Knee-jerk review: "Final Destination Bloodlines"

1. Yeah, this is a pretty hard R.  A whole lot of blood and gore.  If you're into that sort of thing, you won't be disappointed.
2. We remember the first three pretty well: the one with plane crash (Final Destination, 2000), the one with the logging truck accident (Final Destination 2, 2003), and the one with the roller coaster derailment (Final Destination 3, 2006).  A check with Wikipedia reminded us there's also the one with the NASCAR race crash (The Final Destination, 2009) and the cool twist where the characters in Final Destination 5 (2011) ended up on the plane crash from Final Destination in 2000.  Oops.  
3. The whole premise of this franchise is ingenious - it's not only easy to understand the rules (escape death in a mass casualty event, death will come after you by any means necessary as soon as possible), but the movies get the chance to concoct all kinds of elaborately grisly accidental deaths.  Aside from horrific "OMG!" deaths so completely insane you almost have to laugh, however, the movies all sort of run together.
4. That said, this one feels different.  Bloodlines takes more time to develop the characters, all of whom are related.  These aren't high school acquaintances or grumpy strangers; these people all have long histories and complex relationships with each other.  Which means the threat they're facing packs a much bigger dramatic punch.
5. The whole generational "bloodlines" thing also adds a fresh spin to the premise.
6. You make a movie in Canada to get those tax breaks, you end up with a no-name Canadian cast.  Decent, but vanilla.
7. The lead actress in particular is a little bland.  She looks 35 but is playing a college student presumably in only her sophomore or junior year.
8. Opening 20 minutes are pretty incredible if you like disaster scenes.  Wow.
9. We spent the whole movie thinking the mom character was played by an older Lara Flynn Boyle.  No, it's someone named Rya Kihlstedt.
10. Bonus points for a couple of very fun plot twists involving how (if at all) one might cheat death.
11. Of course, most of these deaths go beyond horrible happenstance.  An MRI machine isn't going to turn on, for example, just because a clipboard falls onto a keyboard.
12. Not to get all film theory on you, but movies - like any art - reflect the cultural zeitgiest from which they come.  This is a series of movies that reminds audiences over and over that death is not only inexorable and inevitable, but extremely painful and awful.  That's a pretty dark sentiment.  Smarter people than us will have to explore why a movie with this hopeless a message has resonated with such a wide audience ($187 million at the box office and counting) in 2025.  No movie exists in a vacuum.  Choices were also made to revive this franchise after a 15-year absence from theaters.  Yes, it's all about the business decisions of the filmmakers and the studio rights-holders.  Pre-sold brands are always appealing.  But there are always also other forces at play, whether the filmmakers know it or not.  All art - even the cheesiest TV show or most disposable pop song - is political.

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Notes on the Mid-80s Bob Barker Era of "The Price Is Right"

We've known about the 24-hour "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel for a while now, but a recent household change to the DirecTV Stream provider (our roof dish is now just a useless artifact of technologies past) has made it much easier for us to tune in.  It's pretty much what the name implies: an unending string of "The Price Is Right" reruns from the Bob Barker years.  The channel has been playing as background noise around Cheese Fry Headquarters for about three weeks now.  We've slowly progressed from 1982 to 1985, which is right in the heart of the Cheese Fry's formative years where watching Bob Barker meant either: A) you're home sick from school or B) it's summer vacation.  Childhood nostalgia overload, audio-visual comfort food.

Here are a few thoughts about our ongoing experience with "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel.

* Obviously, there's a very appealing time travel effect at work in watching these episodes.  The crazy fashion; the poofy, teased haircuts; the charmingly low-tech prizes (lots of grandfather clocks and groovy stereo systems) are all from what sometimes seem like a different universe.
* It's always tricky to evaluate legacy media from a contemporary perspective.  Bob has that polished, tanned, Johnny Carson-style charm. He's got a quick wit and a pretty dry sense of humor.  But, as a product of that era (he was born in 1923 and started hosting the show at age 49), he's also... a little sexist and condescending to the women contestants.  Just when we think we're imagining it and being overly sensitive, Bob says something overt and we'll do a "did he just say that?" double-take.  Lots of housewife jokes, lots of "husbands are the boss" jokes.  Sometimes he leers, sometimes he flirts.  This came as a shock to us, spoiling our 1980s innocence.  It also probably runs counter to America's more recent fond memories of Bob as the spry, white-haired elder statesman during the last few years of his run.
* All these youthful contestants jumping and running around in their 20s and 30s?  They're all now senior citizens. 
* Kind of a bummer to consider that the show no longer tapes in the CBS studio in Hollywood.
* Some things never change: the show today still uses a lot of those goofy synth music cues.  And a lot of the games are not only still being played, but look the same.  Like, zero facelifts or redesigns of any kind.
* In elementary school, our crush was redhead "Barker Beauty" Holly Hallstrom.  But now, looking back, there's no question that it's blonde Dian Parkinson who was truly deserving of any and all schoolkid crushes.
* The "Ten Chances" game has always seemed really to hard to play.
* This stretch of episodes includes the rather unexpected death of genius announcer Johnny Olson in late 1985.
* There are almost no cars given away that cost more than four figures.  
* A lot of these prizes remind us of our fashionable aunt and uncle who lived in a swanky part of Houston.  The brass beds, the chrome and steel dinette sets (is "dinette set" even a term any more?), the polished cherry wooden secretaries (remember those?), the mustard yellow garbage disposals, the big color cabinet TVs.  These are the 1980s trappings of the upper middle class.
* The show gave away a surprising amount of mattresses and carpet.  Were those also considered luxurious perks?  Maybe back then there wasn't a mattress store on every corner.
* Apparently, the presence of air conditioning and power locks are distinctive enough to be merit mention in Johnny's "a new car!" script.
* So there's this big green train that the models use pretty regularly to present the items for bid for the folks in contestant's row, slowly rolling out from the wings and onto center stage.  (Trivia: that game the four contestant prospects play has a name: "One Bid.")  There's a green engine that pulls a green platform.  There's fake steam.  It's all steeped in mid-80s cheese.  But the best part is the "waaAAH-waaaahhh!" wolf whistle sound effect.
* We can verify here that Bob does indeed sometimes wear the same suit more than once.  This is a detail that would only become apparent to a screwball like us watching multiple episodes.
* These shows are really, really old, but we still recognize almost all of the pricing game grocery store item brands.  The breath mints, cleaning products, soups, spaghetti sauces, snacks, cold medicines.  These things you can still find on the shelves at your local grocery store.
* In those days, for whatever reason, the contestants definitely skewed to white women.  Also, we're not hardcore obsessive Drew Carey-era fans, so we are speaking with very little authority, but it certainly seems like the Barker shows welcomed a lot of military folks in uniform.
* We're all the way up to 1985 and still we're not seeing any gag T-shirts with funny "pick me!" text and pictures.  When did that become a thing?

Another treat on this 24-hour "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel is that sometimes they'll show really old episodes from the early 70s when it first went on the air.  Bob looks and sounds really young; the contestants all tend to be sheltered, slightly dim housewives; the color scheme are these horrible yellows, oranges, and browns; and - get this - there is no Big Wheel.  Three people play and the top two stick around for the Showcase.  Heathens.

Come on down to the the rabbit hole!

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Knee-jerk review: "Thunderbolts*"

1. Marvel superhero fatigue is real.  We didn't even bother with Captain America: Brave New World earlier this year.  We admire the way the Marvel overlords have skillfully created such an intricate tapestry of characters and plots and characters across so many movies and TV shows since Iron Man in 2008 (if the MCU was a person, they'd be getting ready for their senior year of high school), but at a certain point it all starts to get pretty cumbersome.  The movies are no longer just movies - they're installments that exist solely to sell the next installment.  In doing so, however, each installment runs the risk of warping under the weight of everything that's come before.
2. Exhibit A: On the way to the theater, Ms. Cheese Fry asked "Do I need to have seen anything else before I see this one?"  A fair question.  Should we really have to do homework before going to the movies?
3. Exhibit B: When it ended, the guys sitting next to us totally geeked out, excitedly chattering back and forth not about the actual movie Thunderbolts, but rather the post-credits tag scene that's pointing to a future movie.  What did that tag mean and how will it connect to everything else? 
4. There's definitely an audience for this sort of thing where movies turn into editions of comic books telling an unending soap opera-style story of deaths, resurrections, double-crosses, and new characters.  There's a lot of people out there like our seat neighbors who eat this all up.  (And full disclosure: we can be pretty irritating explaining the nerdy intricacies of Star Wars and Star Trek mythology.) But when you're making $200 million movies for wide audiences who aren't following every twist and turn on fan websites, there's going to be some risk in turning a profit.
5. But this one is pretty good.  Thunderbolts feels different, probably because these are some pretty broken - and in John Walker's case, pretty unlikable - superhero characters who have no illusion that they're on the bottom rung of hero-dom.  There's a black cloud hanging over everything.
6. If done well, team-up movies like this - where characters who hate each other form begrudging temporary alliances that soon evolve into genuine kinship and collaboration - are a whole lot of fun.
7. Lewis Pullman, the actor who plays Bob, is a dead ringer for his father, the great Bill Pullman.
8. Add Florence Pugh to the official Cheese Fry Celebrity Crush List.  Dude.  Seriously.
9. In today's bizarre political climate, it's kind of cute to see a movie portraying Washington DC and mostly functional place that tries to earnestly follow due process and tradition.
10. The ending is kind of weird, but the filmmakers earn points for dramatizing the challenges of overcoming trauma and mental illness. 
11. It's a Marvel movie with big stakes, but because it's focusing on this little dysfunctional group, the movie feels small.  (Even the big climax of New Yorkers running for cover can't really hide that it wasn't shot in New York City.)  We mean this mostly as a compliment.
12. Unless we missed it, we are happy to report there are no laser beams and energy rays anywhere to be found here.  A small victory.
13. David Harbour steals the movie.
14. Julia Louis-Dreyfus makes for a formidable villain.  Flashes that gorgeous smile while she slices your throat.
15. That Black Widow child assassin training program was really something, huh?  Yikes.
16. Let us all stipulate that with the possible exception of the third Lord of the Rings movie in 2003, no pop culture cinematic event has delivered such a satisfying punch of cathartic resolution as 2019's Avengers: Endgame.  Chef's kiss perfection.  In today's fractured culture, we can't imagine anything ever matching that.

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