Stutz

This Netflix movie, directed by actor Jonah Hill, talks about how our own thoughts can be healing. The movie is a relaxing chat between Jonah and his therapist, Phil Stutz. In the movie, they both look back at their lives and share useful ways of dealing with negative emotions and feelings of hopelessness. Jonah is clearly grateful for having become a better, happier person under the guidance of Dr Stutz. Both are honest with their emotions and unpretentious.

Apart from the useful tips on personal mental health, this movie can also be useful in learning English. Both men here speak slowly and clearly enough (as opposed to conversations in action-packed movies) and they talk about stuff we can all relate to. 

Let's look at a couple of quotes from this movie, with mistakes in them - and see if you can find what is wrong.

Explanation:

One mistake here is "event". After "all" you need to add -s when you have a countable noun. So, "all events". 

Another mistake is "values." The plural noun "values" means your moral values, your beliefs, what you believe to be right or wrong. But the singular noun "value" means: 

• how much something is worth or 
• how important or useful something is. 

Here, "all events have value" means that we should consider everything that happens to us as an important experience, in order to feel happier. The last mistake is "zone". Here you need the article "a" since the noun "zone" is a countable noun.

Corrections: 

You need to look at all events as having value. If you can do that, then you're in a zone of tremendous opportunity.

The second quote:

Explanation:

Here one mistake, repeated twice, is "thoughts". After "every" you need a singular noun, even though "every" means the same as "all". We say "every person", "every car", "every story" and so on. 

Another mistake is the word "choice." A lot of students, especially in Hong Kong, use "choice" as a verb even though it is a noun. The verb, and the right word here, is "choose."

Corrections:

Every thought you have is gonna affect your mood. Every thought you have is gonna be either positive or negative. So the Grateful Flow wants to choose the positives.

Doing exercises like the above may be helpful, but watching movies like this one can help you even more, in many ways: build up vocabulary (not textbook vocabulary but real life vocabulary), understand grammar and also improve your listening skills. I say, give it a try!