read the parent guide here).
3.Air Force One. The boys enjoyed the White House Down movie so much, we thought another presidential one might be good–they’re both big fans of Harrison Ford. It’s about terrorists taking over Air Force One all so that their beloved terrorist leader will be released from prison. The president is thought to have safely exited the plane in the escape pod, but his family is left behind. They soon find out, that the president never left the plane and is working behind the scenes to save everyone on the plane as well as his family. It’s rated R and normally we don’t allow the boys to watch movies with that rating, but since it came out in 1997–it seemed like it probably would be considered a PG-13 today. Hmm. I’m not sure about that now. They probably would have cut way back on the graphic violence today to make sure it was PG-13. I’ll be honest, it was a bit much for them. But, I do highly recommend this one for adults.
4.Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. After watching such a high action/intense movie the night before–we decided to pull way back and found this oldy, but goodie. You can’t go wrong with Wallace and Gromit. The boys had never seen this one and it is just delightful, silly, stupid and fun. If you’re not familiar with this series–it’s stop action Claymation style animation. Wallace and Gromit have their own pest control business of catching rabbits that are invading gardens. With the big giant vegetable competition coming up–they are very busy. So, Wallace decides that he will try out a new invention to reprogram the rabbits desire to eat vegetables–it goes terribly wrong. It’s rated G. Littles might find the were-rabbit a little frightening, but they do a good job of making him silly (you can read the parent guide here).
I would love to hear our opinions and any suggestions you may have of what to watch.