 If you were to tell me the best movie I would see in the next few months was a straight-to-TV movie featuring an autistic woman developing the design for a cattle shoot, I would say you're out of your mind. But that's exactly what happened. Let's talk Temple Grandin, baby! Believe it or not, no, I didn't wake up one sunny morning and say, you know what, Adam? I want to check out that 2010 Temple Grandin film with Claire Danes. That didn't happen. No, actually it was a Patreon request at patreon.com slash adamdoesmovies where you too can become a mithral member and request a movie of your very own. I want to give a shout out to Mint Salad. She's a fellow movie critic with her own movie channel, ASE Productions, so make sure to check her out there, subscribe, and give her a shout out from me. And if you want to watch Temple Grandin, it's on HBO Max right now, who knows where it'll be in another week or so. This streaming thing is really fun. This movie follows Temple Grandin through most of her early life. Her struggles, her successes, everything she's achieved, with the first half primarily focusing on her early life, high school, college, and then the second half into her career in the field. Claire Danes, who I've always tolerated in the past, she's good in films, never really like wowed me with anything, freaking wowed me here as Temple Grandin. Absolute powerhouse of a performance. And as I watched this with my wife, who also loved it, we kept getting annoyed that this wasn't a theatrical release back in 2010, that it didn't get a little bit more budget to push it all the way. Because as it stands, it's a good looking movie, it's shot well, it's done by the director who did volcano, but also bodyguard. The bodyguard. That's a solid flick. I mean, clearly this movie had a budget, it's jumping all over the place. No, there's no explosions or ninja fight scenes, but we do get a great retelling and a great look into the eyes of Temple Grandin. I know this was really inspiring to me in salad because she too is autistic, but I as a parent have a son who's also going through a lot of struggles with school. He's actually homeschooled now and we find that's working a lot better because we can get more one-on-one with the kid. He just has a hard time focusing and learning and he has been diagnosed with ADHD, but we don't want to put him on meds. I know it works for some, so watching this movie was incredibly inspirational for us too. Because you get frustrated as a parent, it's like, what am I doing wrong? Why is he upset? Why can he not focus like I can? It's because people are all wired differently and you have to learn to play to people's strengths and that's what Grandin finds out as this movie progresses and the people she comes into contact with. She might not be able to outright thank them or give them a hug, which her mother desperately wants, but she finds ways to do so. Ways to acknowledge these people as time passes. And that's really the message of the film. Of course, Temple Grandin's accomplishments are impressive, but it's really about a foundation, about finding those people in your life that can support you that you can lean on and will always put in the work for you at the end of the day, not belittle you, not make fun of you, not pass you by. What's really fascinating about Grandin is she wasn't able to read for many years of her life, not until a teacher slash scientist was able to determine that it's pictures. Her mind picks up images, puts them in her database and she never forgets. So by utilizing photos, they were able to tap into this bad boy and unlock the secrets within, which just so happened to be a genius lying in the weeds. What's even more fascinating is how Temple acknowledges all the issues she has going on, but instead of feeling sorry for herself or running away from the problem, she addresses them head on. She builds contraptions that she can hide in to make herself more calm. She sees how other humans and mainly animals struggle with these same issues. And that's when she decides to focus her attention on animal husbandry. That's the profession. It's not a great name. In the summer, she worked with her aunt Anne, played by Catherine O'Hara, who is always fantastic, by the way. I love Catherine O'Hara. And she's really at home on the ranch. She developed multiple tools to help these guys make their jobs easier, but it wasn't until after college that her eyes were open to the truly inhumane acts of man. Treating cattle like absolute garbage, drowning them, punishing them, the meat's no good when you do that. If the animals are not healthy or happy even, it's going to show up in the product. She has a brilliant outlook on this too. She doesn't care that the animals are being eaten, laid to slaughter. She just knows we can do it in a better way, a more humane way. So she develops a cattle shoot that these cows can go down so that they're at least happy and ignorant before they're laid to slaughter. Of course, the cattle industry is a man's world. She's going to have to struggle with a lot of that stuff, even at one point dressing up as a dude, just to gain access to the farm where she's supposed to do her thesis. She keeps pushing forward. And that's thanks to her aunt, her mother, Dr. Carlock in high school, that she's able to continue in the way she does. As far as the production goes, the movie's about an hour and 45 minutes long, perfect length for this type of film. The music, pretty standard stuff, inspirational, motivational, happier. I mean, I really don't have any complaints. There are a few shots in the movie where the director goes a little artsier with it, does some overlay effects, and some slow motion that's kind of eh, not great. Definitely rigged of a lower budget movie at those points, but they're so far in view in between, you can easily overlook them. Overall, I'm very happy I watched this movie. I want to show it to my children because it really is one of those films. I am a sucker for a biopic. I'm a sucker for a good story. And this is just a good classic flick that should be appreciated by everyone. Thank you once again, Min Salad, for requesting the movie. Clearly, I enjoyed it a lot. Like the video if you had a good time. Please, again, subscribe if you haven't, to both me and her channel. I'll link it in the description below as well. And hopefully, I'll see you next time. Hey, thanks for sticking around. If you didn't know, I started a podcast with my buddy, Bless, that I've been putting out on the channel every week. It's a freaking fun time. I'm having a blast. And we film these things live on Twitch at twitch.tv slash Adam Does Movies. Please think about following and subscribing there if you have some of those Jeff Bezos bucks. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you have a free subscription to use every month. I'd appreciate that. It's one way to support the channel. And again, of course, you could be a Patreon, a YouTube join member. There's a lot of options. You could buy merch. There's a merch store. So yeah, whatever.