Film · Prime Video · 1998

The Truman Show

Keep it. A life arranged for an audience is not a life. He is right to leave.

Truman Burbank is loved as a product. His wife delivers lines. His best friend is paid to stay. The film is gentle about the horror and exact about the point: a man who has been kept safe, famous, and false would rather risk the ocean than remain a character. Christof calls the cage a mercy. It is a studio.

Watch it with anyone old enough to feel the difference between being known and being viewed. The laugh at the commercials is allowed. The last walk is the scene to keep. A household is not a set, and a neighbor who is only there for the shot is not a neighbor.

The eight

Industry
5/10
He has a job and a route. Both were written for him. The real work starts when he stops hitting the mark.
Household
4/10
A marriage that is a contract with the network. His mother is a cue.
Piety
4/10
Awe at the edge of the dome, not a creed. The creator in the sky is a director, and the film does not bow.
Courage
9/10
He sails into the fear they built to keep him in.
Republic
7/10
A town of actors is a tyranny with good weather. He refuses the part.
Temperance
7/10
The appetite is the audience's, including yours. The film makes you notice you are watching.
Truth
9/10
The whole plot is a man demanding the truth about his own life.
Stewardship
8/10
What he wants to hand himself is an unrecorded day.

Live historicallyName one habit you perform because someone is watching, and do the true version once with the door shut.

Film · Prime Video · 2012

ParaNorman

Fear faced by understanding, not by a spear. Good for a child who can take a ghost.

Norman is bullied for a gift that is mostly the willingness to hear. The town prefers a mob and a story about a witch. The film's turn, that the cursed child was a frightened child and the curse was the town's, is the right turn. It does not ask you to pretend the dead are cute from the first minute. It asks you to stop the torch.

Some of the jokes are ruder than the fable needs. The fable holds. A house can watch it near Halloween and come out less eager to chant at the odd boy. That is a rare result for a cartoon with zombies.

The eight

Industry
5/10
He treats the seeing as a task.
Household
6/10
A family that does not understand him, and a sister who comes anyway.
Piety
5/10
The dead are taken seriously. The mob's ritual is exposed.
Courage
8/10
He walks toward the person everyone else stones.
Republic
7/10
A town's panic is the villain.
Temperance
6/10
Fear is answered, not fed.
Truth
8/10
The witch story was incomplete, and he completes it.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands a child mercy before the pitchfork.

Live historicallyAsk who in your town is feared because no one asked what happened.