Film · Prime Video · 1993

The Sandlot

Keep it. Friendship, a game, and the humiliation of having to tell the truth about the ball.

Smalls is awkward and the film lets him be awkward without a makeover montage. The team is a society with rituals, most of them silly, one of them the willingness to include the kid who cannot throw. The beast next door is a tall tale that resolves into a neighbor. The parents are present at the edges, which is right for a summer when children still had a lot to themselves. Benny's catch is joy. The confession about the ball is the moral.

A boy can watch this more than once. It will not make him cruel. It may make him want to go outside, which is a good outcome and increasingly rare.

The eight

Industry
5/10
Play taken seriously.
Household
6/10
A loose gang of boys, and a stepfather trying.
Piety
3/10
Little reverence. A real decency.
Courage
6/10
Owning the lost ball.
Republic
5/10
A neighborhood.
Temperance
6/10
Summer excess, mostly harmless.
Truth
7/10
The truth about the ball.
Stewardship
7/10
It hands on the vacant lot.

Live historicallyIf you borrowed it and you broke it, go say so.

Film · Walt Disney · 2019

Avengers: Endgame

A man spends his life to restore other people's children. The three-hour fight is the toll you pay to hear that sentence.

Tony Stark's last act is not a quip. He spends himself for people who will not know his name, including a daughter who will. That is a real measure, and it is why the film is not only a product.

It is also a product: a war long enough to sell the next one. Stay for the porch. You do not owe the battlefield your evening.

The eight

Industry
6/10
They build a machine and a plan. The work is comic-book work, and it is still work.
Household
7/10
A father comes home, and then a father does not. The daughter on the porch is the point.
Piety
4/10
Sacrifice stands in for faith. Nobody asks what the soul is owed besides the snap.
Courage
8/10
He knows the glove will kill him and he puts it on.
Republic
3/10
The world is saved by a private company of costumes. No city does this.
Temperance
3/10
The battle is the meal. The quiet hour before it is the better hour.
Truth
6/10
It admits that bringing everyone back does not bring back the five years they lost.
Stewardship
8/10
He dies so that other houses get their people. That is posterity, said with a shield.

Live historicallyDo one unnoticed thing this week for a child who is not yours.