Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
Keep it. Feeling is not a moral, and reserve is not coldness. Both sisters have something to learn.
The Dashwood women are pushed out by an inheritance that prefers a son, and the film is clear-eyed about the money. Marianne's sincerity is beautiful and dangerous. Elinor's silence is loyal and costly. Neither is the whole virtue. Edward's honor about a promise he hates is the kind of fidelity modern stories treat as the obstacle. Here it is the character. Colonel Brandon's patience is not flashy enough for Marianne at first, which is the point.
Adults and older teens. It is talk and walks and a broken heart that does not get to destroy the family. That is a rare romance.
Industry
6/10
A reduced household, kept with care.
Household
9/10
Sisters who do not abandon each other.
Piety
5/10
Honor as a lived piety.
Courage
6/10
Elinor's endurance.
Republic
6/10
A law of inheritance that is unjust and still the setting.
Temperance
8/10
Feeling rebuked without being mocked.
Truth
8/10
Promises are kept.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands on two incomplete virtues that need each other.
Live historicallyDo not make a child choose between being all heart and being all silence.
Keep it for older teens and adults. The dignity is in the training and the choice to go.
The soldiers are not a chorus behind a white officer's growth, though the film sometimes frames them that way and you should say so. Trip, Shaw, Rawlins, and the drill are the substance: pay refused until it is equal, shoes, the lash, the argument between rage and discipline. The fort at the end is slaughter in the service of a true cause, and the film does not cut to a celebration. A house can bear this if it will not turn it into a highlight.
Watch it once, seriously. The charge afterward is not a speech about how far we have come. It is attention to the men who were asked to prove a humanity that was not the army's to award.
Industry
8/10
Drill, the making of a regiment.
Household
4/10
Brothers in arms. Little domestic peace.
Piety
5/10
A cause with a moral weight. Shaw's duty.
Courage
9/10
They go up the beach.
Republic
8/10
A republic arming men it had enslaved, and still cheating them.
Temperance
6/10
Fury governed into a unit.
Truth
8/10
The unequal pay is not skipped.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands on the regiment, not the poster.
Live historicallyDo not cheer a battle you would not be willing to tell truthfully, including who was paid less.
Keep it. Quiet, strange, and on the side of children who are worried.
There is almost no plot, which is the discipline. Mei and Satsuki move to an old house, do chores, meet neighbors, and carry a fear about their mother that the film never turns into a villain. Totoro does not fix the hospital. He makes the waiting room of childhood large enough to breathe in. The cat bus is delight, not a lesson. The lesson, if you need one, is that a father tells them the truth and stays.
The very small can watch it. Do not talk over the rain. Let the dust motes be the special effect.
Industry
6/10
Chores, a garden, a father working.
Household
9/10
Sisters and a father, waiting on a mother.
Piety
6/10
A reverence for place and for spirits a house may locate differently.
Courage
5/10
The courage is ordinary staying.
Republic
5/10
A village that knows them.
Temperance
8/10
No excess. Attention.
Truth
8/10
They are not lied to about the hospital.
Stewardship
9/10
It hands a child company in a worried season.
Live historicallySit with a worried child without rushing them past the worry.
Immigration as a family trying not to lose the child. Earnest and on their side.
The Mousekewitzes leave a pogrom, not a mood. Fievel falls off the ship and spends the film trying to rejoin a mother and a father who did not abandon him. The new world has cats, con men, and a labor that is not the postcard. The hope is not canceled. It is made specific: a family in one place.
Sentimental, and the sentiment is attached to the right object. A child can watch it. An adult who has ever lost sight of a small person in a crowd will recognize the pitch of the voice.
Industry
6/10
A new country means work, not a parade.
Household
9/10
The entire plot is parents and a child finding each other.
Piety
5/10
They leave because of a violence against their people. Faith is in the journey, not a speech.
Courage
8/10
A small mouse keeps looking.
Republic
6/10
The new shore has solidarity and it has swindlers.
Temperance
6/10
The con is condemned.
Truth
7/10
The promise of the new land is tested against a missing child.
Stewardship
9/10
Getting him back is worth more than the dream.
Live historicallyIf you have brought a family across anything, count heads before you count prospects.
Greed corrected by children in the house. A good adventure for the middle years.
Scrooge McDuck is a miser with a talent for the expedition. The show's good idea is that the talent is not enough once Della's children are in the mansion. Webby wants a family so badly she studies it. The adventures are treasure and grudges. The stake that holds is whether a man who counts coins can count heads.
Loud, and worth it when the family is in the scene. A child who likes a quest can have this. Say that the gold is not the happy ending. The sister at the door is.
Industry
7/10
Exploration as work. The fortune is also a moral problem.
Household
8/10
Uncle, nephews, a mother lost and looked for.
Piety
3/10
Luck and curse. Little reverence.
Courage
7/10
They go into the ruin. Scrooge has to go back for them.
Republic
5/10
A city, a mansion, rivals. Not a commons.
Temperance
6/10
His greed is the vice the children interrupt.
Truth
7/10
The family's missing chapter is the real mystery.
Stewardship
8/10
A house restored is worth more than the next artifact.
Live historicallyTake a child somewhere you know well and tell them one true story of how you learned it.
A little place, told truthfully and quietly. One of the best things for a small child on this shelf.
Puffin Rock is small on purpose. Oona has a brother she is responsible for, parents who are present, and an island that does not rearrange itself to flatter her. Nothing in it teaches a child to sneer. Put it on without anxiety, and still turn it off. A good short show becomes a bad long habit if it replaces the walk.
Industry
5/10
The island has work: fishing, nesting, weather.
Household
7/10
A mother, a father, a brother. The family is the safe place the adventure returns to.
Piety
5/10
The natural world is treated with care, not with a speech.
Courage
4/10
The brave thing is a short trip past the nest.
Republic
6/10
An island of neighbors, each with a nature that has to be respected.
Temperance
9/10
Soft, short, and done.
Truth
8/10
The facts of the animals are the story, and they are not bent for a gag.
Stewardship
7/10
A child may learn to look at a real bird twice.
Live historicallyAfterward, look out the window longer than the episode lasted.
Parents still in the house, a teacher who stayed. Soft, and on the side of raising a person.
Riley is not Cory, and the show is not the one her parents were in, but it keeps the right inheritance: a mother and a father who are present, a teacher who thinks a classroom is a moral place, a best friend who is not a romantic prize. It is earnest to the point of a lesson written on the board. Earnest is not a defect when the lesson is about how to be a friend without abandoning your own mind.
Good for the middle years and young teens. You can laugh at the speech and still keep the speech. A house where the adults stayed is the rare picture.
Industry
5/10
School as the work. Parents have jobs and histories.
Household
9/10
The family is intact on purpose. The whole series is about that not being an accident.
Piety
4/10
A moral classroom. Close to a creed of decency.
Courage
5/10
The brave acts are social and real: telling the truth to a friend.
Republic
6/10
A school as a commons across two generations.
Temperance
7/10
Feelings are large and then put back.
Truth
7/10
They talk it out until it is actually said.
Stewardship
8/10
A daughter handed a way of being a person, by people who are still there.
Live historicallyEat with your children and ask one question you do not already know the answer to.
A diary for the youngest. A mother, a father, a house full of children. Keep it.
The premise is stewardship: Charlie is unexpected, the parents are tired and employed, and Teddy decides the baby will need a map of these people. The jokes are sitcom jokes, including some that a parent should be in the room for. The structure is not a joke. Four children, a mother who works as a nurse, a father who is present, a house that is the set because the house is the point.
Good family television of the ordinary kind, which is the kind a week can use. Skip the episodes that go crude for a laugh. Keep the ones where the baby is actually being thought of as a person who will one day watch.
Industry
7/10
A nurse's shifts, a father's work, homework, a video that takes effort.
Household
10/10
The family is the entire subject, including the child who cannot speak yet.
Piety
3/10
Decency. The diary is an act of care, not a prayer.
Courage
4/10
Ordinary nerve: telling each other the awkward thing.
Republic
5/10
Neighbors and school. The public is not the plot.
Temperance
6/10
Sitcom excess, usually pulled back by the parents.
Truth
7/10
The diary is an attempt to tell the baby the truth about who they are.
Stewardship
9/10
She is making a record for someone who will outlast the week. That is the definition.
Live historicallyRecord nothing tonight. Tell the youngest child one true story about the family, in the room.
A false mother, a real kingdom, a girl who leaves. Worth an evening with children.
Mother Gothel loves the hair, not the girl, and she has the language of care memorized. That is the useful terror of this film for a child old enough to hear it: someone who says they are keeping you safe may be keeping you useful. Rapunzel leaves anyway, badly, kindly, and then for good.
The frying pan is funny without being cruel. The kingdom at the end is a restoration, not a prize for being pretty. Watch it together. Ask who sounded kind and was not.
Industry
6/10
She cooks, she cleans, she paints, she learns a world in a day. The work is cheerful and specific.
Household
8/10
The tower is a counterfeit house. The kingdom, and a thief who tells the truth, are the repair.
Piety
5/10
A lantern festival is as close as the film comes to a common prayer.
Courage
7/10
She walks out of the only life she was allowed to call safe.
Republic
4/10
A kingdom has been missing its heir. The public is a festival, not a law.
Temperance
7/10
The jokes serve the girl. They do not humiliate her.
Truth
7/10
The film tells the truth that a captor can sound like love.
Stewardship
7/10
What she returns to is a people, and a name that was stolen.
Live historicallyAsk your child who in the film said 'I love you' and did not mean the person.
A mind, a block, a family. The dinosaur is extra. The grandmother is not.
Lunella is smarter than the room and the show enjoys it. The correction, when it arrives, is a family and a neighborhood that are not her audience. Devil Dinosaur is a partner who is not verbal and is loyal. The inventions would be the whole show if the Lower East Side did not keep being specific.
Good for the middle years. Watch whether genius is allowed to be a service or only a spotlight. Encourage the service. A child who is ahead still has to set the table.
Industry
7/10
She builds. The lab is a craft, and it has consequences.
Household
7/10
Parents, a grandmother, a block. They are not fools.
Piety
3/10
A girl's confidence. Little beyond it.
Courage
6/10
She steps in for people who cannot.
Republic
6/10
A neighborhood with a name and a history.
Temperance
5/10
Being the smartest is the appetite.
Truth
6/10
The family will not let her narrate her own exception forever.
Stewardship
6/10
Inventions that stay in the community are the good ones.
Live historicallyLet a bright child teach you one thing they know, and make them do the boring part of it too.
