u/MaybeOnFire2025

Hi all -- I am sure I'm not the only one -- but for the past few years, I have been slowly but surely processing a helluva lot of trauma that I never "had time for" before. Meaning, I was always on the hamster wheel of work, kids, wife, house, etc. Trying to avoid/numb pain.

Only in middle age when I took my foot off the work accelerator a bit and started having some downtime to just...think. Reflect.

Believe me, not all of it is voluntary. Lots of intrusive memories, especially about my parents. Things they did, said, etc. Some of it really wild, would undoubtedly result in a visit from the police these days. Most of it emotional abuse/shitty parenting, though, made even more complicated by the fact that they were good providers for material stuff, gave me and my sibling great starts, financially, to our lives, but holy fuck, some really, really bad stuff -- not just guilt, although there was a heaping portion of that as well. Anxiety. Rage. Like, there were times I was sure my father was thisclose to yelling he never wanted kids and/or otherwise losing it physically; he was disabled, but could still throw stuff at me (full coffee mugs, etc.), and did. Mom enabled 100%. The emotional stuff was far worse.

More venting, but offering to listen to any other Xers out there who in middle age are able to take a breather, reflect, and realize that things were a lot more fucked up than we wanted to believe, especially about our parents. Hell, maybe some of us, myself included, were running extra hard on that hamster wheel to avoid processing pain earlier.

Happy to listen.

Was mildly* surprised -- I live in a different town, not too far away, and thought there were enough responsible parents there. Was there some unusual issue for the budget, some controversial thing that set it apart from prior years?

*Or was it the MAGAe who just want to burn everything down?

I'm thinking about those 80s films that were clearly marketed as action/adventure, and indeed had a lot of that, but were actually successfully-veiled romance films, but male-centric enough to be fun for husbands as well. Thinking stuff like Crocodile Dundee, Romancing the Stone.

One could make an argument that this applies to Raiders, but that's more of an action movie with some romance thrown in. I'm looking for stuff that is actually a romance, but dressed up in plenty of action/adventure.

Any other good examples from the 90s onwards (yes, aware of the sequels to those noted above). And I don't mean cheesy CGI messes with bad scripts like Passengers.

Thanks!