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Lucky

Film · Prime Video · 1997

Mouse Hunt

Greed against a mouse, and against a father's craft. The slapstick is the sermon.

Ernie wants the house sold. Lars still knows how the string is made. The mouse is chaos, and the brothers' war on it is the picture of men who will wreck a home to clear a transaction. The string factory, a real product, is what their father left. The film would rather they make string than flip a mansion.

Cruel in the way old slapstick is cruel, mostly to the brothers. A family can watch it and hear the question: what did we inherit that we are too proud, or too tired, to keep making?

The eight

  1. Industry

    8/10

    A string factory is the true inheritance. The house is the temptation.

  2. Household

    5/10

    Brothers, a dead father, a marriage Ernie is failing.

  3. Piety

    2/10

    None.

  4. Courage

    4/10

    They endure the mouse. They are not brave. They are frantic.

  5. Republic

    4/10

    A sale, a will, a town.

  6. Temperance

    6/10

    Avarice starts the war.

  7. Truth

    6/10

    The father's craft was the point of the will.

  8. Stewardship

    7/10

    Keep the factory. The mouse, annoyingly, is on the side of keeping.

Live historicallyDo not sell the thing your father built in order to be finished with it.

Film · Prime Video · 1983

A Christmas Story

Keep it. Desire, a tangent-prone father, and a feast that survives the disaster.

Ralphie's want is excessive and completely recognizable. The Old Man's pride in a hideous lamp is the adult version of the same excess, which is why the film is fair. The mother's management of both is the uncredited heroism. There is a meanness in a few of the jokes that a house can talk over. The Chinese Christmas dinner, when the turkey dies, is the scene that knows what a feast is: the people, relocated, still fed.

Watch it every year if you want. Skip any bit that is only a wince. Keep the pink bunny and the humility it requires.

The eight

  1. Industry

    5/10

    A household kept through a holiday.

  2. Household

    8/10

    Parents, a brother, a want.

  3. Piety

    3/10

    Christmas as the setting more than the creed.

  4. Courage

    4/10

    Little danger. Some social bravery.

  5. Republic

    4/10

    A school, a bully, a neighborhood.

  6. Temperance

    5/10

    Appetite is the joke and is gently corrected.

  7. Truth

    6/10

    Childhood wanting is told truly.

  8. Stewardship

    7/10

    The dinner that still happens is the heirloom.

Live historicallyLet a child want something, and do not make the present the whole day.

Annie