Film · Prime Video · 2003

Uptown Girls

A nanny who grows up, a girl who is allowed to be a girl. Better than the poster.

Molly has money and no skill. Ray is a child who manages her mother's illness by becoming a tyrant of neatness. The film sees both clearly. The work of watching a child is the thing that makes Molly real, and the thing that lets Ray put down the clipboard. A father-figure rock star is the weak part. The apartment and the girl are the strong part.

Watch it for the correction: charm is not care. Care is showing up when the child is impossible.

The eight

Industry
6/10
She has to learn a job she thought was beneath her.
Household
8/10
A neglected girl, a sick mother, a woman who becomes responsible.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
6/10
She stays after it stops being cute.
Republic
3/10
A private world of lofts.
Temperance
6/10
Molly's excess is childishness. It costs her, then she quits it.
Truth
7/10
The girl is not a quirky accessory. She is frightened.
Stewardship
8/10
The charge is a child who needed one reliable adult.

Live historicallyIf you are the adult in the room, do the job. Do not make the child hold your collapse.

Film · Prime Video · 2005

Corpse Bride

A vow is a real thing. The film knows it, then spends too long in the underworld's party.

Victor's trouble starts because he treats the words of a marriage as a rehearsal he can mutter in a wood. The dead hear him. That is the right metaphysics for a comedy: a vow is not a draft. Emily is pitiable and she is also wrong to hold a living man to a mistake. The film lets her release him. That release is the decent ending.

The land of the dead is more fun than the land of the living, and the living wedding is a transaction between anxious parents. Count that. A marriage in this story is saved by mercy, not by the party downstairs. Watch it with older children. Do not let the skeletons outvote the vow.

The eight

Industry
5/10
A pianist, a wedding as a contract. Work is mostly nerves.
Household
6/10
Marriage is the subject. The parents treat it as a merger.
Piety
5/10
The dead have a claim because words were spoken. Then the claim is surrendered.
Courage
6/10
He tells the truth and goes back upstairs.
Republic
4/10
The town is a set of grasping families.
Temperance
6/10
The underworld's joke is appetite. He does not stay for it.
Truth
8/10
A mistaken vow is confessed, not hacked into a happy theft.
Stewardship
6/10
He returns to a living marriage. She lets the living go.

Live historicallySay your promises out loud before you make them, and only to the living person you mean.