Welcome back to the end of the month edition of Thursday Movie Picks hosted by Wandering through the Shelves Blog. This week is All in the Family Edition, and the theme is Father-Daughter Relationships (Biologically Related). In case you wanna participate in this series, go the main page here—you’re invited.
Although it’s a common thing in real life, yet, it’s always difficult to find movies to depict bond between father and daughter. Or, is it just me? However, I found three movies that depicted this relationship in a way that made me went sentimental (plus one additional short movie that, still, made me went sentimental. So, here comes my picks!
01. The Descendants (2011)
In Alexander Payne’s The Descendants—a drama about family reconciliation set in beautiful Hawaii—the father, Matt King (George Clooney) attempted to reconcile with his daughters, Scottie (Amara Miller), who went berserk to seek attention, and Alex (Shaylene Woodley), who went to a boarding school. He only did that after his wife had an accident and went on an irreversible comatose. It was never an easy cause for Matt to cope up with his daughters—many obstacles were obstructing him. It was a troubled relationship and it was almost irreversible, but only a gentle care would do. That’s why when in the end he sit together with his children happily, I felt satisfaction is in the air.
02. Kick-Ass (2010)
Double-tapped and devastated by the villainous D’Amico, Damon Macready (Nicolas Cage) was left to live with his only daughter, Mindy (Chloe Grace Moretz). His wife committed suicide and he got nothing left but his child. What he did was awesome—training his daughter to be a badass vigilante, then teaming up with her as Big Daddy and Hit Girl, sweeping the streets from thugs and criminals—them, father and daughter. This pair lived for each other; although, someone was left alone in the end, the depiction of this father-daughter vigilante is irreplaceable.
03. Interstellar (2014)
Fresh from the oven, Nolan’s Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey as Cooper and Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain, as well as Ellen Burstyn as Murph subsequently. Despite all the ambitious sci-fi bonanza with black hole and time travel, the depth of Interstellar could only be reached by a sentimental father-daughter relationship. How Cooper was never eager to leave his daughter and how Murph never wanted to be abandoned, it was the key. Cooper kept the promise through the stars and planets to finally return to his beloved daughter, while the daughter always worked to find a way to reconcile with his father. When they finally met again, then I realized how deep this kind of love is… and that’s amazing.
So, those movies are my picks for this week. But, I still have one more—the 2000 Academy Award winner for Animated Short Film, Michaël Dudok de Wit’s Father and Daughter.
Honorable mention:
04. Father and Daughter (2000)
When I watched Interstellar for the second time, I realized that it had a small similarity to this short film—the depiction of the father and daughter relationship. One day, when they went cycling together, the father left the daughter as he sailed away from a lake. The daughter kept waiting as she kept coming back to the lake day by day, season by season, year by year; until she finally had a family of her own. His father never came back, but her longing for her father never ceased, and that’s the best part. It was an emotional story decorated with water-painting animation; it was kind of contrasted, but things were always bigger when it looks small. This one’s highly recommended.
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So, I finally picked 4 although the last one is unofficial. Yet, that’s my picks. Care to comment?
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