Films that make you feel good
There's little to celebrate in these wintry, recession-hit times, but some movies will always lift our spirits. I have read an article about this subject from the Independent, when I read this article I wanted to share with you, for me The Little Miss Sunshine is the first one with its orange colour and positive perspective:). Here is the list, so tell me which one can make you feel good?
1. It's A Wonderful life (Frank Capra, 1946)
"No man is a failure who has friends," Clarence the angel tells George in the ultimate feel-good line. Capra's film suffers from over-familiarity, thanks to its perennial appearance on the Christmas television schedules, but it has an unlikely topicality as the world's economy nosedives. Scandal, ruin, bankruptcy and the prospect of suicide are all banished and the audience is left with that nice warm feeling inside... If only it was for real.
2. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
"I know the taste of sour," Bill Murray once said in an interview. Few contemporary actors can convey sarcasm and misanthropy as effectively as he. Here, playing a TV weatherman, he repeats the same day again and again. Harold Ramis's comedy delivers a tremendous feel-good finale in which love (in the form of Andie MacDowell) thaws him out and allows time to turn.
3. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
Humphrey Bogart doesn't get the girl – when Ingrid Bergman flies off, he's only left with little Claude Rains. But it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship and the film still qualifies as one of the most effective feel-good movies of its era. It was also excellent propaganda, showing the hero overcoming his cynicism and doing his bit against the Nazis. Play it again, and again.
4. The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997)
Scripted by Simon Beaufoy (who also wrote Slumdog Millionaire), this crowd-pleaser, starring Robert Carlyle, about sacked steelworkers turned male strippers was an expertly crafted affair with just enough grit to avoid seeming maudlin. The famous scene in which they practise their routine in the dole queue to "Hot Stuff" is the epitome of feel-good film-making.
5. Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981)
The early Eighties brought us Thatcherism, unemployment and the miners' strike. British cinema attempted to reintroduce the feel-good factor by celebrating the feats of stiff-upper-lipped athletes at the Paris Olympics of 1924. In times of crisis, the Brits love to bask in the glories of days gone by.
6. Sing As We Go (Basil Dean, 1934)
Gracie Fields is the working-class lass leading a line-up of Blackpool mill-workers in a rousing chorus at the end of Dean's determinedly upbeat British musical. The mill reopens, everyone gets their jobs back – it's the kind of wish-fulfilment fantasy Alistair Darling would love to see come true today.
7. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
Yes, there's plenty of violence and a queasy scene involving a syringe being plunged into Uma Thurman's heart, but this still surely qualifies as feel-good fare. It's not just the John Travolta/Thurman dance sequence or the assassins' chit-chat about mayonnaise and chips – it's the pleasure Tarantino takes in his own film-making, a pleasure he communicates to us.
8. Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977)
You're in a dead-end job. Your home life is crummy. Money is tight. Nonetheless, at the weekend, you're the king of the disco. Welcome to the world of Tony Manero (John Travolta) in a film that somehow combines blue-collar realism with feel-good escapism.
9. I Know Where I'm Going!(Powell and Pressburger, 1945)
Feel-good movies often have the quality of folklore. Characters are swept up in freakish events that transform their lives. Joan (Wendy Hiller) sets off to Scotland to marry her wealthy fiancé but bad weather stops her reaching his island. Instead, she learns the usual lessons about love mattering more than money.
10. Singin' In The Rain(Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952)
We all know the moment. Gene Kelly is ambling down the street, humming contentedly away. The rain is falling but it can't dampen his spirits. After all, he's in love. He breaks into song and dance, using his umbrella and the nearest lamp-post as props.
11. Drifting Clouds(Aki Kaurismaki, 1996)
Not, on the face of it, a feel-good film. The Finnish auteur Kaurismaki is certainly no Richard Curtis. His movies are well-nigh bereft of dialogue. Nobody ever smiles. Here, a tram driver and his wife both lose their jobs. Only Kaurismaki could take a tale about unemployment, alcoholism and depression and make it the stuff of high comedy. Look out for the appearance of the Helsinki Workers' Wrestlers' Association, filling roughly the same function as the cavalry in old John Ford westerns.
12. The Straight Story(David Lynch, 1999)
An old-timer (Richard Farnsworth) sets off across America in a mini-tractor to visit his ailing brother. Lynch movies are often twisted and surreal, but he plays this one exactly as its title suggests. The result is a folksy, heart-warming fable.
13. Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994)
It's hard to beat a good feelgood film about a loveable loser. Burton's biopic of Ed Wood, one of the most inept directors in the history of film, certainly falls into this category. Johnny Depp plays the hapless Wood as a true innocent who never loses his wonder at the magic of film-making.
14. Little Miss Sunshine(Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, 2006)
Family dysfunction has never seemed more appealing than in this exuberant road movie about a bickering brood racing across America in a VW bus so the seven-year-old girl can enter a beauty pageant.
15 .The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (Preston Sturges, 1947)
Oppressed office-workers everywhere will identify with Diddlebock, the young clerk who loses his job and seeks solace in alcohol. Under the influence of the booze, his personality is transformed. He feels good – and so, at least for a while, does the audience.
16. Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985)
The best feel-good movies are often about reinvention – about characters escaping the daily grind and striking out in new directions. Seidelman's energetic yarn has Rosanna Arquette as the bored housewife into the wild, bohemian life of Susan (Madonna).
17. Four Weddings and a Funeral(Mike Newell, 1994)
The first of Richard Curtis's romcoms and by far the best. Not only was it the first time we'd seen Hugh Grant's charming, stuttering shtick, it also features a wonderfully quirky cast, some choice swearing, a fabulously weepy eulogy and, above all, the assurance that being an English prat needn't harm your chances in love.
18. The Last Detail(Hal Ashby, 1973)
Yes, there are some grim elements in Ashby's comedy-drama about two sailors (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) taking a young colleague off to naval prison. The script exposes the bullying and the soullessness of life in the armed forces. However, en route, as the two old-timers try to teach their young prisoner about life, they have a wild old time.
19. 42nd Street(Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
In the Depression era, there was something desperate about the ferocious optimism of Hollywood musicals. This famous effort boasted not only Ruby Keeler in her first screen role but some astonishing Busby Berkeley set-pieces. Who cared about unemployment when you could see the camera whirling like a dervish, as the chorus girls kicked their legs?
20. A Hard Day's Night(Richard Lester, 1964)
A feel-good film isn't just a mawkish fable with a happy ending. What defines the best feelgood movies is their relentless energy. In A Hard Day's Night, Richard Lester tapped into the hysteria surrounding The Beatles. Alongside the cheeky Scouse wit, he threw in plenty of running and jumping as the Fab Four tried to keep ahead of their fans. The film took its tempo from the song that provided the title.
