Happy Saturday From Jury Duty

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Happy Saturday, all. Things have been a little wacky around here as I’ve been in and out of jury duty over the past week. I haven’t been picked, but I haven’t been rejected either. I’m just sitting, and waiting, and listening to potential panelists answer questions about their backgrounds and biases. It’s a fascinating process seeing this cross-section of humanity come together: an Uber Eats driver and an engineering professor, a dentist and a coffee house worker. But I’ve got stuff to do — like this newsletter, for example. So hopefully they’ll decide they don’t need a film critic.

Still, we figured out a way to squeeze in a whole bunch of movie reviews on our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel and podcast. Apologies in advance for the way Friday’s videos sound — my wi-fi went out right as we were about to do our weekly livestream, so I dashed to the library in my neighborhood and borrowed theirs. It’s not ideal, but I tried to make it work.

• WE LIVE IN TIME. Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh are Movie Stars, and their talent, likability and crazy chemistry go a long way for a while in making this film work. It’s an old-fashioned weepy about how a romance survives despite a terminal illness, but it’s told out of order, which is a distracting and distancing device. Still, you’ll remember the childbirth scene. In limited release now, going wider next week.

• THE APPRENTICE. Sebastian Stan IS Donald Trump. But more intriguingly, Jeremy Strong IS Roy Cohn, the lawyer who takes the young Trump under his ruthless tutelage in 1970s and ‘80s New York. The Trump campaign tried to keep this film from being released, which is reason alone to see it. I liked the first half better than the second half. In theaters.

• THE OUTRUN. Like “We Live in Time,” “The Outrun” has a non-linear narrative — but here, it actually makes sense, as Saoirse Ronan’s character recalls her struggles with alcohol on the road to redemption. I related to quite a bit of what she experiences here as she awkwardly tries to figure out who she is and what her place is in the world without drinking. This one’s excellent. In theaters.

• TERRIFIER 3. It’s the third movie in the “Terrifier” series, hence the name. Alonso and I had never seen the first two, but we heard there was great interest in this one (plus it’s a Christmas movie) so we thought we’d give it a shot. Thankfully, we had Alonso’s insightful husband, Dave White, to enlighten us. This slasher flick about a homicidal clown is so wildly over-the-top in its graphic nature, it’s actually funny. Still, you may not want to eat beforehand. In theaters.

• MOVIE NEWS LIVE! This was a quicker one than usual because of my technical difficulties. Still, it’s always nice to see our folks out there in the ether. Plus, you get to enjoy some of our local peacocks in the background. No news next week because I’m going out of town, but come on back on Oct. 25.

Have you watched “Nobody Wants This” on Netflix? Or rather, I should ask, have you binged it? ‘Cause that’s what I’ve done over the past couple of days. Usually, I’m not a fan of when a streaming service dumps an entire season of a series all at once. I’d rather savor the episodes and enjoy the anticipation, week after week. But a show like “Nobody Wants This” is tailor-made for bingeing in the same vein as “Ted Lasso.” So I sat down one afternoon this week to watch one or two episodes because I’d heard such great things about it and ended up watching eight straight, then finished the last two the next morning. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody have such delightful chemistry, and the writing is so breezy, and the supporting cast is so great, and it really gets a specific kind of L.A. right. Plus it starts out with a Haim song and it’s about podcasters — what’s not to like? Netflix just announced a season 2, which makes sense given the way season 1 ends, so hopefully we can find a way to get to it on our Patreon.

We were heartbroken to learn about the damage our friends suffered at the Grail Moviehouse in Asheville, North Carolina. Hurricane Helene destroyed this wonderful little arthouse theater, a hub of community and cool programming within the city’s arts district. We got to know the Grail when we were doing Movie House Shout-Outs in 2022, in hopes of inspiring folks to support their local independent theaters as we were coming out of the pandemic. Now, they’ve set up a GoFundMe to support their two employees, for whom the theater was their only source of income. If you’d like to find a way to help those who’ve been hurt by the recent storms, perhaps you’ll consider this. And we hope Davida and Steve at the Grail find a way to rebuild.

Thank you so much for sharing some of your time with me this weekend. If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, I hope you’ll pass it along to someone in your life who loves movies, too.

There’s still time to pick up tickets for our screening of “The Fog” at The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, another of our Movie House Shout-Out theaters. Join us on Sunday, Oct. 27 at 2pm Pacific, then hang out afterward as we record a review for our podcast. Hope to see you! ‘Til then, have a great week, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.