As someone who went to bed last night with a mug of hot chocolate and The Exorcist, I feel slightly underqualified to tell you how to relax. Nonetheless, in the spirit of procrastination, I’ll be appearing here each week with films to relax your mind, soothe your soul, or – more likely – to at least temporarily distract you from impending doom. Happy exam term.

This week’s recommendations comprise an eclectic mix of films, which I hope means that you’ll find at least one of them attractive. My taste being quite nerdy, we’ll begin with sci-fi; what better to calm you down than the thought of being marooned in space for all eternity?

Our first stop: Star Trek: The Voyage Home. A nostalgic choice for me, and I must admit I watch it chiefly for the shots of San Francisco, my almost-hometown, shrouded in mist. There’s plenty here for the newcomer to Star Trek, however, and as long as you can stomach William Shatner mugging it for the better part of two hours, this film is a populist delight.

Returning home in disgrace, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise are compelled to travel back in time to avert a disaster on Earth. The object of their quest? Whales. Whales are the only thing, it transpires, that can stop a massive space probe from wreaking havoc with Earth’s atmosphere. At this point, I’ll ask you to recall your Year 10 English class; poetic license, if you please.

There is pathos, of course; plenty of it. Commander Spock, brought back to life after a harrowing experience with Ricardo Montalban, has reverted to his emotionless Vulcan ways, and Captain Kirk, his erstwhile friend, is at a loss. There is, of course, a love interest, as well – this time, not a space babe, but an aquarium worker with delightful 80s hair. And of course, there are whales.

If time-travelling whales aren’t your thing (why would they not be?), director Gareth Evans, previously a CGI specialist dealing in monsters, has made for you Godzilla (2013). This, like many recent disaster films, destroys San Francisco with such annihilatory glee that I had to step outside the cinema briefly to recover. Evans runs with the recent trend of sympathetic monsters. The film hinges on a plot that centres around a couple so anodyne that it is hard to sympathise with anyone other than Godzilla himself. Yes, he destroys airports, schools, and cities, but his animation more than makes up for it.

Science fiction touching on timely issues is not new, and Godzilla’s approach to nuclear energy is slightly heavy-handed, set as it is in a Japan that experiences a nuclear disaster. Evans, however, apparently went to great lengths to run his scenes past Japanese viewers affected by the disaster. It is certainly one of the most tasteful nuclear meltdowns that you might see on screen. This Godzilla, despite its artsy tone, is a major throwback to the original post-war Gojira cartoons in Japan, which followed a monster created by radiation and resonated so well with Japanese viewers that they were turned into a franchise. 

I recommend these films on the grounds that seeing things getting smashed can be quite cathartic, and that watching fictional disasters ought to release some of your stress without damage to your person or property. If, however, you find loud noises and spaceships a little too stimulating, I suggest Children of Heaven, for something completely different.

Children of Heaven (Bachehâ-ye Asemân), a children’s film made in Iran, was very well-received at film festivals when it debuted in 1997. Since then it has slipped under the radar. The film’s protagonist, Ali, lives in Tehran with his younger sister Zahra and parents. When Zahra’s shoes are lost, Ali searches desperately for a way to restore them, all the while sharing his single pair of trainers with Zahra so that they will both make it to school. Predictably, this film is not actually about shoes. Yet it manages to pull off a heavy focus on childhood affection without becoming sickly-sweet (a disclaimer: by the end of this film, you will want to hug both these children).

The nice thing about films, I think, is that they approximate a human connection exactly when you need one (that is, at one o’clock in the morning, when you stare at your books and wonder what life might have been like if you had chosen that apprenticeship over university). If this is the case, and if one of these films strikes a chord, I’d like to know. I will be back next week with a special bear-themed column; in the meantime, (try to) stay calm, and have a lovely week.

@citruspeels