Film · Prime Video · 1995

Apollo 13

Keep it. Competence, calm, and a square peg of a problem. One of the best pictures of work we have.

Lovell wants the moon and gets a problem instead. The film's heroism is not a speech on the lawn. It is a CO2 canister, a trajectory, a wife who is not given a false comfort, a crew that does not waste air on panic. Failure is not a metaphor. It is a set of constraints. They respect the constraints and the men come home. A country watching is the public part, and it is not tacky. People should care whether the strangers in the capsule live.

Watch it with a young person who thinks heroism is a feeling. Then look at the table of parts and say: this is what it looked like.

The eight

Industry
10/10
Engineering under a clock.
Household
7/10
The families on the ground are not extras.
Piety
4/10
Awe at the work. Little religious language, a real gravity.
Courage
8/10
Calm nerve.
Republic
8/10
A public effort that tells the truth about the failure.
Temperance
8/10
Panic refused.
Truth
9/10
They say it is broken.
Stewardship
9/10
It hands on a respect for skill in the service of bringing people back.

Live historicallyWhen something breaks, gather the people who know the machine and tell them the truth.

Film · Prime Video · 2001

Spirited Away

Keep it for an older child. Greed is the danger. Remembering who people are is the rescue.

Chihiro does not win by being chosen. She wins by showing up to a hard, humiliating job and by not forgetting her parents when forgetting would be easier. The bathhouse is a brilliant picture of an economy that eats. No-Face is what a loneliness becomes when it is fed every thing it points at. Yubaba steals names because a person without a name will work forever. The film is pagan, crowded, and more morally serious than most films that advertise a lesson.

Not for the very small. Right for a child who is ready to hear that appetite can change a face, and that work and memory can change it back.

The eight

Industry
9/10
She earns the rescue by labor.
Household
8/10
She will not forget her parents.
Piety
5/10
A spirit world. Take it as a fable and keep your own prayers.
Courage
8/10
She stays in the bathhouse.
Republic
6/10
A whole economy of exploitation.
Temperance
8/10
Gluttony is the monster.
Truth
9/10
Names are the truth that frees.
Stewardship
9/10
It hands on memory as a duty.

Live historicallySay the true name of someone the house has started to treat as a use.