How many times have you taken your kids to a movie, or rented a video for them, only to be shocked by the gratuitous sex, violence and profanity that seem to have become so common in today’s films? It’s getting more and more difficult to find good movies these days; movies that both your whole family can enjoy, and that don’t put you to sleep.

There’s no shortage of movie guides out there; every year, you can pick up exhaustive film encyclopedias like media critic Steven Scheuer’s Movies on TV and Videocassette (New York: Bantam Books), or film historian Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide (New York: Signet Books). But these guides, though competent and well-written, deal with movies from an adult’s perspective; what happens when your child wants to watch too?

Film critic Mick Martin and English teacher Marsha Porter have deftly answered this question with their new Video Movie Guide for Family Viewing (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), Martin and Porter are very familiar with cinema; their annual Video Movie Guide, tailored to grown-ups, reviews over 10,000 movies!

For their guide to “family movies,” Martin and Porter selected almost 3,000 popular films from their larger book, and tried to look at them from a child’s point of view. Their goal was to provide a comprehensive list of “all-ages entertainment of video”: that is, movies both you and your kids could watch without worrying about exposing them to steamy sex scenes or graphic violence.

There are four types of movies in this book. To begin with, Martin and Porter review films specifically aimed at children; Disney movies like Fantasia, Pinicchio or Bambi, G-rated (General) animated films like Bugs Bunny or Charlie Brown, and so on. These movies are treated with “kid gloves,” for as the authors point out, they cannot be judged by adult standards. “Children aren’t as discriminating as adults,” Martin and Porter remind us, so a film that parents might find boring could very well charm and delight a youngster.”

But in addition to this, the authors include a liberal selection of movies intended for largely adult audiences. Films like Casablanca, Grand Hotel, or Fiddler on the Roof, while not meant for kids, contain nothing offensive; your child may wander out of the room while it’s being played, but “you don’t have to worry about him coming back in and seeing or hearing something he shouldn’t”

‘Thirdly, the Video Movie Guide for Family Viewing reviews many PG (Parental Guidance) and a few PG-13 movies as well. These films generally contain a few “objectionable scenes,” or suggested violence or nudity; Martin and Porter mark trouble spots, and recommend these sorts of films be screened by you before you pass them on to your kids. Finally, the authors include a selection of deceptively-titled movies; in other words, films that by their titles or subject matters seem to be suitable for children, but in fact are definitely inappropriate for most kids. Indiana Jones, Howard the Duck and Batman Returns are good examples of this type of cinema. The authors are careful to warn you to treat such movies with particular care.

Happily, Martin and Porter include reviews of TV series suitable for children as well; among their recommendations are Star Trek, Gunsmoke and Little House on the Prairie. None of these series qualify objectively as “great cinema,” but again, in their own territory they look pretty good, and at least you don’t have to worry about your kids watching them.

The Video Movie Guide for Family Viewing will save anxious parents a lot of time and trouble, and given its $4.95 price tag, it’s an absolute steal. Of course it’s always a good idea to purchase one of the larger movie guides as well/ there are too many fine movies for Martin and Porter to get them all, and sometimes you don’t have the luxury of seeing the film before your kids to  (it may be on TV, or your children may have spotted it with you in a video shop.)

The larger movie guides have other advantages as well. If you plan to get videos from the United States, for example, you’ll find that rival Maltin’s mail-order list is far more extensive than Martin and Porter’s; Maltin includes laserdisc movies too.

Still, despite the number of movie guides you have, there is no real substitute for “home previewing’ your childrens’ videos. But when that’s just not possible, the Video Movie Guide for Family Viewing is certainly the next best thing.