Hippity Hoppity Saturday

In partnership with

Happy Saturday, all. Happy Easter weekend for those who celebrate. And Happy Monday after Easter, when all that delicious candy will be 50% off.

A little personal check-in before we get to movie reviews: Now that we’re home from spring break, I’m officially on breast cancer duty. It’s a weird time, filled with doctor appointments and MRIs and biopsies. I realize I’m in the best possible bad situation with my prognosis, but there are still many known unknowns and a long road ahead: surgery on May 5, weeks of radiation afterward, and the estrogen blocker I’ll have to take for the next five years to help prevent the cancer from coming back. My particular kind found the estrogen and progesterone in my body delicious and fed on them, so I’ve had to stop taking my hormone replacement therapy entirely. Welcome back, hot flashes and night sweats! Please spare a thought for my sweet husband and son as they endure my mania.

As for the escapism you’re here for, it’s a surprisingly strong week at the movies, given that we’re in the middle of April. Here’s what we talked about on our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel and podcast.

• SINNERS. Wow wow wow. We loved this movie. Ryan Coogler takes a huge swing with this Southern Gothic horror musical and it pays off big-time. This dazzling genre mash-up features a charismatic Michael B. Jordan doing double duty as identical twins in 1930s Mississippi. Unfortunately, the second trailer gives away everything that’s going on here, but Alonso and I tried to be respectful in our review. See it on the biggest screen you can find — and check out this highly informative video Coogler shot, in which he nerds out about film stocks and aspect ratios for 10 minutes. It’s a total treat if you love process like I do. In theaters.

• THE WEDDING BANQUET. Andrew Ahn (“Fire Island,” “Driveways”) remakes the 1993 Ang Lee arthouse classic (which, sadly, isn’t streamable anywhere, but maybe your local library has a copy). He has such a gentle, intuitive way with his character studies. For his version of the queer romantic comedy, Ahn has amassed a lovely cast that includes Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, and the legendary Joan Chen and Youn Yuh-jung. In theaters.

• A MINECRAFT MOVIE. This came out while I was on vacation, but it’s become such a massive phenomenon that we knew we had to catch up with it, and we were both surprised at how much we enjoyed ourselves. Clearly, we are not the target audience for this video game adaptation, but thankfully I had Nic with me to serve as translator. In theaters (in case you were unaware).

• MOVIE NEWS LIVE! It had been a few weeks since we’d done a movie news livestream, so we had lots to catch up on: the new “Fantastic Four” trailer, Seth Rogen’s comments, the Aimee Lou Wood “Saturday Night Live” fiasco, Fyre Festival 2 and more. We meet up at our YouTube channel on Fridays at Noon Pacific, and we’ll try and be as consistent as possible in the weeks and months ahead. Join us!

Over at our Patreon, we recapped the intense and insanely violent “Daredevil: Born Again” finale. By now, you’d think Kingpin would know better than to wear a white suit when he plans to crush a man’s skull with his bare hands, but maybe the messiness is the point. We thought this show was pretty great in its gritty, operatic scope, and particularly in the performances from Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio. You can catch up with all of our “Daredevil: Born Again” recaps here. And we’ll be sure to discuss season 2 whenever it comes out on Disney+.

Gonna wrap it up here because besides being Easter weekend, it’s also Earth Day weekend. Later this morning, Nic and I will be volunteering with the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy on their annual service day, alongside several students and parents from his school district. I’ve loved working with this group, and now more than ever it feels like a necessary act of defiance to do something good for the planet, even in the smallest of ways. If you’ve enjoyed my newsletter, I’d be honored if you’d share it with a family member or friend who loves movies too. Have a great week, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.