Film · Prime Video · 1999

The Iron Giant

Keep it. A gun that refuses to be only a gun. Watch the last choice with the lights up.

Hogarth is lonely, funny, and sometimes a bad influence on a giant who copies him. The film is honest about that. The government man wants a threat because a threat makes him necessary. The giant's line, that he is not a gun, is earned by a death the story does not cheat. Souls, in this picture, are real enough to matter. You do not need the theology spelled further. You need the refusal.

Older children can bear it. Small ones may need a hand at the end. Give the hand, and do not skip the end to keep everyone cheerful. The cheer is on the other side of the choice.

The eight

Industry
5/10
A beatnik artist, a boy, a machine learning a limit.
Household
6/10
A single mother and a boy who needed someone large to care for.
Piety
6/10
A soul is the question, and it is not laughed off.
Courage
10/10
He stays up so the town can live.
Republic
7/10
A panic that would rather destroy than understand.
Temperance
7/10
Power refused.
Truth
8/10
You are what you choose, even if you were built otherwise.
Stewardship
9/10
The sentence to keep is the refusal.

Live historicallyTell a child they are not sentenced to the worst thing they can do.

Film · Prime Video · 1995

Babe

Keep it. Vocation is not breed. Kindness gets the sheep to move.

Farmer Hoggett is a quiet man who bets his reputation on a pig. That bet is the film's courage, and it is not loud. Babe's method, asking rather than biting, is a picture of authority that does not need humiliation. The sheep are not props. The cat is a snob and the film knows it. There is a darkness under the charm, the way a farm is actually a place where animals die, and the story does not fully hide it.

A child can watch this and understand competence as a form of love. When Hoggett says the kind sentence to the pig, the room should be quiet. That sentence is worth more than a speech about believing in yourself.

The eight

Industry
9/10
The work of herding, practiced.
Household
7/10
An odd household that decides to keep him.
Piety
5/10
A farm reverence, almost biblical and never preachy.
Courage
7/10
He goes into the ring.
Republic
6/10
A community of animals with unjust rules.
Temperance
8/10
Gentle authority.
Truth
8/10
Politeness works because it tells the sheep the truth.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands on a way of leading without a bite.

Live historicallyLet someone unusual try the work, and judge them by the work.