Life isn’t fair. When you’re feeling sorry for yourself (as I do sometimes) the best thing is to exercise or call up a friend and have a chat. But, ha! As if we’re going to do that!

What we are going to do is engage in some low-key Schadenfreude. However, laughing at the pain of real life people is sadistic at best and borderline psychopathic at worst. What to do?

Little villains, I’ve got the answer; watch a fake person be put through the ringer, courtesy of Hollywood of course. These movies are best enjoyed with a glass of red and an evil laugh.

The Revenant

Not feeling this ethics essay? Spare a thought for Leo and all the crap he had to go through for an Oscar. As Hugh Glass, an 18th Century frontiersman, he copped a lot. For starters, he fell off a cliff and then had to sleep in the carcass of his horse that also fell off the cliff.

Glass nearly drowns about 10 times, he’s buried alive and cauterizes a neck wound using gunpowder. In a happier scenes he eats raw liver J. Oh, and he watches his son get murdered.

Let’s not forget that none of this would have happened if Hugh hadn’t been mauled by a bear.

This Is 40

Last year a “friend” told me to watch this because it was, and I quote: “funny.” She was wrong.

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of the slanted mouth emoji.

Guys and gals, we should be counting our lucky stars that we are young and free and not living in a Judd Apatow movie. If this is what growing up looks like, there’s no way we should want to.

Moulin Rouge

Picture this: you’re a young, Scottish, penniless writer with big dreams and a RIDICULOUS OBSESSION WITH LOVE. In Paris, you fall for the most beautiful woman ever but then – bummer – find out she’s a prostitute only pretending to love you. That is her job. Ouch.

It gets worse. Said ladylove needs to sleep with a skeezy Duke in order to finance this ridiculous production that she’s starring in. He’s terrible; he doesn’t even believe in true love.

When you do finally end up together you find out that she has tuberculosis because of course she does; this is a Baz Luhrmann movie.

Literally seconds after your joyous duet she dies in your arms. End scene. Roll credits.

Anna Karenina

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” wrote Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. So yes, guys, we are in for a barrel of laughs.

In one of the first scenes someone is crushed by a train and dies. The rest of the story is a cocktail of extra-marital affairs, spurned marriage proposals, childbirth, unrequited love, the cold, cold Russian countryside and some very bad decisions. The movie ends with a heartbroken Anna throwing herself in front of – you guessed it – a train.

Your life is probably better than this. If not, at least it’s warmer.

The Blair Witch Project

Tbh, any horror movie would sit comfortably on this list. But I watched The Blair Witch Project without sound on a bus and was still terrified to the point of nausea. Next time you’re feeling a bit touchy about your shitty part-time job, just be glad you’re not lost in the woods being chased by a freakin’ witch.

Twilight

Things could be worse. You could be called Renesmee.

Lucy studies journalism and Spanish at the University of Wollongong. She’d work a pun into everything if she could.

(Lead image: This Is 40/Facebook)