Happy Saturday From Whistler, BC

Saturday Matinee friends! Yes, it’s spring break, but I couldn’t possibly jet off to ski in Canada and leave your inbox cold and empty. So here I am with a few goodies to tide you over until the Easter Bunny shows up on Sunday. As you read this, I’m traveling to Whistler Blackcomb with my family. We love coming here and we’ve been doing it for years — it’s a giant, gorgeous mountain with incredible views and long, cruisey blues. And Nic likes the jump park now that he’s a teenager, so there’s something for everyone. We’ll be here for a week, but we never want to leave.

But movies don’t take a vacation, so we don’t really either at Breakfast All Day. We had to do a bit of juggling this week between my travel and Alonso recording the audio for his upcoming book, “Hollywood Pride,” due out May 14. Here’s what we ended up covering on our YouTube channel:

• GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE: The X in the title is silent, but this knowingly over-the-top monster extravaganza is anything but. Alonso’s always delightful husband, Dave White, joined me for a review, and we both had a blast. This follow-up to 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong” is good, dumb fun. In theaters.

• IMMACULATE SPOILERS: Our brilliant friend Tim Grierson filled in last week on a review of the horror movie “Immaculate,” starring Sydney Sweeney as a nun in trouble in Italy. But so much crazy stuff happens that we knew we had to do a spoiler conversation, too. Neon, which is distributing the film, has created a genius marketing campaign by taking angry Christian tweets and turning them into blurbs. In theaters.

• LA CHIMERA: Alonso and I discussed the latest film from Italian writer-director Alice Rorhwacher, which plays like a magical realism version of the classic one-last-heist plot. Josh O’Connor stars as a hangdog robber with a preternatural gift for sniffing out Etruscan artifacts buried with the dead. I also had the pleasure of reviewing this mesmerizing oddity for RogerEbert.com. In theaters.

• MOVIE NEWS LIVE!: I squeezed in a rare Thursday movie news segment because I didn’t want to leave our folks hanging for too long. There ended up being a lot to talk about, too, including the teaser for Yorgos Lanthimos’ star-studded “Kinds of Kindness,” Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop Tarts movie on Netflix, “A Simple Favor 2,” and Jeremy Allen White possibly playing Bruce Springsteen. Alonso and I will be back discussing news together live at Noon PDT on Friday, April 12, and we hope you can join us then.

Besides spring break, the other joyous occasion this week is the return of baseball. Tim Grierson had a lengthy and entertaining conversation over at Ebert with the great Keith Law about the best and worst baseball movies. Keith, if you’re unfamiliar, is a former baseball scout-turned-writer. He’s such a wise and insightful guy, though, that he uses his prodigious talents to write about a variety of topics, including film, music, cooking and even board games. This was a great back-and-forth between two sharp, inquisitive minds. Keith loves 2008’s “Sugar,” as do I, because it’s so intimate and unsentimental — a rarity in a genre that tends to tug on our sense of nostalgia. John Sayles’ “Eight Men Out” is one of my favorites, too, possibly because it’s not really about baseball. And I share both guys’ disdain for “Trouble With the Curve.” What’s your favorite baseball movie? I’d love to know.

And of course, whenever we go skiing, I always think about movies set on the slopes. Usually, it’s Ruben Östlund’s searing “Force Majeure,” which immediately comes to mind when we’re sitting on an outdoor deck, eating lunch or enjoying après-ski beverages — I wonder how we’d react if an avalanche were barreling toward us. But the 1985 John Cusack comedy classic “Better Off Dead” (above) remains infinitely quotable decades later. (“I want my two dollars!”) When I was a kid, the raunchy ‘80s sex comedy “Hot Dog … The Movie” seemed so naughty. And a couple of James Bond movies feature thrilling ski-chase scenes: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969) and “For Your Eyes Only” (1981). What’s your favorite skiing movie? Chime in on that, too!

Thanks as always for sharing some of your time with me, especially if you’re out and about having adventures with family and friends, too. If you’ve found this useful, I’d be grateful if you’d share it with others. Have a great week, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.