With the presumption that "whatever you view becomes you", and my father's constant admonishing that everything I do has to eventually lead me to heaven, my criteria for choosing a film to watch has been stricter than most. To illustrate what I mean, most films last between an hour and a half and two hours, time which can be spent doing something far more productive and worthwhile. Also, films, many times, have the power to persuade and, in some instances, change a person's perception of life and reality. Now, that can be good or bad. To sum it all up, my general yardstick for measuring films is that films have to do more than just while away my time for them to be worth watching. In fact, I give them the responsibility to teach me truths about the world, truths of which I would otherwise be ignorant, whether it has to do with plants, animals, history, astronomy, politics or human relations.
             Following up on that yardstick, I eventually came up with a set of criteria for choosing a particular film over another. Since my first contact with most newly released films, more often than not, occurs when I first see its trailer on television, what I learn about the film from the trailer is my very first criterion for choosing a film to watch. In watching a trailer, I examine many factors, the genre, the content, and the rating being the factors I examine most often.
             At the beginning of a trailer the rating of the film is stated. This is probably the most crucial factor in my decision to watch or not to watch that particular film, a film rated G being more desirable than one with an R rating. If a movie was rated R, unless it was totally appalling, I might continue to watch the trailer, but don't count on seeing me at the theatre or the video store renting it. Unlike the R rated film which receives outright rejection, a film with a PG-13 rating or below would be subject to further scrutiny.
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