You need the release but you cannot afford to go near your own material. These films give you somewhere else to put it. Real feelings, someone else's story -- the distance is exactly what makes it work.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Gives you somewhere else to put it. The distance is the whole mechanism.
The distance works
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
Real enough to work, far enough away that it does not cost you anything personal.
Lets you feel it safely
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
Real enough to work, far enough away that it does not cost you anything personal.
Lets you feel it safely
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Real enough to work, far enough away that it does not cost you anything personal.
The distance works
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.
Gives you somewhere else to put it. The distance is the whole mechanism.
Lets you feel it safely
The distance works
For when you need the world to go away for a while. This does that.
A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
Real enough to work, far enough away that it does not cost you anything personal.
The distance works
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
Gives you somewhere else to put it. The distance is the whole mechanism.
Lets you feel it safely
A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
Real enough to work, far enough away that it does not cost you anything personal.
The distance works
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
Real enough to work, far enough away that it does not cost you anything personal.
The distance works
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
Real enough to work, far enough away that it does not cost you anything personal.
Lets you feel it safely
The right film for the right state is a specific thing. These are specific.