3.15.2024

Musings on Jack Reacher

As the Cheese Fry reluctantly slides into middle age, one of the membership requirements of that demographic involves partaking in the phenomenon of fictional bad ass Jack Reacher.  He's a veteran who used to be an Army investigator which means he can solve mysteries like Hercule Poirot and handle fistfights and firearms like John Wick.  Tom Cruise played Reacher in a couple of movies (Jack Reacher, 2012; Never Go Back, 2016) but now Alan Ritchson plays him in a pretty successful Amazon Prime series adaptation that premiered back in 2022.  Season three of that show is coming soon.  

If you hadn't heard of Jack Reacher prior to those movies and shows, you're likely not a male over age 40.  Because, people, the character of Jack Reacher is very big business.  Author Lee Child (who's actually from the UK) has cranked out 28 novels since 1997.  That's more or less one book a year.  He must be tired because Child is now in the process of handing Reacher author responsibilities to his little brother.

Die-hard Reacher fans howled when Cruise made his movies because Reacher on the page, you see, is a mountain of a man, while Cruise is famously more on the shorter side.  Fans seem much more pleased with Ritchson's performance.  He's a big guy, for sure - so big that it stretches plausibility that so many average-sized bad guys seems so willing to take him on.  (This obvious physical mismatch in every confrontation is a similar issue in the books.  Just how dumb and delusional are these villains?)  While the casting agent may have gotten the size right, Ritchson lacks Cruise's charisma.  Ritchson's Reacher gives a dry, deadpan performance that borders on the dull at times.  But we digress.

With our reading stack running low a few months ago, we decided to sample the paperback world of Jack Reacher (via a pile of books given to us by, you guessed it, our 80-year-old father). Since then, we've read three of Child's 28 books, which is 11% of the total Jack Reacher output.  We read One Shot (Reacher clears the name of a man accused of killing five people - this is the one that Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher movie was based on), we read 61 Hours (Reacher uncovers a drug smuggling plot with Mexican cartels), and we read The Hard Way (Reacher gets involved in a New York City kidnapping). 

To us, the Amazon series does a pretty good capturing the Reacher book vibe.  (If you're curious, season one was an adaptation of the book Killing Floor and season two adapted Bad Luck and Trouble.) 

As noted, we've only read 11% of the books, which is a small sample.  Even so, as of now we have identified six characteristics of the prototypical Jack Reacher story.

1. Reacher will be dragged into the story.  Reacher isn't really looking to help.  He stumbles into a situation, often wants very much to look the other way and mind his own business, but then his moral code demands that he help once he fully understands what's going on.  In 61 Hours, Reacher uncovers a conspiracy after his Greyhound bus crashes on a snowy highway and leaves him stranded in a very corrupt town.  In The Hard Way, he's sitting at a Manhattan coffee shop and happens to see a kidnapping ransom drop and gets asked about what he saw.  He's like an R-rated Jessica Fletcher from the old "Murder She Wrote" TV show where she finds a dead body every time she travels.

A corollary to this is what is perhaps most notable about the character: (1a.) Reacher is a drifter.  He wanders from town to town on trains and buses, spends a few weeks here, then moves along.  The books (and show) has a lot of fun with his peculiar lifestyle - the only thing he carries with him is a toothbrush, he wears the same clothes over and over until buys new ones at thrift stores, that sort of thing.  There are samurai stories (and Western copycats) similar to this about fierce warriors who walk the countryside providing help as needed then disappearing over the horizon, but we couldn't easily find a name for that sort of story.  There is a tradition of "picaresque" stories, but those seem to involve lower-class people who get into amusing adventures - one website, for example, suggested that Forrest Gump is a variation on picaresque.  (We're told "picaresque" stories often have a satirical cultural element, which is intriguing because Lee Child's plots lean hard on exposing corruption - crooked cops, lawyers, military, veterans.  Reacher is often the sole voice of honor and morality.)  In any event, Reacher is more of a Shane-style antihero figure who shows up in town, kills the bad guys, then rides off on his horse before the bodies are cold.  He does terrible things for the right reasons.

2. The mystery will be convoluted.  As we read these books, more than once we got hopelessly confused trying to follow who's doing what to do and why.  These are not straight ahead "who done its" - the books feature complex, tangled, layered conspiracies and cover-ups.  Nothing is simple.  And so we as the reader just have to keep going and accept what's happening without always fully understanding it.  (This shows how Lee Child is trying to weave together so many character needs and schemes.  But authors like Elmore Leonard handle just as many complicated characters and crossed purposes and plot turns with crisp clarity.  It can sometimes feel like Child thinks only confusing plots provide suitable gravitas and import.)

3. Reacher will showcase Sherlock Holmes-style deductive reasoning.  It took us a while to really notice this, but Reacher is as mentally sharp as he is physically powerful.  He typically takes note of the smallest details and riffs on those to spin larger theories and hypotheses.  He'll also frequently give quick lectures about human behavior to either explain why someone might do (or not do) something or how he's decided on a specific plan.  He's almost always right, of course.  When this works, it's a lot of fun, although there are certainly many times when Reacher makes a big, fairly implausible leap of logic and one can't help with offer an eyeroll in response.

4. Reacher will have sex with a female sidekick.  Like James Bond, Reacher always seems to end up solving a mystery with a smart, attractive (and conveniently single) woman.  Consenting adults then do what consenting adults do.

5. Reacher will show repeatedly that nothing fazes him.  There are two sides to this coin.

* This "unflappability" aspect is probably the biggest downside to the character and his stories.  Drama and tension arise from conflict, from worrying about what will happen to the protagonist.  While many characters around Reacher suffer and face real consequences, Reacher is a superhero.  He's never in danger.  He's never afraid.  He always has a plan.  If you think of Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves or other A-list actors, notice how their movies often work hard to make you think maybe - just maybe - the hero won't make it.  They get beat up, they suffer setbacks, they wonder how in the hell they're going to get out of an impossible situation.  One never really gets the sense that Reacher is in over his head.  He can handle whatever the story's villains throw at him.  And if the plot twists and Reacher's first plan fails, he'll quickly improvise a new plan that's better than the old plan.  He's like James T. Kirk - he literally doesn't believe in the no-win scenario.  

* Looked at another way, however, that "unflappability" is surely key to Reacher's wide popularity.  It's absolutely a positive.  This is a guy who can handle any situation.  He oozes supreme confidence.  He knows what to say, what not to say, and what to ask (and, also, what the answers he hears might really mean).  And if needed, this is a guy who can easily take care of business with his fists or a weapon.  Think about how those traits might appeal to the flabby guy killing time before another boring work day or the frazzled dad facing mortgage payments and weekends of chores and youth sports.  It may seem simplistic (or even distasteful in an supposedly enlightened 21st century world), but we here at the Cheese Fry believe that Reacher is 100% an aspirational, wish-fulfillment figure for frustrated middle-aged men everywhere.  We wish we could be him.

In other words, these stories are engaging and successful because readers aren't wondering IF Reacher will survive, but HOW he will survive.

6. Reacher will kill a lot of people.  In one of the books, Reacher briefly notes that biologically he just doesn't feel remorse or regret.  And so if you're someone he's judged to be a criminal deserving of death (or maiming), he will deliver that punishment without mercy using whatever tool he can find.  Those violent moments of delicious comeuppance deliver a real zing of pleasure.

And there you have it.  Jack Reacher is the reluctant hero who uses unflappable confidence and deductive powers to solve convoluted mysteries that end in violent punishment of the bad guys.  And he sleeps with the hot woman sidekick along the way.  Are you not entertained?

If and when we read a fourth Jack Reacher novel, we fully expect these six characteristic to be present.

1.15.2024

The 1990s Songs We Still Tolerate

The 1990s provided, as they say, "formative years" for the Cheese Fry as we navigated and fumbled our way through our 20s and early 30s - college (and grad school), first serious girlfriend, first jobs, apartment renting and roommates, moving to Los Angeles, driving for hours a week in Los Angeles traffic dialed into KROQ, KISS, and/or Star 98. 

Today, "90s on 9" is a pre-set channel on our SiriusXM radio and often transports us back to an oddly specific memory from our storied past.  It's like an aural time machine.  That said, some of those 1990s songs make us cringe, roll our eyes, and click to another channel.  Some songs really should stay unsung. 

Which recently made us wonder... which of the most popular songs of the 1990s stand up today?  Which ones remain timeless bangers and which ones have unexpectedly aged poorly and should be deep-sixed for the good of mankind?

For the record, accessing Billboard's official online list of the most popular songs of the 1990s requires a subscription, so we can't verify the accuracy of the free list we found plus we stipulate that how Billboard tracked popular music underwent a lot of changes during this period so the definitive list of 1990s hits is probably full of exceptions and asterisks.  But for the purposes of this informal study we'll accept it.

The Bangers - popular 1990s songs we'd listen to again right now
* The Sign (ranked #11 on the all-time 1990s list), Ace of Base
* Waterfalls (#19), TLC
* Take a Bow (#24), Madonna
* Believe (#31), Cher
* No Scrubs (#33), TLC
* Livin La Vida Loca (#38), Ricky Martin
* Smooth (#41), Santana and Rob Thomas
* Stay (#94), Lisa Loeb
* Save the Best for Last (#47), Vanessa Williams
* Another Night (#51), Real McCoy
* Nobody Knows (#61), Tony Rich Project
* I Love You Always Forever (#71), Donna Lewis
* Unpretty (#76), TLC
* Baby One More Time (#78), Britney Spears
* Nothing Compares 2 U (#82), Sinead O'Connor
* Quit Playing Games (with My Heart) (#86), Backstreet Boys
* Hypnotize (#88), Notorious B.I.G.
* California Love (#97), 2Pac
* Return of the Mack (#100), Mark Morrison

Guess we were bigger TLC fans than we realized.  Of that list, without question the most finely-crafted, perfectly realized pop song is "Livin La Vida Loca."  And there is very little traditional verse/chorus pattern to "Stay" but we know every word.  Kudos also to the crunchy hooks of "California Love" and "Hypnotize" for making white people think they were hip hop fans.

The Outcasts - popular 1990s song we never, ever want to hear again
* Macarena (#2), Los Del Rio
* I Will Always Love You (#7), Whitney Houston
* I Swear (#9), All 4 One
* Because You Loved Me (#18), Celine Dion
* Can't Help Falling in Love (#22), UB40
* (Everything I Do) I Do It for You (#37), Bryan Adams
* Black or White (#39), Michael Jackson
* Whoomp! There It Is (#44), Tag Team
* Here Comes the Hotstepper (#65), Ini Kamoze
* I'm Too Sexy (#79), Right Said Fred

No real surprise here.  Cheap, awful novelty songs ("Macarena" and "Whoomp!" and "I'm Too Sexy") were barely tolerable when they were new.  For us, there's really no Celine Dion song worth a listen - it's all too bombastic and syrupy and "look at how dramatic I can sing" self-aware.  As for "I Will Always Love You," that was ruined for us by endless radio play.  And UB40 holds a special place of irritation in our hearts - they provided not one, but two terrible and unlistenable fake reggae disasters: "Can't Help Falling in Love" and "Red Red Wine."

12.25.2023

Holiday knee-jerk review: "Home Alone"

1. We'd long assumed we'd seen Home Alone before.  But watching it in its entirety last week, we realized that we have not seen Home Alone before.  Not all the way through anyway.  More than one scene we had zero recollection of ever seeing before.
2. People, Joe Pesci's burglar character is also a Chicago police officer.  The whole movie is an inside job, crooked cop story.  Spoiler alert.
3. The McCallister family really treats little Kevin horribly.  He's banished to the third floor attic like a hostage for a chain reaction series of accidents sparked by his obnoxious bully brother who's in dire need of an ass kicking.  Note that this bully brother is not sent to the attic.
4. The whole thing is sort of charming in a goofy 1980s sort of way, we suppose, ladling on plenty of feel-good sentiment and emotion to hide the utter implausibility of it all.
5. Why doesn't Kevin call the police?  We didn't notice this plot hole until another critic recently made the joking suggestion that the McCallister dad must be a mob lawyer who's told his family to never engage with law enforcement.
6. We all know why the movie was a hit: those last 15 minutes when the movie turns into a Looney Tunes cartoon and delivers hilariously satisfying booby-trap cartoon violence on these two despicable criminals.  All these years later - this is the part we've definitely seen again and again - it's still a fantastic showstopper ending.
7. Remember that the Daniel Stern burglar purposely leaves the sink faucet turned on in the houses he burglarizes, which is incredibly mean.  He deserves that iron (and paint can) to the face.
8. The most interesting thing about the movie to us is the fact that the old 1940s noir that plays a pivotal role in the plot - something called Angels with Filthy Souls - is completely made up.  The single scene you see in the movie ("Keep the change, ya filthy animal.") was created by the Home Alone filmmakers.  Genius.
9. Is it sacrilege to admit we never really got the appeal of John Candy? Probably.
10. Catherine O'Hara's character wonders in the movie if she's a bad mom for leaving one of her kids behind when the family flies to Europe.  The answer, of course, is 100% "yes, you are."
11. One of the lingering images of the movie is Macaulay Culkin slapping aftershave on his face, then screaming in pain.  Hardee har har.  But it's the scraping of a razor that makes one's face vulnerable to the sting of aftershave.  Kevin didn't shave, so why is the Brut burning his face?  It's kind of symbolic of the whole movie - go for the joke or the gag whether it makes sense or not.
12. Remember the 20th century when people could only connect over long distances via voice over the telephone?  No e-mail, no texting, no Facetime.  If someone didn't answer your call or if you didn't have a phone handy, you were out of luck.  The plot of this movie couldn't work in 2023.
13. When it comes to holiday movies, we prefer Elf, A Christmas Story, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and White Christmas.  (FYI we recently rewatched Love Actually - it hasn't aged great.)

12.19.2023

Knee-jerk review: "Wonka"

1. We weren't necessarily interested.  This was a Cheese Fry family decision.
2. And yet... we're happy to report that it's a whimsical delight on every level.  Top notch.
3. Family lore has it that Roald Dahl's Charlie and Chocolate Factory was the first book of fiction we read, circa 4th grade in 1982.  The 1971 movie with Gene Wilder is certainly memorable and embraces Dahl's crueler instincts ("You're turning violet, Violet!"), while the 2005 Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie is the sort of oddball visual spectacle - fun, yes, but also kind of cold and remote - you'd expect from those two.
4. Bonus points for avoiding the obvious angle of forcing Willy Wonka to have some kind of love interest.  If there's another popular literary character who's this asexual, we don't know who it might be.
5. The Victorian-era, Dickensian look and feel of the movie is fully developed and wholly immersive.  This is a fairy tale world of dirty street orphans (and the rich snobs who hate them), rundown boarding houses, and secret getaways using giant city sewer pipes. 
6. That is to say, don't go here looking for gritty realism.
7. We're not much of a Timothee Chalamet fan (the same can most definitely not be said for the older Cheese Fry daughter, who muttered "he's so fine" on the car ride home), but he's pitch perfect here.  Is Wonka a genius in on the joke of it all or a weirdo who's completely clueless?
8. We didn't love the business with the giraffe, but we acknowledge it provided a moment for Wonka and his teenaged sidekick Noodle to bond.
9. The quirky plot turns and magic realism details were more than enough to make this movie work, but we appreciate the filmmakers' effort in digging a little deeper into the backstories of Wonka and Noodle, both lonely orphans dreaming of seeing their mother again.  The ending provided an unexpected emotional catharsis.
10. We will never forget the phrase "Yeti sweat."
11. Hugh Grant's Oompa Loompa is, of course, awesome.  Plus for the hardcore fans we get a cute call back to the 
Oompa Loompa-related flute riff from the Gene Wilder movie.
12. We were a little disappointed the Everlasting Gobstopper didn't make an appearance.  Maybe that's something for the next movie, which we're very much interested in seeing.
13. We didn't immediately recognize the name of writer-director Paul King and for that, we are embarrassed.  He's also responsible for the two Paddington movies (20014 and 2017), which are similarly polished and winning.  He's got the goods.

12.09.2023

Knee-jerk review: "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes"

 Full disclosure: We saw this movie more than a couple of weeks ago but only]now found the time to submit for your approval a "Knee-jerk review."

1. We found the book sort of "meh."  And so guess what?  The movie's also sort of "meh."
2. Panem is certainly an interesting dystopian world, but the more you think about it, the more illogical and ridiculous it all is.  Don't look too closely, in other words.
3. Rachel Zegler completely steals the movie as the charismatic tribute Lucy Gray.  Probably not as impressive a feat as you might imagine given the wet blanket performance by Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, the film's supposed protagonist.
4. Were audiences really curious to know how and why the evil President Snow from the original Hunger Games trilogy (tetralogy since the last book spanned two movies - remember when that was a thing?) turned bad?  We get that the "how'd it happen?" exercise likely excited author Suzanne Collins, but the whole thing works very hard to answer a question no one was asking.
5. There are some interesting political and classism issues bubbling under the surface, like Snow's desperate attempt to hide his poverty from his snobby affluent friends.  His determination to rise above his station in life is probably the movie's most relatable element.
6. The story behind the actual invention of the Hunger Games - which we get here only through dialogue about things that happened long before the events of the movie - might have been more compelling.
7. No doubt Viola Davis is having a great time.  She's in full diva mode here, chewing up the scenery and sporting that actor's prop delight - crazy contact lenses.
8. The snakes-that-recognize-scents thing is pretty cool.
9. The real kicker is that after you sit through a whole lot of plot and action and conflict and characters to see this movie's edition of the Hunger Games play out, which was more or less satisfying, the story shifts gears into a new setting and keeps going for another 45 minutes.  Most troubling, the big heel turn for Snow is crammed into the last 20 minutes.  That dark chain of events felt so rushed and unmotivated, in fact, that we had to conduct a family debriefing on the car ride home to work out just what exactly happened.  It took all of us to piece it together.
10. Of course the movie has to find a way to namecheck Katniss Everdeen, a character who won't be born for another 30 years or so.  Eye roll.
11. It's well done, goes through the paces, yadda yadda.  It's fine.

From the archives, here's our original review of The Hunger Games from 2012.

11.13.2023

Knee-jerk review: "The Marvels"

1. By now we should know that negative online chatter about a movie before it even comes out often times has little -- if anything -- to do with the actual quality of the movie.  Too many "critics" have axes to grind.  Did the chatter predict the underwhelming box office performance or did the chatter sort of cause the underwhelming box office performance?
2. The real problem, of course, is overall Marvel fatigue - a mix of market oversaturation and increasingly overlapping and complicated plots.  Right or wrong, it looks like The Marvels is going to be the poster child of that growing disinterest.  It had to happen eventually.  Did Disney and Marvel really think the gravy train would never end?
3. The movie is very much... okay.  Fun at times.  But it certainly could have been much, much better and more satisfying with a sharper execution.
4. For example, there's a lot of good conflict and drama to be mined from Kamala meeting her idol Captain Marvel.  Kamala's room is covered in Captain Marvel stuff; it borders on creepy stalker obsession and it's a fun moment when Captain Marvel sees it.  But aside from a couple of quick lines along the way here and there, the movie just sort of glosses over the whole thing.  Why?
5. The whole movie, in fact, feels glossed over and rushed.  If you're going to tell this story... take a moment and, like, tell it right.
6. The opening is rocky as the movie wades through a lot of backstory exposition to bring everyone up to speed.  We had a sinking "uh oh" moment about ten minutes in.  (As you may have heard, two of the three leads were introduced in Disney+  TV shows which presumably limits how much wide audiences might know about them.  The opening almost plays like a lengthy "previously on" intro to a complicated TV drama.)
7. But once the three Marvels team up, things perk up considerably.
8. Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan steals the whole movie.  Her starstruck teenager energy shines.  The "Ms. Marvel" TV show worked because of her wide-eyed charisma.
9. In fact, we sort of wished the movie had just pushed everything further and fully embraced the comedy and farce of the body-switching premise.  Aside from one inspired montage where the women learn to control the switching, the movie doesn't really take advantage of its own fun gimmick.  (Worse, the rules of the switching aren't clearly explained.)
10. Another example of missed opportunities: there a planet where everyone wears flashy, bright colors and sings instead of speaks.  We suspected we were about to see a full-on Bollywood style dance sequence.  Alas, it didn't happen.
11. Apparently, the Flerken alien cats are polarizing.  Some people actually don't like them?  But we found the cats pretty funny and provided some unexpected plot turns.
12. We've had enough of the Skrulls and the Kree, thank you very much.
13. Ditto climactic duels of CGI laser beams.  Ugh.
14. The villain's plot is unusual, but she's just not very memorable.  Don't these kind of things need brash, scenery-chewing bad guys?
15. The credits tag is as delightful as it is completely inevitable.
16. Our Brie Larson crush persists.
17. At some point, Sam Jackson needs to write a tell-all book about the years and years he's spent across TV and film playing the same Nick Fury character.

8.12.2023

Why We Hate This Cinemark Spot

The Cheese Fry's local movie theater is a Cinemark.  It's ten minutes away, so we go to the same one every time.  (We prefer row C, the last row in the front section so there's no chance a noisy talker sits behind us.)

Cinemark's trailer packet before the movie always, always features this ridiculous spot pushing the theater's concessions app.  We hate it.  It's not just because we have to sit through those 30 seconds of hell every time we see a Cinemark movie, although that can't help.  We hated this spot the very first time we saw it.  Let us explain why.


* Why is this idiot going to get snacks towards what seems to be the movie's big ending?  We can understand an unexpected bathroom break, but this guy walks in with a huge tub of popcorn like he just arrived at the theater.  Note also that he enters with that obnoxious empty-cup straw noise.  So he's somehow slurped down the entire drink on his way from the soda fountain to the theater?  Don't insult our intelligence by trying to make a point with a completely unrealistic scenario.

* Look at these people's absurd reactions - in slow motion no less, an accompanied by some kind of aria to further heighten the psuedo-drama of it all - to whatever they're seeing.  Wide eyes.  Slack jaws.  Bouncing and pointing.  Hands over mouths.  Laughter.  Also tears.  The dude who throws up his arms signaling a touchdown.  What a douche.  Can you imagine him sitting next to you?  We don't think audiences from the 1910s who saw a movie for the very time in their entire lives had these sorts of over the top, bug-eyed, cartoon responses.  

This got us to thinking if there was ever a twist or an ending to a movie we saw in theaters that might come close to inspiring this sort of wild reaction from us.  Spoilers below.  Off the top of our heads...
1. The penis reveal in The Crying Game
2. The hair gel gag in There's Something About Mary
3. DiCaprio's shocking murder in The Departed
4. The big ghost twist at the end of The Sixth Sense
Huge, unexpected moments, but none of these inspired us to throw our popcorn bucket in the air.

Knee-jerk review: "Barbie"

1. In portraying the world where Barbies all live, the film displays a wildly whimsical, surreal streak that's pretty striking.  It's like nothing really that we've ever seen.  The cinematography and production sign are beautiful, somehow conveying "plastic toy" at every turn.  It's a technical master class.
2. The storyline got a little messy towards the end as the Barbies and Kens try to find a way to live in harmony.
3. But there is no denying that Barbie delivers sharp - at times vicious - satire on gender roles and gender inequity.
4. It's the kind of meticulously layered, smart, purposeful movie that reminds us film can be art.  Nothing on screen feels haphazard or throwaway.
5. Plenty of what seem to be Barbie toy inside jokes went way over our head.  It's pretty impressive that Mattel was okay with making fun of some of the doll's embarrassing misfires over the years.  Usually corporations are fairly humorless about themselves.
6. Margot Robbie, as always, is fantastic.  What other A-list actress could credibly play Barbie? As they say, casting is often half the battle.
7. That said, it's Ryan Gosling's Ken that has more of a complicated, dynamic role to play and he eats it up.
8. It makes narrative sense to go to Mattel headquarters, sure, but beyond that the movie didn't really know what to do with Will Farrell and the Mattel board of directors.
9. We would have preferred spending more time in the real world.  Seeing Barbie and Ken walking the streets of Santa Monica and Venice is pretty hilarious.
10. Disappointing that the mother-daughter relationship felt so undercooked.
11. The movie's last line is a home run.  Fantastic.
12. We don't understand the visceral reaction from some critics who've called the movie anti-men.  The movie sort of goes out of its way to suggest that both genders are just as willing to oppress the other if given the chance.  A society that makes men subservient is just as wrong as one that makes women subservient.  It take selfless work to level the playing field.
13. In other words, yes, it's a pro-feminist movie, but so what?
14. And if you think "patriarchal" is some phony, make-believe, liberal arts concept, you're not seeing our world as it is.
15. America Ferrara delivers a passionate monologue towards the end that felt a little preachy to us, but it resonated with Ms. Fry so clearly the movie is onto something.
16. A movie that feels fresh and clever and important at a time when so many summer movies feel like pointless, underwhelming retreads.

7.30.2023

Knee-jerk review: "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One"

1. That title is a mouthful, huh?
2. The finale with the train, as you may have heard, is a total knockout.  What an ending.
3. All of the more recent Mission: Impossible movies - that is, everything that came after the J.J. Abrams' very decent Mission: Impossible III - are fantastic and thrilling, but also mostly interchangeable.  Don't ask us to explain the plots (or even the nonsensical titles that sound cool but rarely describe the movies) because most of us know by now that the storylines exist solely to connect the big action set pieces.
4. We must deduct points for the fact that these movies eventually fall back on the "agents gone rogue" premise so that our heroes have to execute their impossible mission while evading both the bad guys and also the good guys who Don't Understand What's Really Going On.
5. We love that the Mission: Impossible films always include a TV-show-style credit sequence with the theme song blasting and lots of quick action cuts of the movie we're about to see, as if it's something we just tuned into on ABC in 1974.  It always gives us goosebumps.
6. We honestly could not follow the plot here.  Eventually, we gave up trying to work out who was doing what to who and why.  Spy movies can be complicated, sure, but it's not good when they're totally obtuse.
7. The cruciform key gimmick was clever, though.
8. Strange that someone so familiar with Impossible Mission Force shenanigans would fall for the mask gimmick, which is surely the IMF's most renowned trick.
9. As smart as these movies can be, we still have a hard time watching Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg hack any system anywhere in the world at will with just a few keystrokes.
10. No spoilers, but the way the movie callously disposes of a heretofore key member of the team felt to us not only completely pointless but disrespectful to the character.  We're hoping the next movie somehow rectifies that.
11. New movie star crush: Hayley Atwell.
12. A lot was made in the marketing about this supposed death-defying motorcycle/parachute stunt that Tom Cruise performs for the movie.  We don't doubt the danger or the skill required, but viewed in the scope of everything we've seen in this franchise and considered from a purely visual perspective, that jump might not even crack the top ten Mission: Impossible stunt moments.  It's impressive, but we didn't get a sense it was somehow unprecedented or historical when we saw it.
13. Cruise is 61 now and getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing, but there's no reason he can't start to take a more passive mentor role in the franchise, recruiting and teaching a new generation of heroes.
14. The filmmakers did Rebecca Ferguson's character wrong.  Not cool.
15. It's pretty good, but not great.  It's the first Mission: Impossible movie from writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (this is his third) that doesn't feel like a slam dunk.

Our current rankings:
1. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - the one where Tom Cruise climbed the skyscraper
2. Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) - the one with the dueling helicopters
3. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) - the one with the opera assassination attempt
4. (tie) Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) - the one with the train ending
4. (tie) Mission: Impossible III (2006) - the one with the Rabbit's Foot MacGuffin
6. Mission: Impossible (1996) - the one with Tom Cruise suspended over the floor
7. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) - the one that John Woo directed

7.03.2023

Knee-jerk review: "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"

1. It's pretty good.  Definitely an upgrade from 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was a complete mess.  This one should have been the fourth one.
2. We really don't understand the bad reviews.  Were expectations too high?  
3. The biggest criticism we could maybe offer is the whole question of why it was made.  But should that sort of thing factor into a review of the quality of the finished film?  Should critics focus only on the art or should they take into account the narrative surrounding how and why the art was created?
4. The movie certainly embraces Harrison Ford's age (he's 80).  We noticed several shots of Indy walking away from the camera linger on his old man shuffle-limp and there's more than one scuffle that a younger Raiders of the Lost Ark-era Indy would have been handled no problem, but here he's surprisingly weak and clumsy.
5. We're not sure about including another underage, Short Round-style, street kid sidekick.
6. We heard the ending was wild, but it's... really wild.  We figured we had an idea what to expect, but we were totally wrong.  It's fun to be surprised.
7. The train prologue may go on a little too long, but it's a slam-bang action sequence very much in line with what you'd see in the earlier movies.
8. The last scene got to us. We didn't have to wipe a tear, but we sure came close.  You'll know it when you see it.
9. Another great "Indy's getting old" moment comes when he's giving a lecture to a classroom full of bored students, a stark contrast to the students (especially the female students making goo-goo eyes) in the earlier movies who were paying rapt attention.
10. Then again, as a friend pointed out, hitting the "Indy's getting old" angle so hard may be a turnoff for some.  Who wants to spend two hours contemplating the looming mortality of one of Hollywood's greatest hero characters?
11. There's also the issue of whether younger moviegoers even know who Indiana Jones is.  We took the Little Fries to see it, but would they have gone on their own if given a choice?  We've dutifully showed them the first three movies, which they liked, but it's not really in their bones like it is might be for Generation X who came of age with Indiana Jones.
12. They cast Antonio Banderas for that role?  
13. It's good that they also gave a strong arc to Phoebe Waller-Bridger's character, who starts the movie undertaking these adventures solely as a way to get rich and get out of debt.  Shades of Han Solo, in fact.
14. The "de-aging" CGI magic that creates new flashback footage of Harrison Ford as he looked thirty years ago is pretty good, but it still has a bit of that "uncanny valley" quality at times.  That said, you get used to it pretty quickly.  It does the trick.
15. It's not an Indiana Jones movie without him riding on a horse, deciphering some crazy clues in an ancient language, or crawling through a booby-trapped underground catacomb.  Check, check, and... check.

Updated Indiana Jones movie rankings -
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), obviously
2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), obviously
3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), by a hair and if you argued Dial of Destiny is better we wouldn't argue
4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
and then...
5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - we still can't believe that stupid title

Our (current) favorite Indiana Jones quotes - if you know, you know
* "He chose... poorly."
* "It's not the years, honey.  It's the mileage."
* "It belongs in a museum!"
* "Give me the whip!"
* "Nothing to fear here." "That's what scares me."
* "Indiana, let it go."
* "You lost today, kid, but that doesn't mean you have to like it."
* "Bad dates."
* "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."
* "Snakes.  Why did it have to be snakes?"