Happy Saturday for the Last Time in 2024

Happy Saturday, all — although every day kinda feels like a Wednesday during this in-between time, doesn’t it? Hope you had a beautiful Christmas, or you’re enjoying Hanukkah, or maybe you’re just relishing a bit of a break. You’ve earned it.

Did you go to the movies on Christmas? My sister-in-law and her husband visited us from Scottsdale for a few days, and I took them and Nic to see “A Complete Unknown.” I liked it even more the second time around, and appreciated both the subtlety and the swagger of Timothée Chalamet’s performance. I am more certain than ever that he’s going to win the Oscar (and yes, I realize that nominations don’t come out for a few more weeks yet). He is electrifying, if you’ll pardon the pun.

If “A Complete Unknown” has you thinking about Bob Dylan these days, you must check out “Don’t Look Back,” D.A. Pennebaker’s groundbreaking, black-and-white documentary. Pennebaker follows Dylan in England during his 1965 tour, and creates an entire genre of filmmaking in the process. It offers an intriguing overlap with the last part of James Mangold’s film but it’s also hugely entertaining in its own right, as Dylan reveals himself to be charismatic and maddening in equal measure. “Don’t Look Back” is streaming for free on The Criterion Channel through Jan. 1.

And then once you’ve seen that, this scene from “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” will make a whole lot more sense to you:

As for new movies, we kept it low-key over at our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel and podcast (where we’re about to hit 1 million downloads, woo hoo!):

• CARRY-ON. So many viewers requested that we catch up with this Netflix thriller, and I’m glad we did. This is the kind of lean, mean action movie we enjoy from Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra (“Unknown,” “Orphan,” “The Shallows”). After playing variations of a snarky jerk for the entirety of his career, Jason Bateman is a straight-up villain here as a terrorist who forces a TSA agent (Taron Egerton) to let a suspicious suitcase pass through security on Christmas Eve at LAX. Streaming now.

• THE ROOM NEXT DOOR. A new Pedro Almodóvar film is always an event. But “The Room Next Door” is especially noteworthy because it’s the Spanish master’s first feature in English, starring two of the most daring and enduring actresses working today. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore play old friends who reconnect after many years apart. When Swinton’s character asks Moore’s character for a major favor, it tests their bond. Alonso and I differ on how effective the film is, but we both enjoyed it. In theaters now in New York and Los Angeles before opening wider in January.

Over at our Patreon, we recapped the finale of “Dune: Prophecy” on Max, which turns out to be the season 1 finale and not the end of the series. We learned recently that the show, which takes place 10,000 years before Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies, will be back for a second season. And that makes total sense, given the cliffhanger ending here. This six-episode run was crammed with twists and turns and deeply meaningful flashbacks, and it featured impressive production values throughout. Plus, Emily Watson and Olivia Williams were both reliably great as psychic sisters with secrets. We’ll be back for more when “Dune: Prophecy” returns.

One of my favorite things Alonso and I do is our Table for One reviews. You pick the movie you want to review with us, we meet up online to discuss it, then I send you the video to keep. It’s been a great way for us to get to know our viewers better, and it’s often introduced us to movies we’ve never even heard of, much less seen. That was the case recently when our good friend Andrew Krueger asked to discuss the 2018 Spanish drama “The Realm” (“El reino”) with us. Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s film never got a theatrical release in the United States, but it won seven Goya awards including best director and best actor. Antonio de la Torre stars as a corrupt government official who ends up taking the fall for his equally powerful and shady friends. It’s based on a recent Spanish scandal but plays like a paranoid political thriller from the 1970s. We loved the long tracking shots and propulsive techno score. “The Realm” is available for online rental through Prime Video, Apple TV+ and various other platforms. And if you’d like to take part in a Table for One review yourself, you can find out more at ChristyLemire.com.

Thank you so much for sharing your morning, your weekend, your year with me. It’s been such a pleasure building this newsletter and watching it grow, and I’m grateful for your support along the way. If you’ve found value here, I’d be honored if you’d share it with friends and family. And if you’re looking for me on social media, apparently I’m on Bluesky — I set up an account a year ago as an alternative to Twitter and totally forgot about it until Alonso reminded me. Turns out, there’s a lot of nice folks there, so I’m planning to dip a toe in from time to time. Come say hi!

Have a tremendous New Year’s Eve, Happy 2025, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.