Feel Bad Entertainment Is Not For The Faint of Heart. Let's Talk about Some of our Favorites.

I finished Manacled. I wanted to give you all my thoughts on it but to be honest I am not ready yet, I need more time to process. I have been really stuck on the way it left me feeling, because it is not good. I feel at a loss. It started to make me think, mostly, “why do I do this to myself?”. Because this is not the first time that I have finished something that make me feel empty and confused even though I loved the story. So here are some other recommendations for if you really just want to question your life and the universe and just generally ask why? Why do we do what we do? Why to other people do what they do? Without further a due:

1. I have to start with the one that prompted this, Manacled. I would like to talk about this more in the future but if you want a story that is gut wrenching despite a happy ending this is the one for you. Everyone can identify with this story on some level. You don’t have to be in the midst of war to know what it feels like to give everything you have to something, and it never be enough for people.

2. My second recommendation is the movie Interstellar. For me personally, anytime the concepts of time and how much we don’t know about the universe we live in are talked about I am bound to be left with a pit in my stomach. This movie really shows us that time is just a concept that is made up and we don’t know the things in our life that cause us to do the things we do. This movie will without a doubt leave you with more questions than answers. Even typing this I barely know what I’m talking about.

3. Another movie that I think falls in this category is Atonement. I have not read the book by Ian McEwan, though I know it is on Crosslyn’s list, maybe she will give us a review someday. This movie could also be classified as simply sad, and I would agree that it is. But it does cause you to consider earnestly how one decision, one wrong assumption, one little lie, can affect someone’s whole life. Sometimes we are so carelessly cruel to one another. This story would make you reconsider how harmless you might think those actions are.

4. Lastly, I must throw The Hunger Games in this mix. Whether you have seen the movies, read the books or done both, this story reflects a world we already live in, and I think that gets overlooked. I have never once gotten through this story and felt good about it at the end. The cultural mirror that this series is, will leave you questioning and in despair.