Films for Children

A subforum to discuss film culture and criticism.
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bamwc2
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:54 am

Re: Films for Children

#101 Post by bamwc2 » Sat Aug 23, 2014 2:23 pm

Sadly the Movie Goods website is dead. Does anyone know of other good places to purchase movie posters online?

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Swift
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Re: Films for Children

#102 Post by Swift » Sat Aug 23, 2014 11:30 pm

MichaelB wrote:A totally left-field suggestion: Geoffrey Jones's Snow (1963).

My three-year-old daughter discovered it last week when she saw me watching it on YouTube, fell in love with it instantly, and insists on watching it at least once a day. Because her brother is rather less enamoured of it (he's older, and more interested in narrative), I ended up ripping it to my iPhone and just handing it to her whenever she brings up the "snowy train film".
Seeing as this thread has been revived, I just want to say that, left field suggestion or not, I introduced my son to this short a couple of years ago when he was 2 years old based on your recommendation. He was going through a train obsession period, and requested it all the time. I suspect he would love The General, so I need to give that a shot sometime. He's been going through a space obsession lately, so we sat down and watched the first episode of the new Cosmos series, and he surprised me by being interested for the full hour.

I've never really tried to force my son into watching certain films. The only one that comes to mind is The Snowman, which he didn't care for, but it was 2 years ago. I'll have to try again with that one, as it was always a favourite of mine. He has been interested in some films I've been watching when he walks on in - Modern Times, The Kid, some Three Stooges shorts, The Adventures of Robin Hood and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He was also intrigued by the animation in Is The Man Who is Tall Happy?, Gondry's conversation with Noam Chomsky.

Last week, he chose to sit down and watch The Princess and the Frog and Super Buddies, one of those talking dog movies. I didn't join him for the latter, but I don't begrudge him watching junk movies. He was thoroughly into it, and that's all that matters for me. We all watched junk movies when we were younger, and still do now.

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ArchCarrier
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Re: Films for Children

#103 Post by ArchCarrier » Thu Aug 28, 2014 2:15 pm

I want to thank whoever mentioned Lotte Reiniger upthread: my 4-year old daughter loves Reiniger's short Papageno. I haven't showed her the other shorts yet, but I did take the opportunity to show her a live recording of the 'Papageno / Papagena' aria from The Magic Flute.

My two year old son mostly likes to watch clips of tractors, forklifts and combine harvesters, so he did enjoy Snow, but his favorite two videos this week are the skeleton fight from Jason and the Argonauts and the Paddington trailer.

And then there's the baby, who just spent a couple of minutes completely hypnotised by Oskar Fischinger's Optical Poem.

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Quot
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:11 am

Re: Films for Children

#104 Post by Quot » Fri Sep 05, 2014 10:57 pm

Not sure if these have been mentioned previously: I remember as a child being quite taken with George Pal's 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Randall's performance was never problematic for me, tho I can understand others' reservations.

No such reservations meet the series of 3 Soviet animated shorts of Vinni-Pukh (Winnie the Pooh). They're not widely available (tho I think they may be on YouTube), but they get my highest recommendation. They are charming, utterly brilliant, and not-to-be-missed.

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Caligula
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Film Club for 10-13 year olds

#105 Post by Caligula » Thu Oct 16, 2014 6:52 am

Here's the situation: I live in a rural part of South Africa and am involved with a local primary school (which my youngest son still attends). The school is culturally diverse with learners coming from households that really cover the extremes of the socio-economic spectrum. Age group is about 10 to 13 years. Through my involvement with the school's governing body I have a tentative open door to get a film club started.

The idea would be in the first instance to entertain, but also to expose the kids to films they wouldn't find at the local video store (finding the latest Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Picture is about as much as you could hope for). From the school's side there is interest for the concept not just to culturally educate, but possibly also enforce values. I envisage a regular session, possibly monthly on a Friday eve, where one would have a introductory talk, screen the film, and have the possibility for discussion afterwards.

Typically the learners would attend with their parents. The film hence would have to speak to both, though not necessarily on the same level. Films have to be age-appropriate and steer clear of controversy (language, violence, sex etc) if the project is to endure. I specifically accept that not everything I show to my kids at home would be acceptable at the school. One probably also has to reckon with a limited concentration span.

I have been thinking of some of the Studio Ghibli films (in particular My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service), High Noon, Bad Day At Black Rock (although
SpoilerShow
the guy on fire at the end
worries me), Some Like It Hot, Singin' In the Rain, City Lights, you get the idea.

I would really appreciate any input or suggestions. If you feel I'm on the wrong track (especially with the films I mentioned), I'd welcome that too.

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domino harvey
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Re: Films for Children

#106 Post by domino harvey » Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:40 am

There's this thread for kids just a few years older than your target audience

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colinr0380
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Re: Films for Children

#107 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Oct 16, 2014 3:06 pm

You probably also couldn't go wrong with the films used in Mark Cousins' A Story of Children and Film documentary. (Say Bicycle Thives or I Wish)

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Caligula
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Re: Films for Children

#108 Post by Caligula » Fri Oct 17, 2014 2:40 am

colinr0380 wrote:You probably also couldn't go wrong with the films used in Mark Cousins' A Story of Children and Film documentary. (Say Bicycle Thives or I Wish)
Thanks for the link. Some of the films mentioned might be somewhat dicey for the my audience (Fanny & Alexander, for example) but I Wish is a great suggestion!

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Tom Amolad
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Toddlers

#109 Post by Tom Amolad » Wed Feb 22, 2017 2:17 pm

At what point can toddlers enjoy a movie (at, say, a "family screening" -- I won't be that jerk invading real screenings with a crying kid)? A local rep house is planning a child-oriented Buster Keaton series. You'd think that might be a hit with kids, at least the ones too young to know that black and white is uncool. Is it? How old? Or better, what's the range of what works? Anecdotal data welcome.

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Toddlers

#110 Post by zedz » Wed Feb 22, 2017 2:55 pm

Tom Amolad wrote:At what point can toddlers enjoy a movie (at, say, a "family screening" -- I won't be that jerk invading real screenings with a crying kid)? A local rep house is planning a child-oriented Buster Keaton series. You'd think that might be a hit with kids, at least the ones too young to know that black and white is uncool. Is it? How old? Or better, what's the range of what works? Anecdotal data welcome.
I haven't had my own toddler to experiment on, but I have had some experience with festival screenings where very little kids are encouraged (for the purposes of longterm indoctrination, no doubt). These include specially curated animation programmes and silent comedies. Generally, the kids love it and are well-behaved (in a manner of speaking - sometimes vocal or rowdy, but rarely screaming and crying). In many cases, they've never experienced the ritual of going to the cinema - the big difference between cinema and television - and some of them find it strange and magical (particularly if the screening is taking place in an old cinema palace or other especially grand auditorium). Even the idea of turning off the lights to watch a movie can strike them as exotic.

Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd always go down well, and they tend to get swiftly absorbed in the story. The animation programmes are more restless, as there's the stop and start nature of it, and all those (brief) credits, but usually that space is just filled with the children talking to their parents about what they just saw.

At Safety Last last year, I overheard one little boy after the screening (about six or seven, so not exactly a toddler) tell his dad that "that was the best film I've EVER SEEN!" A minute or two later, I heard a woman in her twenties tell her girlfriend almost exactly the same thing ("that was the funniest film I've ever seen.")

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Films for Children

#111 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Feb 22, 2017 8:49 pm

I've taken my nearly four-year-old daughter to animated movies at the theater since she was about 2-1/2; for her, it just requires a lot of talking up the rituals and rules of moviegoing beforehand, and occasional reminders about talking versus whispering. I also reinforce some of these rituals when we watch movies at home, and she does quite well in both situations. As with all things with kids, it's all in how they're prepared for new experiences.

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chiendent
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Re: Films for Children

#112 Post by chiendent » Wed Feb 22, 2017 9:20 pm

I'm not sure how old I was when my dad started taking me to silent screenings. I don't think I was a toddler but The Gold Rush is one of my earliest film memories so I'm guessing I was 6 or so. Obviously I can't really remember how well-behaved I was or the age ranges of the kids there but I always had a great time and I'm grateful I got to be exposed to Chaplin and Keaton that early. Based on family-oriented screenings I've been to in recent years, I'm sure other parents will be bringing young children along so you should be just fine.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Films for Children

#113 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Feb 23, 2017 12:19 am

We showed our kids some silents (including Gold Rush when they were 6 or 7). They were interested. When they were a bit older -- and were big Lloyd fans -- they were frustrated that they couldn't get any cousins or friends to watch along...

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cdnchris
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Re: Films for Children

#114 Post by cdnchris » Thu Feb 23, 2017 12:29 am

My daughter, 8, likes Chaplin and she's enjoyed some Melies after seeing Hugo recently. She's watched Lloyd and Keaton as well and parts of Phantom of the Opera. But she really likes Chaplin and occasionally I would put one on for her to watch. When she was 3 she watched the Gold Rush a lot.

Kids really differ, though. I've been taking her to the theater since she was 2 1/2 and she's always been good. She'll also watch anything.

My son, on the other hand, will be 5 this year and he has a hard time with movies. He likes super heroes and really will only watch those, but even then he can't sit still. I take him to the theater and once in a while he does fine, but most of the time he gets up and starts wandering around. He won't watch silents, though has sat still for a few minutes watching Chaplin.

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essrog
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Re: Films for Children

#115 Post by essrog » Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:26 am

I started showing my son, now 8, some Keaton when he was about 3. He was into Thomas the Train at the time, so I showed him The General (which he always referred to as "Buster on the Train." Steamboat Bill Jr. was "Buster on the Boat"). He always wanted me to fast-forward the parts that didn't take place on the train, but he's grown out of that and now still wants me to show him Keatons he hasn't seen, which is great. My 5-year-old daughter has also liked Keaton and the few other silents we've watched for family movie night, The Gold Rush and Safety Last!, though there were restless moments with both her and her brother. On the other hand, my youngest daughter, who's now 3, isn't as likely to sit still for that long. Being the youngest of three, we've probably ruined her with too many screens trying to keep her occupied while we deal with the other two kids.

All in all, it sounds like a great opportunity. You mentioned that it's kid-oriented anyway, but the great thing about silents is that they're harder for kids to ruin for other people since there's no dialogue for them to talk over.
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jazzo
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Re: Films for Children

#116 Post by jazzo » Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:32 am

In terms of actual cinema, I started both my children with The Red Balloon and Paddle to the Sea right around the age of 2, and was shocked as to how much they were enthralled by what are essentially purely visual narratives.

They are 4 and 6 now. Both love The Iron Giant and E.T.

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jazzo
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Re: Films for Children

#117 Post by jazzo » Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:36 am

Also, just to add this; my 6 year-old boy loses attention much more quickly in the theatre than his 4 year-old sister. She's built for movie watching. I could show her anything, and have probably shown her things waaaaaayyyy too mature for her age level (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Porky's {kidding on the latter}), but my dad also took me to a 1977 re-release of Jaws when I was 6, so bad parenting decisions are in my DNA.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Films for Children

#118 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Feb 23, 2017 3:11 pm

We had lengthy bedtime reading sessions pretty much every night for a long time (starting when our kids were quite young). This may have pre-conditioned them for movie viewing, etc...

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Films for Children

#119 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 06, 2023 6:02 pm

We Bought a Zoo

Even though I'm a bit more charitable towards Crowe's late-career output than most (i.e. love Elizabethtown's fantasy of narcissistic self-actualization.. which doesn't play much differently than any of Crowe's other, more celebrated, similar fantasies of narcissistic self-actualization), I loathe Aloha's gruff misfire, and so had zero hopes for how he'd integrate his sentimentality into a "family movie" mashup, fearing that the result would be nothing more than a mawkish dullard. Thankfully, We Bought a Zoo is far from the trainwreck of Aloha, and touches on a variety of authentic adult topics very shakily-funneled into the schema of a PG-audience. Loss, imperfect parenting, choosing humans over animals (maybe one of the most controversially blasphemous conclusions in a family movie!) are all addressed, and even if they're still filtered through the rose-colored glasses of romanticized hopefulness, this is actually one of Crowe's sadder films. He leans into the messiness of relationships and compromise in a few scenes that really hit the mark. In particular, Crowe isn't afraid to diagnose the inherent brokenness of coerced maturity when presented with irrevocable loss at an early developmental age, as well as explore child behaviors of acting out. I think this hits close to home for him.

It's a bit overdone at times -even for Crowe- but that's the Family/Children's Film component at work, and it's admirable how he repeatedly ventures to pretty brutal, vulnerable territory in between bouts of cutesy celebrations of camaraderie, purpose, animal-human empathy, and goal setting. The latter theme extends itself from the grand scheme of opening a zoo to simple philosophical advice for overcoming introverted barriers to locate courage and outwardly connect in measurable, bite-size chunks (20 seconds is digestible, even for a kid!) In typical Crowe fashion, he both barely-grazes and more-than-grazes his ideas throughout his engagements with them, which often leads to unevenness but feels wholly appropriate for a film that's trying to be both family-friendly and honest about how clumsily individual suffering fits into contexts of collective responsibility. In a sense, the latter accountability to a Higher Power of family, love, a zoo, etc. forces a 'Suck It Up' approach to swallowing one's wallowing in favor of an external need. Such a strategy is reflexively emulated here by getting outside of the gravity of mature seriousness into a spiritual space of gratitude; validating emotions unconditionally, and then dropping them off early to smile and crack jokes and play with animals. It's a perfect movie about having your cake and eating it too, because it exhibits the impossibility of that without compartmentalizing, sacrificing, and simplifying when we can.

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Re: Films for Children

#120 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:50 pm

I really hated the ending of that one

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