My name is Tom Grasty, and I have worked in the food service department at Green Acre since 2012. While the culinary arts are my current passion, I have also had a lifelong love of movies, probably from growing up around the corner from a long-vanished neighborhood movie theater. For over twenty years I owned and operated Atlantic Video in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during the glory days of VHS movie rentals. The store was a focal point for area cinephiles looking for classic, foreign and hard-to-find titles. Though the store has been gone for almost two decades, I would like to continue to make movie recommendations as I once did, by selecting some of the best—and sometimes underappreciated—films available for streaming today. Each episode of Tom’s Take will present noteworthy streaming options based on a corresponding theme.
Our theme for our inaugural show will focus on resilience, a trait that we are cultivating as best we can during these trying times of a pandemic and global instability. Each of the three films selected—Lagaan, Blinded by the Light and Crip Camp—offer stories of resilience, where victory is only achieved through perseverance in spite of setbacks, an important lesson for good times as well as bad.