An Uncertain Saturday

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Happy Saturday, all. It’s been another terrible week in our country, with another reason to feel depressed and demoralized. But in these pre-dawn hours when I’m the only one awake, sitting in silence by the glow of the Christmas tree that I swear we’re going to take down this weekend, I feel grateful that I get to write to you. I treasure this supportive, kindhearted community we’re building. More than ever, we have to look to each other — and look out for each other — or we’ll go mad. So that’s the attitude I’m choosing as I move through the world these days.

Part of that includes reviewing movies, which may seem frivolous right now, but maybe you could use the mindless distraction. And boy, do I have one of those for you. Here’s what we discussed this week on our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel and podcast. I hope you’ll join us if you’re out and about, and maybe leave a review and a few stars if you’re so inclined.

• PRIMATE. Ben is a brilliant, highly-trained chimpanzee who gets bitten by a rabid mongoose and goes on a homicidal rampage in Hawaii. It happens! It especially happens at the beginning of January, which has become a prime spot for insane horror movies. (See: “M3GAN.”) This is extremely gory but it’s also lean, mean fun. I found myself saying “Wowww,” out loud, a lot. In theaters.

• SONG SUNG BLUE. If you’re looking for a cheesier flavor of escapism, there’s writer-director Craig Brewer’s feel-good musical drama, inspired by a true story. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson star as musicians who fall in love while performing as a Neil Diamond tribute band. The first hour of this is enjoyable, and then it takes a major turn and never really recovers. Hudson is terrific here, though: funny, sexy and earthy, and she can really sing. In theaters.

• MARTY SUPREME LIVE SPOILER CHAT. After I saw “Marty Supreme” for a second time on Christmas Day, I knew we needed to do a spoiler chat to dig into all the things we didn’t want to ruin in our non-spoiler review. That includes the ending, which Alonso and I still don’t agree on. Join us and share your thoughts.

• MOVIE NEWS LIVE! Our first movie news livestream of 2026 ran longer then usual because there was so much to talk about. including Sunday’s Golden Globes and the state of awards season, the “Stranger Things” finale, Mickey Rourke’s GoFundMe, Spencer Pratt’s run for LA mayor, and that scathing essay Ashley Tisdale wrote about dumping her celebrity mom group. Join us every Friday at Noon Pacific.

Also this week, we went in-depth on our lists of the best movies and worst movies of 2025. I wrote about this in last week’s newsletter, but it’s always fun to go back and forth with Alonso and compare our picks. Sometimes we’re on the same page, as we are with the big-budget Netflix vomit “The Electric State” above, and sometimes we surprise each other. Check it out, and let me know what you would pick.

Over at our Patreon, we caught up with “Heated Rivalry,” which has become a massive pop-culture phenomenon. The queer hockey romance series wrapped up at the end of 2025, and I worried that we might be too late discussing it at the start of 2026. But stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie have only become more popular over the past couple weeks, and it appears they’re not going anywhere. We binged the Canadian show over the holidays and recapped all six episodes at once. So if you’re a Patreon member, enjoy! And if you’re not, but you’d like to check out our lengthy conversation, the video is available for individual purchase. Whenever writer-director Jacob Tierney comes out with season 2, we’ll be there to watch it week by week.

We also finished our recaps of “Pluribus” and “I Love LA,” which completed their first seasons while we were off at the end of last year. Both of these shows already have been renewed for a second season, so we’ll be back to talk about them, as well.

Finally this week, I had the pleasure of moderating a Q&A on Tuesday night with writer-director Brandt Andersen after a screening of his new movie, “I Was a Stranger.” Andersen is a longtime producer who’s worked with veteran directors including Martin Scorsese (“Silence”), Doug Liman (“American Made”) and Peter Berg (“Lone Survivor”). Here, he’s made a movie of his own, inspired by his experiences doing humanitarian work in the Middle East. “I Was a Stranger” follows five characters — a doctor, a soldier, a smuggler, a poet and a captain — whose lives intersect when a boat packed with refugees leaves Turkey for Greece. Andersen favors long tracking shots and intimate camerawork to put us in the minds and struggles of these people, and he ends with a powerful twist. This was a deeper and more emotional conversation than most. “I Was a Stranger” is in theaters now.

That’ll do it for me for this week. Again, thank you so much for being here. We will get through all of this together. If you’ve enjoyed my newsletter, I hope you’ll pass it along to a friend. And if someone passed it along to you, I hope you’ll subscribe. Have a great week, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.