Happy Saturday From the Holiday Scramble

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Happy Saturday before Christmas! If you’re out and about running last-minute errands and buying those final few gifts, I salute you. It is treacherous. Personally, I plan to avoid the mayhem for a few hours today, and instead watch my beloved SMU Mustangs play Penn State in the first round of the College Football Playoffs. We tore through the ACC in our first season, and now we’re playing even more formidable teams. There’s an alumni watch party at a sports bar in Manhattan Beach, so I’ll converge there with my fellow Ponies (and my supportive husband), eat breakfast tacos and hope for the best. If we win, we go on to the Fiesta Bowl. If we lose, it’s been an incredible year.

It’s also an incredible week for new movies. The heavy-hitter awards contenders tend to come out around this time, and we discussed several of them on our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel and podcast.

• THE BRUTALIST. A true epic in its scope, ambition and running time of 3 ½ hours (but that includes an intermission!). Adrien Brody is tremendous as a Hungarian architect who comes to America after World War II with dreams of artistic freedom and success. Like brutalist design itself, Brady Corbet’s film is grand and imposing, but it also feels substantial and built to last. We loved this. See it in 70mm if you can. In theaters now in limited release and expanding in upcoming weeks.

• A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. Brody is going to have to compete with Timothée Chalamet for best actor come Oscar time. Chalamet’s portrayal of a young Bob Dylan will floor you, and not just because he’s doing his own playing and singing. James Mangold’s film is wise to focus on a pivotal section of the iconic folk singer’s life. Tim Grierson and I thought this was pretty great. In theaters Christmas Day.

• MUFASA: THE LION KING. If you’ve ever wondered how that rift formed between Mufasa and Scar in “The Lion King,” or how Rafiki got his walking stick, or where the chatty bird Zazu came from, you’re in luck. Barry Jenkins directed this lively but needless prequel, and while we looked for traces of the great artist who made “Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and the miniseries “The Underground Railroad,” we couldn’t find them. In theaters.

• NICKEL BOYS. Alonso and I are very much in the minority among our fellow critics in not loving this movie, but we admire the ambition of its approach. RaMell Ross tells the story of two young black men who become friends at a reform school in 1960s Florida, and he does it entirely through first-person perspective. This creates some inspired imagery, but it also made me feel headachy and nauseous. I can’t read in the car, though — your mileage may vary. Playing now in New York and Los Angeles before expanding wider.

Plus, we went live on our channel a couple of times this week:

• ALONSO’S CHRISTMAS MOVIE LIVESTREAM. The Christmas king himself took questions and shared holiday memories. This is always a good time. We’ll do it again next year in case you missed it.

• MOVIE NEWS LIVE! The last one of 2024, and it was packed between the “Superman” teaser, Oscar shortlists and Mufasa vs. Sonic at the weekend box office. We’ll resume these on Friday, Jan. 10 at Noon Pacific, so come on back and see us then.

Also this week, I reviewed “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” for RogerEbert.com, which is shockingly not terrible and actually extremely fun. It’s the best of the three movies, with Jim Carrey doing deranged double duty as mad scientist Dr. Robotnik AND his equally evil grandfather, Gerald Robotnik. But there’s also great joy to be had in Keanu Reeves’ performance as the voice of Shadow, Sonic’s speedy rival. Imagine John Wick as a diabolical hedgehog from space, and you’ll have an idea of how seriously Reeves took this assignment. I’ve never played the Sega games, but I still had a good time, and so did Nic. In theaters.

Plus I filled in on FilmWeek on LAist, where we discussed these films and others including Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, “The Room Next Door,” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” another excellent three-hour epic. So if you’d like to hear my shrill squawk on public radio, here you go.

For December’s Off the Menu poll on our Patreon, we offered several of Alonso’s all-time favorite Christmas movies. Our members chose “Desk Set,” the 1957 screwball comedy starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. This is a movie Alonso and his husband Dave watch every year around this time, but I’d never seen it. “Desk Set” takes place at a TV network research department where Hepburn’s brilliant character and her quick-witted co-workers (including Joan Blondell and Dina Merrill) are about to be replaced by a giant computer that can answer any question you ask it. Eerily prescient! This was Tracy and Hepburn’s eighth pairing and their first film together in color, and while I enjoyed their banter, I thought they both seemed way too old for such frivolous, flirty shenanigans. The boozy, handsy office Christmas party that takes up a bulk of the film’s runtime is a relic that’s both amusing and appalling. But the clothes are great. “Desk Set” is rentable on various platforms including Prime Video and Apple TV+.

And speaking of our Patreon, you can now gift membership to the movie lover in your life. We make an easy and convenient digital stocking stuffer, and your support helps keep us going. We offer different perks at various levels, but all of our patrons get access to our TV recaps, Off the Menu throwbacks and ad-free reviews. You can either share our content monthly or for an entire year. To find out more about gifting membership to our Breakfast All Day Patreon, click here.

Thank you so much for sharing a few moments with me during this crazy, busy time. If you’re visiting family or friends for the holidays, I wish you safe travels. If you’re staying home, I hope I’ve given you some inspiration for movies to watch. And if you’ve found value in my newsletter, I’d be honored if you’d pass it along. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.

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