I have something against watching movies with 'happy' or 'good' in the title. They are often quite the opposite. Except for Happy Gilmore and Goodburger. Don't get me wrong, I prefer morose to peppy all the time, but if I know from the beginning that something is going to be stab-you-in-the-heart depressing, it's hard to get motivated to see it. But I saw Happy Together (love love love Netflix) finally. It was so beautiful, of course, and I have a hardcore crush on Tony Leung (for obvious reasons, see right) and I would give anything to see the world in Wong Kar-Wai's reds and oranges and yellows and shadows. It was achingly, squirmingly, and ordinarily sad, with the occasional laugh that jarred you out of your complete absorption in the movie. Moments like being woken up in the middle of a feverishly ill night to cook for your lazy, broken-handed boyfriend, like having to buy cigarettes for him at 3am, it was the ordinariness that was both touching and funny.

About the humour in everyday life, I fell down the stairs yesterday. Just another highlight in a miserable week of trying to quit smoking and failing, of worrying about my friend and her cancer scare, and then feeling depressed that the threat of cancer looming all around isn't quite scary enough to make me quit smoking, and then feeling ashamed because somehow everything always has to be about me, thinking I was head-injured, and having a battle of wills (in my mind, but as she probably doesn't give a fuck, I guess that means she wins the battle of wills hands down) with my useless fucking roommate who will never clean the kitchen. Oh, and I killed a huge Chernobyl cockroach that FLEW into my room this week. I thought cockroaches only flew in the southern hemisphere (payback for hot weather, mangoes and lychees all year round). Money also makes me feel blue. I have to pay back my student loans and the monthly payments are not small, so I want a laptop (need) and want to go to Paris to use up my vacation before I lose it (yeah, I know, Paris is so over) and I can't do either. Wow, tears just filled my eyes, I have to stop and have a laugh-at-myself-for-the-pity-party and get-some-perspective moment. I guess I just have to get my ass in gear and try to get more freelance work.

I guess this is what mundane sounds like. It's not expansive blue-washed waterfall scenes and beautiful people looking sad in cabs. It's killing fucking cockroaches, forgetting to buy cat litter, being poor, hating your roommates and having an ugly bruise on your shoulder that looks like stretch marks.

Here's something that isn't false advertising. A list of truly happy movies. Not poignant happy, or a succession of tragedies ending in one small happiness, or huge romantic happy movies that make you feel sad about your life, but real I-feel-like-hugging-myself-afterwards and kissing the world happy movies:

1. Anne of Green Gables (epic, romantic, CANADIAN! orphan makes good story, what more could you ask?)
2. The Cutting Edge (included in the 'any dance movie is cheerful' category)
3. When Harry Met Sally (you must sing 'Surrey with the Fringe on top' for this to work)
4. Any Jane Austen book adapted for the screen. I highly recommend Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma (shudder, Gwyneth). Hijinks in pinafores, repressed lust and choreographed dances in drawing rooms!
5. Whale Rider (uplifting movie, totally kickass little girl and Maori tattoos)
6. 200 Cigarettes. (Great music, Dave Chapelle, and finally the right girl ends up with the right guy, Janeane Garofalo + Elvis Costello)
7. Se7en (happy movie only for me because Gwyneth Paltrow's head gets chopped off)
8. Sneakers (any hacker movie with themes of bringing down big business. See Hackers, Antitrust, WarGames, The Net)
9. Eat, Drink Man Woman (most movies about food fall into this category, not cannibalism a la The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her lover or Hannibal (both very cool though), or stupid Big Night, but greats like Scent of Green Papaya, Like Water for Chocolate, Mystic Pizza...which brings me to the final and the most perfect happy movie ever, that is romantic, uplifting, funny, and murderous and empowering and timeless and perfect....
10. Fried Green Tomatoes. Everything about this movie is wonderful, and just because you cry everytime doesn't mean it isn't happy. We just do that sometimes.