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A Few of My Favorite Things, Part 3

Recently, Plugged In surveyed many of our users regarding a number of things we needed to know to better serve you. If you were one of those who responded, thank you!

We learned a great many things from readers like you. For instance, we learned that we had an NPS score of 62. That doesn’t mean much to you, probably: It sure didn’t mean much to me at first either. Turns out, it’s an indicator of how many users would recommend to a friend, and 62 is apparently pretty great. For comparison’s sake, Pandora has a 59 NPS score. Spotify comes in at 31. Apple iTunes gets a 30. Would it be gloating of me to say I’m pretty happy we more than doubled Tim Cook’s little music site?!

When we asked you how we could improve, several of you said we needed to review more classic movies. A number of you wanted to see “more of everything,” which means you’d like to see more book, TV, music and video game reviews.

But one common bit of survey-advice hurt my feelings: You asked if we could offer lists of recommended movies.

Okay, so my feelings weren’t really hurt. We don’t do as many lists as some outlets do, primarily because we want you to really be the final arbiter of what’s right for you and your family. We give you the information and let you decide.

But we do offer some opinions from time to time. Why, Plugged In’s coming close to selecting our top movies for the year for our annual Plugged In Movie Awards. And I’ve offered lists of my own on this very blog—titled “A Few of My Favorite Things (Parts 1 and 2)”. You can read them here and here.

So, because you’re (still) asking, I thought I’d go out on a limb at least one more time and list a few films I’ve enjoyed since “A Few of My Favorite Things, Part 2” was posted two years ago. A quick reminder before I start, though: Always use this list in conjunction with our reviews (though we, admittedly, didn’t review everything on my list). Nearly every film has a content concern or two.

So here we go!

All Saints

Arrival

Ben-Hur

Born in China

The Case for Christ

Darkest Hour

Denial

A Dog’s Purpose

Facing Darkness

Far from the Madding Crowd

Finding Dory

The Finest Hours

Gifted

Goodbye Christopher Robin

Greater

The Greatest Showman

Heaven Sent

Hidden Figures

I’ll Push You

I’m Not Ashamed

Is Genesis History

Jonah the Musical

La La Land

The Letters

Lion

Loving

The Man Who Invented Christmas

Maudie

Megan Leavy

Miracle from Heaven

Mully

New Life

Pete’s Dragon

Queen of Katwe

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone

Risen

Same Kind of Different as Me

The Shack

The Star

To Joey with Love

A United Kingdom

Wonder

The Young Messiah

 

I should also mention that there were many other movies that were relatively family-friendly like Ferdinand, The Force Awakens and Leap!  that didn’t make my list. And that’s just because I didn’t enjoy them enough. There were others like Marshall and Breathe that almost made my list, but contained too many content concerns.

Speaking of lists, if you’ve checked out all three of my “Favorite Things” blogs and are still looking for more potential films to view with the spouse or kids, I’d like to suggest that you Google the words “Plugged In Movie Awards.” You’ll find lists of nominees and winners from the Plugged In team that go back several years. And while there is a bit of overlap, there are a number of films that aren’t among my favorites such as Mr. Holmes and The Martian.

One final way to find “recommended” films is to get a copy of one of our “Movie Nights” books. Sadly, we no longer carry them here at Focus, but you can get them on Amazon. When I checked, I had to add “Focus on the Family” to “Movie Nights” to get them to come up.

Lastly, Happy New Year!

Oh, and feel free to tell me what film you think I really should have added to my list. And if you didn’t get to be part of the survey and yet have a suggestion or two, just note ‘em in the comment section below.