Film · Prime Video · 1984

Gremlins

Rules are not meanness. The creature is not a friend. A true cautionary tale.

Gizmo is gentle. The rules are clear. Billy breaks them the way a boy breaks a curfew, and the film does not wink him out of the bill. The gremlins are malice with a giggle, which is exactly the right picture of a small evil that multiplies when it is fed after midnight and left wet. The mother's fight in the kitchen is competence, not a joke.

Frightening, and some of the kills are played for a laugh you should not share. The spine is sound: a gift with conditions is still a gift, and sentimentality about a pet is how the town burns. Older children, with you in the room.

The eight

Industry
6/10
His mother can run a kitchen like a defense. His father is a tinkerer.
Household
6/10
A household that has to survive what the son brought home.
Piety
4/10
The rules are a kind of law. Breaking them is not liberation.
Courage
6/10
They fight for the street.
Republic
6/10
A whole town is the victim of one boy's exception.
Temperance
8/10
Cute is not a virtue. Appetite after midnight is the plot.
Truth
8/10
He was told. He did it anyway. The film does not call that bold.
Stewardship
7/10
What he owed the town was obedience to a simple care.

Live historicallyKeep the rule you were given about a thing you do not understand. Especially after dark.

Film · Universal · 1982

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

He keeps the stranger safe, and he does not keep him.

Elliott wants a friend in a house that has a hole in it. The film understands the want, and it does not let the want win. E.T. has a home that is not this cul-de-sac. Keeping him would be the child's victory and the stranger's exile. The goodbye is the measure.

A child can watch it. Say, when it ends, that loving someone is not the same as owning them. The government men are a cartoon of a real temptation: to treat a life as a specimen because you can.

The eight

Industry
4/10
A child is not at a trade. The work he does do is the hiding, the building, and the getting of the friend to the ship.
Household
7/10
The father is already gone. The mother is tired and still the mother. The children keep a secret a parent should have been told.
Piety
6/10
The raised finger and the goodbye are played as reverence. The film believes a life can be owed to someone who is not useful.
Courage
8/10
The courage is the last reel. He takes the friend to the ship instead of keeping the miracle in the closet.
Republic
4/10
The men with the keys are a lab, not a people. The picture is not interested in a republic. It is interested in a yard.
Temperance
7/10
The fear is real and it is not played as a joke on the small. The bike flight is joy, not a taunt.
Truth
7/10
A boy tells the truth by refusing to hand a living thing to people who would take it apart.
Stewardship
8/10
What is not his, he returns. That is the whole stewardship of the film, and it is the right one.

Live historicallyName one living thing in this house that is not yours to keep, and treat it that way.