The Wicked Weekend of the West

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Happy Saturday, all. As you read this, we’re heading up to Whistler to ski over Thanksgiving week. This was sort of a last-minute decision: We wanted to go someplace different like Park City, but no place different has snow. Whistler has snow.

Whatever you’re doing for the holiday, whether it’s visiting family or staying home and hosting, I hope it’s delicious and relaxing. And if movies are part of your plan, I’ve got you covered.

Here’s what we reviewed this week on our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel and podcast. Take us with you if you’re traveling over the holiday, too, and maybe leave a review and a few stars. It helps folks find us in the vast expanse of podcasts. Thanks!

• WICKED: FOR GOOD. Alonso and I didn’t agree on the first half of “Wicked” from last year, and we’re even further apart this time. The best songs are in part one, it’s true, but part two has more emotional heft. Still, the production and costume design remain dazzling, and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo can sing the hell out of these tunes. In theaters everywhere this weekend. You can run but you can’t hide.

And if you’re interested in reading my full review of “Wicked: For Good” over at Ebert, here it is. Walking out of the screening, I thought I liked this one a little better in some ways than the first one, but then I ended up giving it three stars out of four again. I look forward to hearing your thoughts when you see it.

• KEEPER. More nightmare fuel from horror director Osgood Perkins (“Longlegs,” “The Monkey”). This is a deeply unsettling sensory experience with a tremendous lead performance from Tatiana Maslany. We have a non-spoiler review for you here, but we’re planning to do a live spoiler chat after the Thanksgiving holiday to sort through what’s really happening, so keep an eye out for details on that. In theaters.

• JAY KELLY. George Clooney IS George Clooney in “Jay Kelly.” Or at least he’s playing an extremely Clooneyesque figure. Noah Baumbach’s meta drama follows a Hollywood A-lister as he looks back on his life and legacy. This is a very classy, old-fashioned picture with an incredible supporting cast including Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough and Patrick Wilson. In select theaters now before streaming on Netflix Dec. 5.

   

  And once you’ve seen “Jay Kelly,” you’ll want to read this LA Times interview with Crudup. He breaks down his single, suspenseful scene, which changes the whole movie. It’s a tremendous performance from an actor who consistently finds ways to surprise us. (More on that in our recap of “The Morning Show” season finale below.)

• REBUILDING. It’s Josh O’Connor Week — again! — between this and the upcoming “Wake Up Dead Man.” But that’s a good thing, because it gives us another chance to enjoy his versatility. Here, he gives a quietly powerful performance as a cowboy who has lost everything in a devastating wildfire. Lily LaTorre is excellent as his young daughter. We both loved this film, which is in select theaters now and expending over the next few weeks. Find out here when “Rebuilding” playing near you.

Over at our Patreon, we recapped the season 4 finale of “The Morning Show” this week. This show is always extremely nuts, but the past season combined real-world headlines and soapy melodrama in a way that was beyond bonkers. I wasn’t particularly interested in the environmental scandal cover-up, but it all tied together nicely within the ill-advised affair between Billy Crudup’s Cory and Marion Cotillard’s Celine. Watching her run down the hall in slow motion to Moby’s “Porcelain” as she’s about to get caught for her crimes was hilarious and thrilling. “The Morning Show” is at its best when it leans into its inherent insanity in this way. (No more Yanko marriage proposals, please.) The fact that Celine screams her confession into an iPhone on live television is a genius bit of product placement on this Apple TV series. Also: Kudos to Reese Witherspoon for casting aside her vanity to make it look like Bradley actually had spent a month in a Belarus prison.

“The Morning Show” will be back for season 5, and so will we. And our entire collection of recaps is available for purchase if you’re not already a Patreon member (but it’s really fun being a Patreon member).

Christmas is coming, which means it's prime time for Alonso! In case you didn’t know, my co-host is the Christmas movie expert. He literally wrote the book on the subject: “Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas,” the updated version of which is out now. He'll be out in the world selling and signing copies throughout December if you’d like to meet him in person. We'll keep adding to this list as we have more dates:

Dec. 6: “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Gardena Cinema. (I’ll be there, too, if you’d like to come say hello.)

Dec. 12-14: ChristmasCon in Edison, New Jersey

Dec. 19: “Remember the Night” at the Palm Springs Cultural Center

Order your copy of Alonso’s book here or ask your local independent bookseller.

That’ll do it for me this week. Thank you so much for sharing some of your time with me, especially if you’re busy preparing for the holiday. If you’ve enjoyed my newsletter, I’d be honored if you’d pass it along to a friend. And if someone passed it along to you, I’d be honored if you’d subscribe. Have a great week, Happy Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.