Caitlin Flanagan's essay-review on Alec Baldwin's book about divorce (A Promise to Ourselves) has some witty, whiplash insights and a chewy center. Flanagan reports that the book "proceeds from a double-pronged thesis: that American divorce laws are deeply flawed, and that Kim Basinger is a crazy bitch," adding, "I would have liked to hear more about the latter..." As he made clear in the interviews he gave at the time it was published, Baldwin's book is intended as a serious examination of the toll that divorce can take--"this," writes Flanagan, "is the go-to book if you’re thinking of ending a two-movie-star marriage"--with a special emphasis on the way the legal system, particularly as it relates to child custody, can exacerbate unfairness and human suffering. However, his own experience may be more specialized than he cares to realize. Flanagan claims to "have a fair grasp of the way contested-custody decisions are made in California, and it’s not too difficult to read between the lines of Baldwin’s book and get a sense of what has probably been taking place over the years. Baldwin’s fury at the system emanates from his belief that the institution is reflexively anti-father. Yet he also admits to having a terrible temper, and to having displayed this protean force in front of the very people authorized to decide his fate. Family court is charged with protecting the physical and emotional safety of children, and if you tend to rave during depositions, you’re not going to like the custody orders you get."

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Suzie Templeton's 2008 stop-motion short Peter and The Wolf is a stunner for all ages.  It's not just that it's visually impressive - and it really is - but it's also the way it shows Peter's anger as a righteous source of strength.  Lots of children's entertainment goes out of its way to paint life in exclusively sunny colors, but it's fair to say that most children have some impressive stores of anger and frustration, too.  Very impressive, at least in the case of my pre-schoolers.  Templeton's take on Sergei Prokofiev's Peter is not the cherub of the Disney short nor the high-pitched simpleton Elmo, to name two other versions that have passed through our house.  Instead, she sees Peter as a sad child, cloistered by his grandfather behind high walls, and mostly friendless.

The darkness of her version reached its most terrifying moment early in the short, when Peter accidentally bumps one of the hunters in the street of his unidentified (but vaguely Eastern European) town.  The hunter, face scrunched in a universal look of sheer meanness, grabs Peter roughly and shoves him into an alley, where he tosses the child into a dumpster and points his gun at him just for kicks.  My son gasped in disbelief at the cruelty.  I gasped, too, (well, inwardly, I guess) because I realized that the movie was not going to follow the story closely, and all bets were off.

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I can see where some might consider The Iron Giant too sad or too scary for little kids.  But my little kids have taken to it.  After all, it does feature a boy's relationship with a giant robot from outer space, which a story that kids really want to hear.  I find it inexpressibly tragic, but my kids do not, and I'm happy about that.

So, The Iron Giant was Brad Bird's first film, a few years before The Incredibles and Ratatouille.  It's based on The Iron Man, a story that Ted Hughes wrote for his kids to comfort them after their mother's suicide.  Their mother was, incidentally, Sylvia Plath, who was never too good at math, according to noted scholar Peter Laughner, who knew a thing or two about premature death.  The Iron Man is different in some important ways from The Iron Giant.  For instance, the titular metal character fights a space-dragon instead of vintage Cold War fear. 

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In this column, we at the Screengrab discuss movies fit for children.  If you are vaguely aware of the state of children's movies, you know that most of them are animated affairs involving rapid-fire references to pop culture that, strangely enough, few under the age of 31 could possibly understand.  Only rarely do filmmakers decide to make movies that appeal to anything deeper than a child's love of a sugar rush.  Despite the odds, some brave souls still manage to create great kid movies, and this column will seek to weed wheat from chaff.  This being the first edition, we'll start with some low-hanging fruit: my 3-year-old son's all-time favorite movie, My Neighbor Totoro.

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