The Movie Doctors. Simon Mayo

      RING OF BRIGHT WATER (1969)

      It’s a pet movie. A pet movie set on the west coast of Scotland starring the Born Free pairing of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. We know how this will play out. Bachelor Bill buys an otter called Mij, finds it’s too much of a handful for his small London flat and they move to an idyllic, remote cottage. Virginal Virginia who lives next door falls for them both, and the course of true love is set: man, woman and otter in perfect harmony.

      This all works beautifully until Mij is chopped in two by a ditch digger with a spade. It is sudden, brutal and shocking. There has been no build-up, no hint of illness, the otter never coughs or looks depressed. One minute he’s running happily through the peaty bog, the next he’s been dispatched to that otter holt in the sky.

      For a U-certificate film, this wretched vision will hit viewers hard. And with Val Doonican singing the title track, this more than deserves its place as a top downer.

      Measure of gloom

      THE MIST (2007)

      No one does misery quite like Stephen King (indeed no one did Misery quite like Stephen King), but the real scaremonger here is screenwriter/director Frank Darabont. If it’s terror, slaughter and hopelessness you need, then The Mist is your film. Some are misled by the fact that the King/Darabont combo produced The Shawshank Redemption, concluding that while there may well be some tough scenes to endure here, ultimately there’ll be an ending to cheer. Maybe even a boat-polishing beach scene to send us home happy. Well, think again. After a storm-induced shopping trip to the local mall, the titular mist rolls in. (Meteorological NB: as the visibility is less than one kilometre, this is not a mist but a fog. But as that would make it The Fog and John Carpenter has already done that, everyone has to call it ‘a mist’. As none of our protagonists mentions a fear of ghostly lepers, we conclude none of them can have seen this 1980 horror film.) Surfing in on the wave of condensed water droplets are spiders, bugs, a many-tentacled thing – and more than a suggestion that our friends in the military are to blame.

      King’s novella has an inconclusive ending, but Darabont’s movie is something else. Just when you think the final reel has got as grim as it could possibly get, he delivers a final scene so devoid of hope that you’ll pop back to The Road for some light relief (see p.305).

      Measure of gloom

      WINTER LIGHT (1963)

      If you have worked out the meaning of life and your place in the celestial order, make an appointment to see Pastor Tomas Ericsson. He might have the church and all the right clothes, but that turns out to be misleading. Here’s a priest who, if asked to present ‘Pause For Thought’, would just tell us to end it all now. He can’t stop an anguished fisherman from committing suicide, he can’t take the affection on offer from young Marta and he can’t believe in God any more. The stunning photography and brilliant performances offer some brief consolation before we reflect on the utter meaninglessness of life.

      Measure of gloom

      WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (1986)

      Just because it’s a cartoon doesn’t mean it won’t fill you with despair. Raymond Briggs produced this story when we were still (just about) worried about the pesky Soviets and the cowboy in the White House. Jim and Hilda Bloggs are preparing for the coming nuclear attack with the guidance of leaflets from the government. The voices of John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft reassure us briefly before they both die of radiation poisoning. The only consolation for the modern viewer is that this was all a long time ago, when Russia was thought of as a dangerous country with a crazed leader who had designs on its neighbours. So that’s all right, then . . .

      Measure of gloom

      UPPERS

      Yes, please. The combined effect of all those downers has made the Movie Doctors look more pasty-faced than ever. It is time to prescribe some films that will brighten your life. Films that we are sure will make you feel better about yourself, your neighbour and the world in general (see also ‘Patient Transport’, p.308). Unlike the downers, you may watch as many as you like, as often as you like.

      OIL CITY CONFIDENTIAL (2009)

      It’s time for some feel-good movies. And for our first choice, an actual, real-life feel-good movie. This Julian Temple documentary about Dr Feelgood has been unfairly pigeonholed as being only for yearning, nostalgic men in their fifties who wish they could still fit the shiny suits they wore in the seventies. Not so. This movie we prescribe for everyone. There is something irresistibly joyous about OCC which demands its inclusion.

      It is the story of four guys from Canvey Island, Essex, making music that will lift your soul. The joke was always that a storm had blown through Canvey Island causing millions of pounds’ worth of improvements, but here Temple runs with the gag that the Thames Estuary is linked with the Mississippi Delta. Thus we have the Thames Delta – our very own swampland. This is an upper for all because it is a proper film. Even if you’ve never heard of Dr Feelgood, never been to Canvey Island and never worn a shiny suit, you will leave this movie dancing your way to the nearest oil terminal.

      Feel-good factor ALL THE FEELGOODS

      THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)

      And this, Mr Darabont, is the sort of Stephen King story that we like you working on. Topping endless lists of ‘Best Movie Evs!’ (Dr K wrote a book, made a documentary, and still whinges on endlessly about the ‘tacked-on ending’), The Shawshank Redemption had to make our uppers list. For much of this prison drama you may be wondering why we are prescribing it; as we have observed before, you have to get through a lot of Shawshank before you get any redemption. But there is something so noble about Andy Dufresne and Red (Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman) that even when the baton-wielding, Bible-preaching redneck guards are a-clubbin’ and a-beatin’, we are so warmed by this story of hope that we stay with it. When justice finally rains down on the vile prison warden Norton (Bob Gunton) we are more than ready to whoop and holler.

      Red says, ‘You either get busy livin’ or you get busy dyin’,’ and whether you get grumpy at the ending or you just love it as it is, you’ll finish this movie with hope in your heart and the desire to go varnish someone’s boat (not a euphemism).

      Feel-good factor

      THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RICHARD CURTIS APART FROM THE BOAT THAT ROCKED

      If you are walking through town and something lovely happens, that’s Richard Curtis. If your partner says, it’s OK, he forgives you, that’s Richard Curtis. And if as you drive along the A303 you notice a wavy-haired man on his knees proposing to his flaxen-haired girlfriend in the middle of Stonehenge while a boy band mime an Elvis Costello song, that too is Richard Curtis. There is not a single writer, producer or director anywhere who has devoted more time to warm-heartedness than Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis.

      This does not mean soppy. This does not mean sugar-coated pap with horrible characters who make you vomit with their nauseating sincerity and po-faced moralising. It just means that he wants to make films about love (yes, actually). Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting