Film · Prime Video · 1994

The Shawshank Redemption

Keep it for adults. Hope here is a discipline, not a poster. The friendship is the good.

Andy brings a skill into a brutal institution and uses it, at first, to survive and to get young men their exams. Red's voice is the moral ear of the film: institutionalization is real, and a man can be afraid of a door. The warden's piety is a counterfeit, bible and books and a crime. The escape is satisfaction the story has earned by patience. Do not turn it into a revenge fantasy. He leaves. He asks a friend to live.

Adults. Some of the prison violence is the point and some is more than you need. The scene to keep is the music over the yard, a beauty the warden cannot administer.

The eight

Industry
8/10
A craft used inside a cage, then for the men.
Household
4/10
Friendship as the household he gets.
Piety
4/10
False piety exposed. Hope almost theological.
Courage
8/10
The long patience.
Republic
6/10
An institution rotten from the top.
Temperance
7/10
He plays a long game without a spree of rage.
Truth
7/10
He maintains his innocence without a speech every reel.
Stewardship
8/10
He leaves a way out for a friend.

Live historicallyBe a friend to someone in a low place without making them your project.

Film · Prime Video · 1995

A Little Princess

Keep it. Imagination here is a way of telling the truth about a person's worth, not an escape from the attic.

Sara's kindness in the attic is the film's argument, and it is not cheap because the film lets her be hungry. Miss Minchin worships money and calls it standards. The other girls learn which authority is real. There is a softness to the ending that a strict reading of the book might resist, and the softness is a mercy for a child audience. The picture to keep is the one where she gives the bun away.

A young house can watch this whenever someone has started ranking the children. Rank is the villain.

The eight

Industry
6/10
Servant work, done without becoming the role.
Household
7/10
A lost father, a made family of girls.
Piety
5/10
A sense that every child is a soul.
Courage
7/10
She stays kind without an audience.
Republic
5/10
A school as a small unjust state.
Temperance
7/10
Want, governed.
Truth
7/10
She tells a truer story than the headmistress.
Stewardship
8/10
The bun is the heirloom.

Live historicallyTreat the child with the least as if the story about them were true.