More Feel Good Movies to Watch When You Feel Like Shit
We’re back with more cinematic masterpieces that we’re pretty sure will breathe some life and love into the cold cockles of your depressed heart.
This post is sponsored by the Dead Pets, the podcast about pet grief that celebrates the lives of the creatures that have changed ours. Click below to listen to this week’s episode.
Times are weird. The seasons are changing, the magic of the holidays has officially fucked off, the snow is melting away to mud, and we are all stuck in the middle of the in-between. During this time of year, we more often than not feel like hot dog shit in a blender.
Among the many activities we force ourselves to engage in to lift the spirits is cracking a beer, sparking a joint (or both), and watching one of the following feel-good cinematic masterpieces.
Here are five more movies that we are pretty sure will brighten your mood when you feel like shit.
Second Hand Lions
It’s the summer of 1962, and Walter’s floozy of a mother sends him to live with his wild and crazy uncles, Hub and Garth — played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine in full zaddy mode. Rumor has it that the old bachelors are sitting on a fortune amassed from their lifetime of adventures. They spend their time shooing away people who come sniffing around for their gold by shooting shotguns at them from their porch.
The men spend their time regaling Walter with tales of the adventures from before and after WWII. Planting a field of corn leads them to a retired circus lion who becomes Walter’s pet and ultimately serves a greater purpose when his mom turns up with her grifter boyfriend in search of the uncles’ wealth.
Cool Runnings
Cool Runnings is the best sports movie ever made. Don’t agree? Drop a pin, we’re coming to fucking fight you.
It’s 1987, and Jamaican sprinter Derice Bannock’s Olympic dreams are dashed during time trials. Desperate to make it to the Olympic stage, Bannock tracks down an old friend of his dead father’s, disgraced bobsled champion Irv Blitzer, and convinces him to form a team to compete in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Calgary.
Bannock and teammates Sanka, Yul, and Junior train under Blitzer and qualify to represent Jamaica in the winter games, even though none of them have even seen a flake of snow. It’s the ultimate underdog story. If you’ve seen it, don’t even pretend you don’t bawl your eyes out when they pick up that bobsled.
Best in Show
In a perfect lambasting of the highfalutin, ridiculous world of prestigious dog shows, Best in Show follows five dogs and their owners on their journey to compete in the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show in Philadelphia.
Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara play Gerry and Cookie Fleck, who have high hopes for their Wheaten Terrier Winkey. Their journey includes an overzealous former lover and being forced to sleep in the storage room of the hotel.
Michael Hitchcock and Parker Posey play a high-strung J.Crew and Starbucks-loving couple who can’t get to the bottom of their Weimaraner’s neurosis, but suspect it has to do with it walking in on them having sex (or at least that’s what they tell the dog’s therapist).
Jennifer Coolidge plays a young wife to a 90-year-old sugar daddy who is determined to make her standard poodle a star with the help of a very butch dog trainer.
Bait shop owner Harlan Pepper waxes poetic about his family’s lineage of hounds as he prepares his bloodhound Hubert for greatness, and finally, gay couple Scott Donlan and Stefan Vanderhoof and their Shih Tzu Ms. Agnes round out the competition.
Office Space
Who hasn’t wanted to rob their evil corporate overlords and beat the life out of the office copy machine that never works when you need it to? Office Space is an evergreen tale of three workplace besties who set out to rob the IT company they work for.
Peter goes to a hypnotherapy session to find relief from the stress of his dead-end job, but the hypnotist dies of a sudden heart attack before he can snap Peter out of it. His new don’t-give-a-single-fuck attitude impresses the higher-ups as the company ruthlessly downsizes. When his friends are laid off, they sic a virus on the company’s accounting system that diverts fractions of pennies into a bank account over a long period of time. Of course, it goes terribly awry.
Hot Fuzz
We never don't want to watch a Simon Pegg and Nick Frost joint. Police officer Nicholas Angel is reassigned from the hard streets of London to the sleepy village of Sandford. Angel's hard-nosed policing is a poor match for the laid-back community and his barely competent colleagues. After responding to calls that include a runaway swan and a land-bound sea mine, Angel struggles with the slower pace of his new life. And then the bodies start turning up. Hot Fuzz literally has everything: a community theatre performance of Romeo and Juliet, the 1988 movie, murder by church steeple, and sweet elderly villagers wielding an armory.
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