Actually, the USA is one of the few countries in the world that does not have government-mandated movie censorship. Unlike other countries where you absolutely must submit a film for certification (and edit it to get it passed if required), in the USA you can go ahead and release your film in any format without any certification. In fact, many smaller distributors save a lot of money by not submitting their films to the MPAA. The certification only exists because the major theatre chains will not play anything without a rating (and of course, many won't play NC-17 rated movies either). When studios decide to edit their films for a certain MPAA rating, it's purely financial - nobody is stopping them from releasing it.
(i'm not an American, btw)

Please don't watch any movies that show real life. Go back to your fairy tale book, I'm sure you know it by heart and it's your choice drug.

Rating hurts NO ONE! So why all this complaining about it. It is only useful for those of us who do NOT wish to see the whole movies before we decide it's OK for our children or not. Perhaps we don't want to pollute our souls with filth and get awful things imprinted on our minds when a rating system makes it is so much easier, or perhaps we don't have time to watch every movie TWICE!

Butts & boobs.

What a shocking notion - that people with children should actually take responsibility for parenting. Too radical. It'll never fly.
"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."

The Valenti program was one of several I attended years ago at the AFI which stick in my memoryGene Kelly, Jimmy Stewart, Rudy Vallee, Chuck Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, etc. along with special showings of Nashville, Black Sunday Harold Lloyd's Safety First and an evening of Charley Chase.
After the AFI moved the Silver Spring MD, I missed out on Eastwood, Jeanne Moreau and Patricia Hitchcok. I still remember Mike Nichols turning up in the audience for Black Sunday and saying the last half hour almost gave him a heart attack.
Thank you for writing.

Valenti was full of it - all he ever did was cater to the conservative crowd in the US.
His sorry legacy is still with us today.

Years ago the AFI(DC) had an evening with Jack Valenti as part of its Sensuality on Film series. Valentin talked about the Production Code and how it had become outdated by the mid 60's due to movies such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Blow Up, and the ratings system. He also had clips from The Wild Bunch, Carnal Knowledge and other controversial films. One woman raked him over the coals for not giving The Exorcist an X rating.
Three other thoughtsThe AFI also had an evening with Garson Kanin with My Favorite Wife and Adam's Rib. Kanin preferred the old days under the Code because it forced filmmaker to be more creative in seeing how they could get around the censors.
The commentary for The Bride of Frankenstein has a story about director James Whale who took some friends to see his new movie. Apparently he started laughing at how much they had gotten past the censors. Finally a woman turned to him and said "If you don't like the movie, why don't you leave?"
The worst movie I ever saw was the German film Nekromantik 2 about a woman who has two loversone living, the other dead. Police seized the film after a judge declared it obscene and all copies were ordered destroyed. I had do desire to see Part One or any other films by the director.

I realize that this is months later. I just barely realized that someone had replied.
I am curious as to how a parent will know what is contained in a movie if some other outside entity does not supply a some sort of description of what is in the movie. As I understand it, the government does not run the MPAA, is that where you believe that I implied the government's involvement? or is it in the enforcement of the policy? In a person's own home they can control (for the most part) access to material. Internet filters, passwords on television, etc. However, outside of the home, others should be held accountable for what they sell, distribute, or allow others to see. For example, the neighborhood pawn shop can't sell a gun to specific individual.
Therefore, I believe that there should be laws that are enforced about what people distribute to minors. If you don't agree with that, I would be interested in knowing if you believe that a retailer should be able to distribute anything it wishes to anyone, or if there are some form of limitations you would apply. I would also like to know if you believe it is a right for a parent to limit access to pornographic, violent, vulgar, or objectionable material to minors. If yes, how would that be made possible without another entity helping, and if not the government, then what would it be?
If you would like to have a conversation, I am open to it. However, you begin every reply with "you are full of it" and then tell others to "grow up". Neither one of these items make you appear like you are genuine or sincere in an interest to have a discussion. Therefore, I doubt that this will go any further than this reply, or one more from you with remarks about my intelligence or backwards thinking, to which I will not reply.

vikesluvr - you are full ot it. The parents are the ONLY ones ultimately responsible for what their children watch, not the government or any other entity. Grow up.

So many of the arguments on this post have nothing to do with our rating system and instead about who enforces the rating system. It is not the systems fault if parents or theaters choose to disregard their ratings.
Therefore, the best rating system is kids-in-mind.com or similar sights that simply state what is in the movie and the extent to which it goes. This allows for a parent to truly determine if they will allow their children the opportunity to watch a film. That being said, I still believe that theaters should be held accountable for the persons to whom they show a movie just as I believe stores should be held accountable for the persons to whom they sell movies, video games, magazines, etc. To state that there should be no rating system eliminates accountability on the part of businesses in dispensing their product to minors. If as a parent I choose not to allow my child to view pornographic, violent, vulgar, or immoral material, I should be supported in that attempt by an industry standard stating what is in the product before I view or purchase it. Also, if you truly do enjoy these types of materials, you should still respect the fact that there may be others who do not and appreciate the ability to be forewarned at the presence of such material.

Best rating system is no one whatsoever, film ratings over the years has caused good art to be censored and decline in quality. It has caused the PG 13 horror movie to gain extreme popularity, and worst of all it has made any NC 17 movie basically unavailable in theaters.
I'm still a teenager and not even close to having kids, but I'm pretty sure if they were to watch a movie rated R, or even NC 17, it wouldn't affect them in the long run.

As for myself I believe that the system that is now being held in Finland seems quite good. It includes a governmental organisation (VET, Finnish Board of Film Classification), which rates films (and other audiovisual material) according how harmful it would be to a child.
There are 6 different categories that are marked with a number. That number indicates that the material is not harmful to a child of that age (or older). The categories are: 3, 7, 11, 13, 15 and 18.
Category 18 (K18 for short) usually includes horror, violence and porn. K3 includes
My Little Ponies
and sorts.
VET doesn't have any guide lines about the film quality. It has stated before that it doesn't rate language. As it is certainly not pleasant to hear bad language there isn't any indication that it'd be harmful to a child.
Also VET doesn't rated nudity if there is no sexual content present. This is for the same reason, but also probably because in Finnish culture nudity itself isn't considered a taboo.
Also what I like about the system that it's 100% open. Anyone can see who has rated the movie, every single time it has been viewed by VET. The voting results are all open and you can see if the voting has been unanimous or not. And the members of VET are experts in audio visual media or child protection or otherwise part of the Ministery of Education.
So as an answer to the question. I think VET has been doing very good job and that seems to be if not best, then at least a very good way to rate movies.
Here are some links that I found about VET:
Brief overview:
http://www.vet.fi/english/yleista.php
Some guidelines:
http://www.vet.fi/english/elokuvat_ikarajaluokitus.php
Age Category Details:
http://www.vet.fi/english/elokuvat_ikarajat_ja_merkinnat.php
(All links are in English - I am sure there is even more information in Finnish.)

The BBFC! They have more reasonable language guidelines for their 12A rating than those for the MPAA's PG-13 rating.

But what if the point of let the children watching the movie is that ( father & his children ) watching together?
it's hard to watch movie you watched before especially if it's in the same day

The responsibility is 1005 percent on the parents to decide if something is ok for their children to watch. Most parents that complain that their children were corrupted by movies or video games are the same parents who werent paying enough attention to their kids to begin with. No two kids are the same, so a parent should decide what their child can watch, since some 12 year olds are more mature than some 16 year olds. Even if the family doesnt have time or money to prescreen movies for their kids, they could take 15 minutes to do some research online. I know when i have kids i would rather decide on my own if my kid can handle it, than have a group of people without children tell me whats best for them.
"KILL IF YOU WILL BUT COMMAND ME NOTHING!!"

I think IMDB is great for that, even though I'm not a parent myself, I use IMDB to see if a movie will be offensive to my parents. But yeah, you can just click on parental guide, and see all the possibly offensive material that a movie has.

Your rating system works fine for some BUT some families dont have the same time availability you and yours have.
Some families have both parents working either opposite shifts, or both parents working 2 jobs to pay bills. Which means just getting a day when everyone can actually be together to go see a movie can be very tough.
Add to that the fact that the average ticket price is hovering around 8-10 dollars a ticket at the multi-plexe's, less if its a locally run theater. Not everyone has the extra 20 bucks or the extra time to PRE-view a film before hand.
That being said I think our ratings system needs to be re evaluated as they are way off the mark on many aspects.
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You must be really proud of yourself
Sadly, it must be the only way you feel good about yourself Not only did you align yourself with the evil censorship system, under the silly excuse of doing your job. But insulted these poor people intelligence; or at least, put into question their parental skills and good judgement. Yet also denied rightful entry without solid grounds. Especially as there is no biding law between final user and theaters either. Making you in effect not only the aforementioned, but a foolish discriminatory donkey's behind. I hope they sued; or at the very least; complained about your ridiculous anal attitude, or that they never returned to that gawd awful place; ever. For there are lot of other locales that are not so self-righteously BS driven

When I worked for a theater years ago I took the R rating very serious. When we had True Lies two teenage girl showed up with tickets and I told them I had to have their parents' permission. If the parents said they could go see the movie that was ok by me.
One of them called her mother and came back to say her mother said she could see the movie. That's fine but I still have to have her permission. Half an hour later here comes the mother who turned out to be a friend of mine. "No, they don't have my permission."
Then there was the couple who wanted to take their 7 year old son to the NC-17 Kids and couldn't understand why I said no.
As noted elsewhere I agree with Garson Kanin about the old days under the Production Code when filmmakers were forced to be more creative in getting around the censor.

@moo2400: but PG movies are not rated higher than PG-13 movies are, PG movies are non-offensive most of the time? that's why there content is not to RAW.

Not true. I made a database of movies I own and their information I collected, two of many variables being their IMDB rating and MPAA rating. Here's what I found:
Out of the 2126 movies I have in there (and they're mostly very common Hollywood movies, mostly of the last two or three decades), 198 are unrated, 57 are rated G, 289 are PG, 583 are PG-13, 987 are R, and 12 are NC-17 or X. The average IMDB rating in the collection is 7.13 and median is 7.1. When I break it down to MPAA ratings, I'll leave out the average and median IMDB results for G, NC-17 / X, and unrated films.
For PG rated movies, the average IMDB rating is 7.07. The median is 7.1.
For PG-13 rated movies, the average is 6.84. The median is 6.8.
For R rated movies, the average is 7.15. The median is 7.2.
Clearly, PG-13 movies tend to be worse than PG or R rated movies. This is likely because PG-13 movies usually contain watered down R rated content. Indeed, this is quite apparent to most any teenager wanting to see an R rated film but is stuck watching a PG-13 film instead. R rated films tend to have a lot more freedom in their content than PG-13 films do, which is not only why there's a lot more R rated films, but also that they tend to be quite a bit better. PG-13 films simply can't do that, as much as they often try. PG films don't do this, and because PG films go their own way rather than trying to be a watered down version of PG-13 films, PG films tend to do a lot better on the whole.

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Although, if a movie is rated R I expect it to be better than one that is rated PG-13.
Ill disagree there, especially about the 'expect' part.
because going from PG to PG-13 there is definitely a bigger quality boost on average than going from PG-13 to R (especially because PG is REALLY limiting on what can be shown where as PG-13 is closer to R than it is PG in general which is much less restrictions). hence, as long as you got at least a PG-13 rating you typically don't have to worry about it.
so my basic point is as long as a film is PG-13 or R, then you don't really have to worry to much about the overall quality of film.
p.s. i am not saying there is no quality 'PG Rated' films out there but finding those are MUCH fewer and further between vs PG-13/R which is a lot more common to find good films. because most PG Rated films are mostly kids movies for the most part as it's hard to find a PG Rated film that can hold up against some of the better PG-13/R films, but they are out there

My Vote History
http://imdb.to/b5rrNh