15. The Last Starfighter
Maybe I’m not wasting my life as a barista. Maybe the espresso machine is an exact replica of the controls for an alien spaceship, and I’m being vetted to defeat an evil galactic empire! Okay, probably not, but maybe my manager will sell me one of her adderall again! Yeah!
14. Death Race 2000
Here’s a fun game, watch this before going into work without sleep and figure out the point value for murdering your customers! That lady who wants a “less hot extra foamy latte, NOT a cappuccino”? 500 points. The creepy guy who’s always asking for your inappropriately young female coworker’s schedule? 1,000 easy. That dude who asks for no room and then pours half his coffee into the trash instead of the dump cup despite the fact that the trash can is further away than the dump cup? A million. A fucking million.
13. Tron
Forget your troubles a while and harken back to a time where getting sucked into a video game seemed whimsical and fanciful, not sad and common.
12. Explorers
This underrated gem from Joe Dante is absolutely charming, whimsical and fun, though it does sort of crash and burn toward the end. Sort of like my life.
11. The Neverending Story
I wish I lived in the neverending story of fantasia, and not the never ending story of “guy who’s always one paycheck away from homelessness.” I think my feet are rotting off.
10. The Goonies
They say chewing gum can relieve anxiety because your lizard brain thinks “I must not be in danger because I’m chewing something.” That’s sort of like what watching “The Goonies” at 3:30 a.m. is like. Your lizard brain thinks “I can’t be about to be forced to endure another soul-sucking shift at the job I hate soon, I’m watching “The Goonies.”
9. Batman (1966)
Holy downward spiral Batman, I can’t sleep because I’m worried my employment is hanging by a thread, which is endangering my employment! Hit me with the Bat Self Destructive Cycle Repellent spray!
8. Monster Squad
“Wolfman’s got nard!” Haha, remember that? And you didn’t have a job or anything and you would spend whole days smiling for no reason? Remember?
7. Barbarella
If the thought of being on your feet surrounded by people you hate makes you want to cry, just handle things Jane Fonda style. Get coked to the gills and shoot lasers with sexy bird people. Okay I might be really losing it now.
6. Flash Gordon
You can cry and moan all you want but work is coming either way, so just turn off your brain, look at all the pretty colors and try to ignore the uncomfortably sexual charge Dino De Laurentiis added to this kid’s movie.
5. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
In my frail, suggestable state this movie will probably make me adapt ‘90s burnout vernacular for the rest of the day, but I don’t think they’re allowed to fire me for that. It would be most heinous of them.
4. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
“Robocop” stars as a genius physicist/mathematician/rockstar who must thwart an alien plot with the help of his band The Hong Kong Cavaliers and a Jeff Goldblum cowboy. I’m just shooting for a manic episode at this point. Should I start dressing like Perfect Tommy?
3. Big Trouble in Little China
A bonkers, genre-bending reminder that I don’t need to be the main character of my own life to be a badass.
2. Time Bandits
Yes. Fuck it. Let’s get completely unhinged. Let’s get balls to the wall Terry Gilliam level unhinged. A young boy from a repressed home is taken in by a band of time-traveling dwarf thieves. The bad guy is God. Sean Connery is there, and parents explode. Fuck you reality, I’m watching “Time Bandits.”
1. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
Yup, time for the big guns. If the late Paul Reubens can’t raise my serotonin high enough to endure a sleepless shift at my dead-end job then nothing can. “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” is not a movie. It’s a place you can go, when everywhere else seems too dark, cold and unwelcoming. And if I wind up ordering every cortado-swilling yuppie I deal with today to “Tell ’em Large Marge sent ya!” that’s their problem.
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