So, the weather dreadful and it’s two weeks until pay-day. You haven’t stuck to your self-imposed, restrictive healthy eating plan (or is that just me??). What films should you watch if you’re in need of cheering up? Here are my personal recommendations. Please feel free to add your own.
- My Neighbour Totoro
DIr: Hayao Miyazaki
Fun for all the family. Although this is a children’s film, we watched this long before we had kids and it brightened up a dull, Sunday afternoon.
MEI and SATSUKI are two young sisters who move to the countryside with their father while their mother is having a prolonged stay in hospital. They meet up with a friendly neighbourhood troll one day and their adventures begin. Totoro - the troll in question, is the most adorably squidgy fellow that you’d ever hope to meet. Enough said.
- Life is Sweet
Dir: Mike Leigh.
Jane Horrocks plays NICOLA; a young woman with lots of issues. She is anorexic, unemployed and generally pissed off with the world. Her favourite word is ‘Bollocks’, which she casts about constantly. Claire Skinner plays her tomboy twin sister, NATALIE, who works as a plumber and has her life sorted. Jim Broadbent and Alison Steadman play their hapless parents, ANDY and WENDY.
This is a joyous film; full of warmth and hope. It also has moments of bathos and comic absurdity. Andy’s friend, AUBREY, (played by the brilliant Timothy Spall) opens a restaurant serving a menu of disgusting and pretentious sounding food.
What I like about ‘Life is Sweet’ is that, issues surrounding eating disorders and unemployment notwithstanding, it is a positive, unpatronising portrayal of working class life. Kind of the antithesis of ‘Rita, Sue and Bob too’ (although I do quite like that film too). It is moving without being sentimental. Long before Leigh’s ‘Another Year’, it has a happy marriage at its core, based on mutual liking and respect. The family love and look out for each other, even if they don’t necessarily understand each other.
- Amelie
Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
As we walked into the cinema, my companion said to me, ‘The review of this film says that it defies anybody to be unhappy when they come out of it!’ He said this to me because a) I can be perceived as a bit of a stroppy cow and b) I was in a bit of bad mood that day. Anyway, the reviewer was right; a wonderfully weird and romantic film with stunning visuals, I definitely came out happier then I went in (and not just because of the ‘family’ bag of Revels I’d just had).
- Zoolander (the first one!)
Dir: Ben Stiller
Delightfully silly and surprisingly subversive (their criticism of the fashion industry is spot on - eating disorders, exploitative trading practices with developing countries etc). Phrases like ‘blue steel’ and ‘u-goo-gilly’ have made it into common parlance now.
- It’s a Wonderful Life
Dir: Frank Capra
James Stewart and Donna Reed. A depressed, suicidal man, GEORGE BAILEY, is shown what life in his hometown would have been like if he’d never existed. Slightly schmaltzy in parts but we can forgive Jimmy Stewart anything. Brilliant scene at the school dance. If you’ve never seen this then you’re in for a real treat!
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