List: Movies to Lift Your Spirit from Rogerebert.com
Posted on July 31, 2016 at 2:03 pm
I was honored to be asked to participate in this critics’ discussion of movies that may not be our favorites or the best but that always cheer us up.
Here’s what I wrote:
I have a bunch. I call them “flu movies,” and they are the only ones I will buy, to have on hand any time they are needed. Many are musicals, like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” “The Music Man,” and “Bells are Ringing.” In a moment of very dire professional circumstances, I admit it, I watched “High School Musical.” Three times in a row.
Some are funny, like “Galaxy Quest” and “Happy Texas.” Some are romantic like “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” and some are empowering like “Stick It.” Some I know by heart, like “The Philadelphia Story” and “His Girl Friday” and “I Love You Again.”
My view is that movies fall along two axes. The horizontal is bad to good. But the vertical is what I call “watchability.” Some movies aren’t especially good, but they effortlessly evoke a kind of pleasant dramatic justice that makes them cinematic mood-elevators. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.
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as another deliciously twisted bad guy. But this morning, I’m remembering another of my favorites, his distressed Shakespearean actor slumming in a sci-fi television series, 
Rockwell takes on the biggest possible acting challenge — he in alone on screen for the entire movie as a man on near the end of a three-year solo mission in outer space.
One of my favorite comedies of all time is this knowing and very loving tribute to “Star Wars” and its fans. Rockwell plays an actor who appeared on one episode of the beloved sci-fi series who gets taken along when the stars of the show are transported into a real outer space adventure.
Rockwell plays Kenny Waters in this fact-based story of a wrongly imprisoned man whose sister went to college and law school to have his conviction overturned.
In the Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz reboot of the 1970’s television series, Rockwell plays a client hiding more than one secret.
Tom Hanks is a prison guard in this Stephen King story set on Death Row, and Rockwell is one of the most vile and despicable prisoners.
and its sequel, 
are documentaries about the passionate fans, from the woman who was excused from jury duty because she insisted on wearing her “Star Trek” uniform to the woman who has thousands of photos of Brent Spiner to the young man who has very firm ideas about the epaulets on his uniform to the dentist whose office and staff attire are based on the show. And many, many Klingons.
is a hilarious tribute and spoof starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and Alan Rickman as actors who once appeared on a “Star Trek”-like series and now spend their days living off their former fame and their loyal fans. They discover that those fans include some aliens who believe the shows they saw were historical documents and who have created a real-life spaceship that replicates the one on the show. It is one of the funniest movies of the last ten years.