In our spot on the site where we chat mental health and wellbeing, a few words on the movies, games and TV shows we keep coming back to.
Hello, and welcome to the spot on the Film Stories site where we chat about mental health, wellbeing, and the things that may be affecting you, or someone around you. No miracle cures are offered here, this is just a moment we take pretty much every week to natter about stuff. This week is no exception.
Personally, I’ve had – and am still having – a very trying year, with full on sandwich generation stuff dominating a lot of my weeks. It hasn’t half been frazzling my headspace and for a while earlier in the year it made me a more imperfect watcher of new movies. I found myself watching fewer of them, as I wasn’t quite in the right headspace a lot of the time.
I thus went backwards. I went through a month where I was watching a whole bunch of stuff, almost exclusively, that I’d seen before. It started by me digging out the DVDs of the TV series Chancer from the 1990s, and then I wound through films as varied as Whiplash, Boogie Nights, Geostorm, Magnolia, Goodfellas, a few Kevin Costner films, Bowfinger, Parenthood, Game Night, The Truman Show…. things I guess I knew I’d enjoy, and had familiarity with.
It’s a binge that’s done and is doing me a lot of good. I’ve looked to find pockets of time to dig out my ZX Spectrum emulator too, and not so much wallow in nostalgia, but bathe in the familiar. Things that have brought me joy, and – it turns out – are bringing me joy again.
I ask this question sporadically here, and it’s worth regular revisiting. Because I’m always curious what other people’s comfort food is. Not the must-see movie that you watch once and never want to go to again. What’s on that metaphorical and perhaps actual shelf of ten to 12 films, TV shows, games and such like. The ones you can reach for when your brain isn’t quite firing, but you know you can depend on? Please leave them in the comments below.
This, incidentally, is going to be the last column in this series for a week or two, due to summer downtime. But it will be returning!
Thanks, as always, for reading. The very best to you all.
