What to Watch When You Feel Like Crying

There are few things as comforting, particularly in the throes of feeling bad, than a good movie.

Film critic Roger Ebert titled a collection of his critiques Awake in the Dark, implying a sense of familiarity and safety when watching a movie at the theater or at home. Even Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman proclaims that heartbreak feels good in a place like this, “this” being a movie theater.

Cinema has the unique power to create a world—whether similar to our own or not—that allows us entry into a space where the details have already been fully formed. Engaging on-screen with characters, situations, and environments can be an effective way to deal with our own emotions. Movies can distract us from turmoil, be a vehicle for self-soothing, and/or a way to confront difficult emotions head-on in a way that provides clarity.

The way film functions for people looking to take a break and cheer up is different for everyone, explains Marissa Florio, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in working with youth. Not everyone may be attracted to conventional feel-good movies, like The Princess Bride or Clueless. Some may gravitate towards other material that also invites, as movies can, a feeling of community.

Florio explains, “I think what is really interesting about our relationship to media is that we are learning that there’s no such thing as content that traditionally ‘makes people feel good.’ We're just starting to have the conversation about how self-soothing is different for everyone. True crime and horror, for example, have always attracted a large community of viewers.”

Our reasons for watching a particular movie to ease our mental health can be as varied as the movies themselves. While the experience of depression and sadness (not to be conflated) is highly variable, the impetus to find comfort in more unconventional fare, say The Ring or Melancholia, makes sense.

“Some people may find comfort in watching these depictions because it is cathartic to watch their internal experiences be seen and validated,” Florio explains. “Many people mask their depression in order to function every day, so it can be comforting to be able to watch a depiction of what you’re feeling without having to outwardly express it.”

Regardless of the type of film that comforts you, experts say most people seek content that feels familiar or has a particular resonance—either through the characters’ experience or through the positive memories and associations it creates.

Nadeem Akhtar, MBBS, MA, MRCPsych, a licensed psychiatrist based in Hamilton, Ontario, believes so strongly in the ability to educate and heal through film he developed Cine-Psych, a first-of-its-kind therapeutic group for adolescents. “We use short films and guided discussion in an immersive therapeutic space to harness positive change and improve self-esteem,” he says.

Working as mental health filmmakers, Cine-Psych students create short movies about the experience of mental illness in a way that evokes greater empathy and understanding. Flight, a film the group created in 2017, offers an intimate look at bipolar disorder through a young woman who has suffered through its challenges. Buddy (2019) movingly depicts the debilitating effects of social anxiety. These small films (along with several others created by Akhtar’s students) make a big impact. They don’t just educate, they inspire empathy, awareness, and understanding for an often misunderstood and largely “invisible” population struggling with mental illness.

“The process gives my students valuable insight that helps them relate to each other and those around them. Hopefully, the Cine-Psych experience will encourage some to work in the field professionally someday,” Akhtar explains.

Both Akhtar and Florio agree that cinema has a unique ability to help us understand the human experience. “Looking at movies from a therapeutic perspective, they can either be used for pure distraction (an entertaining way to escape problems) or a way to help viewers problem solve their own emotional conflicts,” Akhtar says.

Film has an extraordinary ability to capture memory permanently. The temporal relationship to cinema is a crucial part of how and why we engage with movies on an emotional level, he says.

“It’s important to remember that memories can be associated with strong positive and negative emotions,” Akhtar explains. “So, re-watching a film that you perhaps saw in the prime of your life with someone you enjoy, can be soothing and healing—a way to revisit the positive feelings from that era.”

Whether you select a film because you want an escape or are just looking for some inspiration, the relationship between a movie and a viewer is dynamic period. The hopeful feeling that is often left behind just may be the most important byproduct of a really good watch.

Sourced from an eclectic group of movie-loving media influencers on Twitter (a pediatrician, writers, and performers), this watchlist is just as eclectic. Read on for our feel-good mix of old and new flicks.

#1. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2020, Josh Greenbaum)—Juan Barquin, film critic and programmer

Comfort through art used to come to me through some “darker” features (Melancholia was my go-to during depressive spirals), but over the past years getting started with therapy and medication, my true comfort comes through comedy. One film over the last year has been particularly essential and rewatched to death: Barb & Star go to Vista Del Mar. It’s a film that’s so removed from reality that it helps me disconnect. The absurdity with which Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo approach everything offers me endless laughs. And it engages and toys with tropes from other comfort films of mine, from rom-coms to musicals, in a way that I’ll never get tired of. Comfort cinema for me has become about being lifted up out of my dark spots rather than purely wallowing in them, and Barb & Star does exactly that.

#2. Crazy Rich Asians (2019, Jon M. Chu)—Dylan Adler, comedian, actor, and writer

When I need a “pick me up” movie I often turn to Crazy Rich Asians. When I watch the movie it brings me back to the day I first saw it in 2018 and how amazed and validated I felt watching a movie starring incredible Asian actors. I remember walking out of the movie feeling like I was on cloud nine. The performances from Michelle Yeoh and Constance Wu were truly mesmerizing and that one homoerotic scene between Henry Golding and Chris Pang often gives me the will to keep living.

#3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011, David Fincher)—Roxana Hadadi, film critic, Vulture’s TV critic

When I was in grad school, during a seminar in which we were talking about the joy of discovering a work for the first time versus the comfort of returning to something you already enjoy, one of my professors was shocked to learn that Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a common fixture on my nightstand. It might not make sense to everyone, I admit: Larsson's book is full of abuse, kidnapping, rape, and Nazis, and to call it prevailingly grim is definitely an understatement.

But Larsson is a deliberate writer whose painstaking precision in crafting this neo-noir mystery is immersive, and David Fincher's 2011 film adaptation of the novel is the perfect visual accompaniment to it. Just as Larsson's original text was a comfort read for me, Fincher's film is a comfort watch. Fincher has a chilly touch but a methodical approach, and his movies have always focused on the work of how journalists, investigators, and hackers work from the outside in, circling a story or their prey until they understand their every move and every detail. Again, I cannot overstate that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is bleak and brutal; Fincher doesn't remove any grueling elements from the source novel. But I find comfort in watching people—with all of their flaws and mistakes—maneuver through those obstacles to arrive at something like completion, and the truth.

#4. Under the Tuscan Sun (2003, Audrey Wells)—Marya E. Gates, film critic, historian, and blogger

A movie I watch when I’m feeling depressed is Under the Tuscan Sun, written and directed by Audrey Wells. It stars Diane Lane as a writer going through a rough divorce who is gifted a life-changing trip to Tuscany, where she buys a villa and jumpstarts her life anew. This film is comforting for a few reasons. Diane Lane is endlessly charming even in her darkest moments, so spending time with her feels wonderful. The location is gorgeous, mostly filled with the bright Italian sun and ancient cobblestone streets.

Like the warmth of that sun, the film radiates with joy and inspiration. It puts an emphasis on building strong friendships and self-care over romance or career-based goals. It helps me remember that life is about the here and now, and that taking time to luxuriate in something I love like a delicious meal or a good book is okay, and even necessary for a happy life. It also reminds me that happiness is not an end goal; it’s a process and a way of living life, so you should be kind and patient with yourself when you forget that for a bit.

#5. The Naked Gun (1988, Robert Zemeckis)—Daniel Summers, MD, writer, and Boston-based pediatrician

To describe the humor as sophomoric would be exceedingly charitable. Many of the jokes are dated. And it's not nearly as easy to laugh at OJ Simpson as it used to be. With all of that acknowledged, no movie can more reliably hoist me out of a terrible mood than The Naked Gun. Frank Drebin's implacable obtuseness never fails to make me cry with laughter, no matter how many times I watch him accidentally kill Ricardo Montalban's fish. Whatever life hands me, I can always treat it with a healthy dose of rampant absurdity.

#6. What’s Up, Doc? (1972, Peter Bogdonavich)—Isabel Sandoval, filmmaker, and actress

It’s my go-to comfort watch because I have a goofy smile on my face from start to finish. I try not to rationalize the pleasure of watching it much beyond that but, if I must, it’s hot people being funny and silly. The definition of pure escapist cinema and a madcap delight. Hysterical sequences galore like the hotel room catching fire and the chase through the streets of San Francisco. Barbra Streisand is at the peak of her goofball-comedienne powers and nerdy Ryan O’Neal was never hotter than he is here. An inspired heir to the Cukor original, thanks to Bogdanovich.

#7. The Women (1939, George Cukor)—Daniel M. Lavery, writer and author of Something That May Shock and Discredit You

Anita Loos is one of my favorite screenwriters, of course, and she’s in fine form here, punching up Clare Booth Luce’s straightforward conservative position into something looser, funnier, and more agile. This movie has everything of everything–there’s more more in The Women than in anything else, if that makes sense; Norma Shearer spends a solid two hours quivering her lip and edging a single tear, Joan Crawford tries to bring down the entire world from a glass bathtub complete with drop-down velvet canopy curtains, Joan Fontaine somehow reveals the fundamentally twinkish position of the ingenue-housewife, and Rosalind Russell pratfalls her way into eternity. Nothing else compares, nothing else approaches it–and it’s so oversaturated with self-pity and martyrdom complexes and brisk impatience that I almost always feel reinvigorated by the end of it. (It gives you two hours to grow claws—Jungle Red.)