What I Watched While Sick

A couple of weeks ago, I got nasty cold. I had no energy to do anything but watch movies. Here’s my evaluation of each movie I watched in terms of its ability to make you not feel like crap but still catch the thread of the movie at the end by the time you’ve fallen asleep in a Nyquil haze.

1. Erin Brokovitch – Perfect for when you don’t have the energy to do anything useful but are in the mood to watch someone kick-ass.

2. Cold Comfort Farm – On of my favorite movies of all time, this stars Kate Beckinsale as the orphaned Flora Poste, who goes to live with her odd relatives on a rural farm. High fashion Poste must figure out how to live among the low-brow farm folk. Joanna Lumley plays her best friend while Eileen Atkins has a brilliant turn as the melodramatic mother. I still would love all of Beckinsale’s wardrobe from this movie.

3. Heathers – Note to self: come up with a group Heathers costume complete with croquet mallets for Halloween this year. I forgot how creepy this movie is. I also must work in, “Great pate, mom, but I gotta motor if I wanna be ready for that party tonight.”

4. Thor – Mmmmm, Chris Hemsworth. It reminded me how much I love summer popcorn movies. I fell asleep for about the middle 20 minutes of this movie, but I still got the plot!

5. In The Loop – This movie is amazing and funny and awesome all around. It is not good to fall asleep to since there is so much great dialogue.

6. Outsourced – Netflix has been recommending this to me forever and I never tried to watch it until I couldn’t sleep from cold nastiness. I spent half the movie trying to remember who the actress is who plays the love interest, and I finally recognized her as the efficient tour-director from the Dr. Who episode with all the Ood who are being sold as servants. It was okay, a light, fluffy romantic comedy where the white dude has to figure out that America! isn’t the best ever. I’m not up on how popular arranged marriage is in India currently, so I couldn’t really judge how I should be viewing the whole arranged marriage-but-having-an-affair plotline.

7. Sabah: A Love Story – This is another one that Netflix has been pressuring me to watch lately. It was kind of interesting. It’s about this lady who is in her 40s and from a conservative Muslim family living in Toronto. I thought the acting was a little rough and some of the plot points about how conservative Islam works in Western countries a little ham-fisted, but I appreciated the spirit in which it was presented. Plus, it was nice to see a romantic movie about a character who isn’t your typical ingenue. I also appreciated that they didn’t entirely demonize people who might choose a more conservative path and instead tried to look at all the grey areas that happen when another culture is trying preserve it’s traditions in a new country.

8. Bridget Jones’s Diary – This movie is always and forever one of the best movies to watch while sick. It will forever trump Love Actually.

9. Clueless – Need I say more? This movie is amazing on all levels.

So, dear readers, what do you watch when sick?