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What is your go-to feel-good movie?


John

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On occasion, I like to watch movies that have low stakes, good humor, are easy to watch and don't dip too far down before a big, boisterous third act. One of my favorite examples of a movie like this is Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox. Yes, it's a stop-motion film with talking animals, but it's also an absolute masterpiece and immensely amusing. From the way the film looks (everything is shot in rich, warm tones), to the pitch-perfect voice cast, to the deadpan humor; it's a movie I can put on whenever I'm feeling a bit down and is guaranteed to put a smile on my face.

 

What is everyone's favorite "feel-good" movie?

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Singin in the Rain, which never fails to cheer me up. It's movie magic from start to finish, and about as good as musicals get.

 

Also Back to the Future, The Before Trilogy, Blazing Saddles, Forrest Gump, or most Star Wars films. 

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I don't like art to dictate me how to feel. If a movie says "Be happy now!", then there's a good chance it might have the opposite effect on me. You can feel good just by experiencing emotions, any emotions. It doesn't have to be a feel-good movies or feel-good music.

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I don't think he means only happy movies. I mean he put a Wes Anderson movie as an example. (Maybe Isle of Dogs is the exception? I kept expecting for anything to go wrong...)

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3 minutes ago, Brónach said:

I don't think he means only happy movies. I mean he put a Wes Anderson movie as an example. 

 

Yes, with The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson delivered a feel-good movie.

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Any of the first three Harry Potter films. My siblings and I grew up with the films and books, so I have fond memories from the times those were released and don't mind watching them a thousand times.

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1 minute ago, Stefancos said:

 

Oooohhh! Good one!

 

It’s a perfect blockbuster and never fails to put me in a good mood

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Other than Sorcerer's Stone, the ones listed here so far are what I'm looking for when I want to be thrilled, excited, have fun. If I just need to feel warm and fuzzy inside, it's the 1938 Christmas Carol around the appropriate time, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory any other day.

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If I'm in the mood of feeling good, I tend to go for animated movies like The Iron Giant and Frozen.

If I need a quick fix, I put on Paperman.

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My feel good movies don't necessarily have to be light hearted, or funny, etc.  When I'm looking for a "feel good" movie I'm looking to be inspired.  Putting on Braveheart for example will always make me feel good...even though in many ways parts of it are tragic.  

 

 

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I don't really rewatch movies much.  These first two, I've probably seen once in the past 10 years.  E.T. and Star Wars.  Moana is one that I've seen a lot now that I have a kid, and that one works really well.  Although like all movies for me, really dulls with repetition.

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A lot of my favorite movies don't necessarily make me feel good.  I'm not gonna pop on Schindler's List to up my mood!

 

Kasey's post reminds me of one of mine though - The Muppets Take Manhattan.

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An Officer and a Gentleman or Steel Magnolia's. 

Oh and Temple Of Doom such a great feel good ending.

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29 minutes ago, leeallen01 said:

Schindler's List. 

 

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It does feel good that someone within the system saved all those lives. 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

When I'm looking for a "feel good" movie I'm looking to be inspired.  Putting on Braveheart for example will always make me feel good...even though in many ways parts of it are tragic.  

 

To make something truly dramatic, you have to have significant low points where the story is downright grim, so the catharsis of the end is that much more impactful.

 

Specifically, in the case of Braveheart, the tragedy that looms over so much of the narrative is balanced with humor that's just insanely funny, to me. Not to mention that its always delivered in just the right spots for the audience to never too deep into the harrowing nature of the story - so there's that going for it, as well. It really is a marvel of editing, because the script is much different to the final edit.

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2 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

They apparently had a lot of fun dubbing it!

 

It's among the very small number of films that actually have a good dub. Possibly the only live action movie. Compare that with Holy Grail, which has one of the worst dubs (i.e. much worse still than the better ones are already).

 

Anyway, feel good movies:

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2 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

It's among the very small number of films that actually have a good dub. Possibly the only live action movie. Compare that with Holy Grail, which has one of the worst dubs (i.e. much worse still than the better ones are already).

You're not one of these dub despising people, are you? Hands down, most of the German dubs for American movies are great, regarding the technical and the artistical aspect. Some of them are not perfect, but only a tiny part of them is really bad. When I started watching movies in English I was surprised how much I missed that was just apparent in the original version, but at the same time I was surprised how close the dub came, circumvented (or sometimes even improved) puns and represented the characters from the original. It is not true, that dubs are always bad/worse. They save us from reading subtitles, so that we can focus on the images, while mostly successfully transporting the mood and the message of the original.

 

Anyway, feel good movies:

Most Spielberg and Zemeckis movies,

Harry Potter, Star Wars,

stuff like that...

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22 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

You're not one of these dub despising people, are you?

 

 

Definitely. I think I've seen three good German dubs in my life, two of them for animated films. And I know that German dubs are still good, as far as dubs go.

 

First, you have the voice actors. Some of them are good (for example Peter Matić, who does Ben Kingsley among others), most are lousy and just narrate everything in the same cliched dub inflection. Then there's the casting - for example, the "funny voice" (I don't know who the voice actor is) for actors like Eric Idle - or Tom Hanks, because he used to do primarily comedies in his early days, but even his most serious drama still features the same voice and cliched acting (which by the way has nothing at all to do with Hanks' own voice or performance). Then there's the problem that most voice actors don't seem to care who or what they're dubbing - see the aforementioned cliched dub inflection, which makes the most cliched genre Hollywood film seem like high art in comparison. Add to all that that real time dialogue generally *cannot* be translated properly, and that most translations are even worse than they would have to be (especially bad with TV series, where there's apparently hardly any time for the translators, and none for the actors for even a read through, resulting in completely missed puns and emphasis, simply because the actors have no idea what context an earlier line will have later in the script).

 

(And then take films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail or The Hallelujah Trail, where they took out much of the fun stuff from the original script and then added a narrator (which does not appear in the original) to replace it with seriously un-funny jokes)

 

Or simply consider that you originally have a cast of actors who spend weeks, often months, shaping and performing a role, making it their own, and then you have other actors, often with completely different voices, chosen decades ago because of some genre casting, who don't know and/or don't care about the script or the role and just do every drama and every science fiction action flick and every romantic comedy exactly the same way, with little preparation and little time to record.

 

I recall a moment from the Se7en commentary track when Brad Pitt regrets that they had to re-dub a car dialogue scene in post production because they could never get close to the original performance. An excellent foreign dub usually cannot possibly match a good original performance, but most actual dubs are leagues below that.

 

I haven't seen a dubbed film in years, probably decades, but I cringe whenever I have to see a dubbed trailer. German dubbing has such a distinct sound, I can hear a commercial in a supermarket and recognise it as dubbed dialogue excerpts from a movie, simply based on the quality.

 

I'm absolutely convinced that, as a general rule, dubs ruin movies. 

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Dubbing live action movies was never a thing in Israel. I remember being appaled with its use in European broadcasting of films.

 

I don’t see anything wrong with subtitles - I often write new ones for some of the movies I like.

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