What's Your Favorite Sick Day Movie?

by Daniel Crooke

Any film fan knows that when they’re feeling under the weather, there’s at least one silver lining to spending the day in bed: the opportunity to put on a movie in the middle of the day. Just like the definitive cure for the common cold, it’s up for debate how to maximize your debilitated duration. Is this the ideal time to finally begin binge-watching The Americans? Should you opt for the comfort food route, watch old favorites, and boost your health with the warm and fuzzies? Or is this a golden opportunity to burn through your Netflix queue and finally watch the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and Melanie Lynskey starring vehicle I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore?

Now that the seasons are changing it’s that time of the year when coughs and sneezes materialize so ubiquitously around you that they begin to sound like street noises – so it’s time to strategize your sick day viewing head-on.

As I’m currently in the thrilling throes of nose and throat congestion, I’ll share my selections first. Perhaps it’s the general dread of missing out on real life while your day revolves around Vitamin C but I always go for something slice of life with a bit of movie magic schmaltz around the edges, with a cast of real people in a very specific milieu. So yesterday Nicole Holofcener’s lovely first feature Walking and Talking was just what the doctor ordered. 

How about you: what do you like to watch when you're sickly and stuck at home?

Call Me By Your Release Date

By Spencer Coile

After it dazzled audiences and critics alike at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it is not altogether baffling that Call Me By Your Name, the latest entry from I Am Love and A Bigger Splash director Luca Guadagnino was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics before it even premiered at the festival. And for those eagerly awaiting Guadagnino's latest cinematic concoction, our countdown commences: the film's limited release date is scheduled for November 24, 2017, or Thanksgiving weekend.

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Thoughts I Had... This EW "Thor: Ragnarok" Cover

Though it's 240 days until Thor: Ragnarok is in theaters, the heavy promo starts now. EW's new cover features Chris Hemsworth, sans long light blonde Thor wig and thus looking far less Scandinavian (sigh) and his two female co-stars. Thoughts that came to me as they came to me without stopping to edit are after the jump...

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International Women's Day: "White Material"

by Robert Balkovich

Today is International Women's Day. To honor this day, a look back at a great female directed film that was critically lauded at the time but tends to not get the legacy attention it deserves: Claire Denis' "White Material."

Set in an unnamed former French colony in Africa on the brink of violent civil war, White Material is not new territory for Denis – a French national who grew up in Cameroon, Burinka Faso, Somalia and Senegal – but it does represent a more searing look at the ways in which colonialism has completely uprooted the continent.

Our hero of the story is no hero at all...

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Someone pitch a "Beulah" Miniseries. Hear me out.

Imitation of Life (1934) starred Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers who went into the pancake business

On this day in 1902 Louise Beavers born in Cincinatti. Though she was never as famous as the similarly cast Hattie McDaniel she also had her own big film moments in the studio system including the original Imitation of Life in which Claudette Colbert got wildly rich off of her recipe while she Beavers struggled with her light-skinned daughter. FREE PITCH IDEA FOR WRITERS OF COLOR: Don't you think a prestige miniseries on Black Hollywood throughout the years would be fascinating?

More on Louise Beavers and other "on this day" items after the jump...

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