What Is the Best Movie to Watch with a Sinus Infection?

+ sneezing at the regal essex

Want to know what two weeks of work travel gets you? Enough frequent flyer miles to get you a one-way ticket to Pittsburgh and a reverberating sinus infection. Still, I soldier on. There is no rest for the wicked, and if you can name someone more wicked than a movie blogger, I’d like to hear it in the comments.

Society without amateur film criticism

I’m hard at work behind the scenes at Deeper Into Movies HQ, and hopefully I have something to show for it soon. In the meantime, you can check out my appearance on the Trylove podcast, the unofficial podcast of the greatest movie theater in the world. Add the Trylon to your want-to-go, while you’re at it, or maybe throw them some change? The Trylon was essentially my incubator program as a hopeful writer, so if you’re hate-reading this, you have them to thank.

Due to my various times in various convention centers, I have watched only a couple recent releases but I am, as always, eager to weigh in….

Monkey Man (Dev Patel, in theaters)

Dev Patel makes his directorial debut in this Wick-adjacent revenge thriller as a down-but-not-out amateur street fighter.

Where’s the Men’s Health cover, Dev?

Having seen and loved Patel in several movies over the last decade, it remains shocking to me that I first saw him as Anwar — the skinny teenager in Skins (for Gen-Z: it was British Euphoria) struggling with how to reconcile his conservative religious beliefs alongside his largely white, largely secular peer group. Anwar and Jamal, Patel’s canny orphan in Slumdog Millionaire, loom unfortunately large in the small canon of South Asian protagonists in Western media. While watching Monkey Man, I was struck by how few comps there are for spiritual thrillers in Hollywood. As much as Monkey Man is a relative of the John Wick genre (more on that next month), it’s also an investigation of faith with a directness unusual for movies that don’t end with Ethan Hawke wrapped in barbed wire.

I’m told this is also how Father Stu ends

You could read Monkey Man’s narrative about the worst of urban poverty, and the people who gleefully profit from it, as a reaction to Slumdog, and to the swell of white-eyes-on-India feel-good fiction that followed (Eat Pray Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel … honestly Avatar). But this is just one of the many ideas Monkey Man is stuffed with: it’s a rejection of false gurus, of violent gender politics, of a growing fascist police state. Unsurprisingly, Monkey Man feels cluttered with ideas that don’t get enough space to breathe, and it’s disappointingly action-light for its long middle hour. Still, the frenzied denouement, and Patel’s full evolution into bonafide action hunk, is worth the price of admission.

The First Omen (Arkasha Stevenson, in theaters)

The prequel to the 1976 classic The Omen (you know, the one with Damien).

Me at 2:30 pm on my work from home days

An American nun heads to Italy to take her vows, only to uncover a nefarious pregnancy scheme by an extremist priest who hopes to birth a new kind of savior. Oops! It’s Immaculate. This is the better version, with stronger acting and more convincing frights, but it’s drawing on similar anxieties about secret cabals and the denial of female autonomy. 

No sinus infection can keep me off Canva

Amidst all this nun cinema (Benedetta streaming now on Hulu), I stand before you asking: where are the monks? Are we just not as interested in brotherhood, or in male-to-male expressions of sexuality? What better time than right now for a movie about male isolation, homosocial bonding, and masculine radicalization? Anyway, I’m looking for a co-writer for my monks-gone-wild erotic thriller. Working title is The Nail.