Film · Prime Video · 1995

Casper

Gentler than the poster. A dead child, a living one, a father who is not a joke.

Casper is lonely in a way the slapstick uncles are not. Kat has lost her mother. The father is chasing a machine that would let the living say goodbye, which is grief with a hobby. The film is uneven and commercial and still treats the two children as people who miss someone.

Not a substitute for a real conversation. A tolerable companion to one, if the house is not in the first raw month of a loss. The uncles are noise. The boy at the window is the story.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

The eight

Industry
4/10
A father with a crackpot invention and a real motive.
Household
7/10
A bereaved father and daughter. A ghost who wants a friend.
Piety
4/10
Death is in the house, not as a thrill only.
Courage
5/10
She stays in the house.
Republic
3/10
An inheritance, a town that wants the property.
Temperance
5/10
The uncles' appetite for haunting is the joke.
Truth
6/10
He was a boy. The film does not turn that into a gag.
Stewardship
6/10
What they offer each other is company, not a trick.

Live historicallyTalk about death in a normal voice before a movie does it for you.

Film · Prime Video · 1999

10 Things I Hate About You

The bet is the sin. The poem is the repair. Older teens, with the bet named.

Someone is paid to take the difficult sister out so the younger one can be dated. That is a use of a person, and the film knows it before it decides to be charming about it. Kat is not a problem to be solved. She is a girl with a standard, some of it pride and some of it sense. The poem works because it is specific and public and ashamed. A romance that ends on a confession is better than one that ends on a wink.

The Shakespeare underneath is a harsh play. This softens it into a high school, which is a mercy, and keeps the money, which is the part you have to say out loud so a teenager does not learn that being purchased is a meet-cute.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

The eight

Industry
4/10
School, a bet, a band.
Household
5/10
Sisters under one roof, mismanaged by the plot and then restored.
Piety
3/10
No creed. A conscience in the last scene.
Courage
6/10
The poem is said in public.
Republic
4/10
A campus that treats a girl as a door prize.
Temperance
5/10
The scheme is rebuked, late.
Truth
7/10
The confession is actual.
Stewardship
6/10
The poem is the part to keep.

Live historicallyIf you started a friendship as a strategy, confess the strategy.