Movie · Netflix · 2006

The Devil Wears Prada

A clean picture of how a workplace eats a person who thinks she is only visiting.

Andy Sachs thinks she is above the clothes, which is a vanity the film punishes properly. Miranda Priestly is magnificent and a warning: a woman who can do the work and has organized her whole life so that no one else may need her. The famous speech about the cerulean sweater is correct about how a trade shapes a town. It is not a reason to give the trade your evenings.

Good for an older teen or a grown daughter who is about to take a glittering job. Watch it with her. Ask which part of Andy's old week she would not sell.

The eight

Industry
7/10
The office is work: deadlines, competence, a boss who can tell when you have not tried.
Household
5/10
A boyfriend and friends are the life she misplaces. The film is on their side by the end.
Piety
3/10
The cathedral is fashion. The movie mocks it and also films it like a church.
Courage
6/10
Leaving, when leaving costs the future she had started to want, is the brave act.
Republic
4/10
The magazine is a court, not a town. Everyone is a courtier.
Temperance
5/10
Ambition is the appetite, and the film does eventually call it that.
Truth
6/10
It tells the truth that 'it's just a job' is how the job wins.
Stewardship
5/10
What she almost loses is the person she was going to be for other people.

Live historicallyLeave work at a stated hour one day this week, and spend that hour on a person.

Movie · Netflix · 2003

Elf

A son looking for a father. Silly, and the aim is the right aim.

Elf is a comedy about a man who finds out he has a son and would rather finish the meeting. The movie is on the son's side, and it is right to be. The gags are silly enough for a family and long enough that you should not expect a sermon. Watch it in the season, and notice that the good ending is not the sleigh. The good ending is the father at the table.

The eight

Industry
4/10
The workshop is work. New York is a father who has replaced his house with an office.
Household
7/10
The whole trip is an attempt to get a father to be a father, and a brother to have a brother.
Piety
4/10
Christmas is belief, played broad, and still about a household.
Courage
5/10
He keeps walking into rooms that humiliate him because the man might be his father.
Republic
4/10
An office building against a family.
Temperance
5/10
Candy and volume. The sweetness is not a sneer.
Truth
6/10
The father is a neglectful man, not a secret hero, until he turns.
Stewardship
6/10
What he wants handed to him is a name on a family tree.

Live historicallyIf you watch it, mention the meeting the father should have left.