Matt Singer's new book Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever is a delight, a labor of love that traces one of the most significant forces in film criticism in the 20th century. For those of us who grew up learning about movies from these guys on this show, it's a necessary and lovely read. This week, I caught up with a complicated, thoughtful story from Lila Shapiro that Vulture ran in September about the lawsuit filed by the two then-teenage stars of Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. It raises a host of questions and is well worth a read. I was very curious about Pain Hustlers, yet another based-on-a-true-story film about the evils of the pharmaceutical industry. It stars Emily Blunt as a single mom who gets a job as a rep for a new pain med and Chris Evans as her dirtbag boss. The reviews have been, at best, mixed. I think Blunt and Evans are both good -- this is the most convincing dirtbag turn of his career, I'd say -- although the story ends up retracing a lot of now-familiar ground. It's now on Netflix. They're just beginning a limited rollout of the Alexander Payne film The Holdovers, which we'll be covering on an upcoming episode of PCHH. (It opens wide on November 10.) Mild spoiler alert for that episode? I really liked it. | 
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