Knee-jerk review: "Weapons"

1. It's a great movie, but that is one terrible title.
2. Probably more unsettling than traditionally scary.  There are a handful of old-fashioned jump scares for the traditionalists out there, however.
3. And one truly creepy moment that gave us chills.  Okay, maybe two.
4. Josh Brolin is always great, isn't he?
5. The pop culture buzz for this movie is pretty strong.  There's certainly a risk in situations like this where the actual movie has no chance of living up to the hype; everyone's expectations are sky high. But for the most part, we were not disappointed.
6. Very clever, novelistic structure, using a series of "chapters" from different character POVs (most of the characters interconnect in some way) to slowly reveal the whole story.  The way it all comes together is pretty perfect.
7. Lots of interesting subtext (domestic violence, school shootings, addiction) simmering under the plot, which gives the story unexpected heft.  These are all pretty flawed, miserable people doing their best, which isn't always good enough.
8. Aunt Gladys.  Wow.
9. What's really happening with the missing kids isn't 100% spelled out, but there are a few throwaway background references that we think provides the answer.
10. Nothing good at all can be happening in a house with newspapers covering all of the windows from the inside.
11. "Your two o'clock is here."  Indeed.
12. Always a fun moment in a movie when someone studies a map and starts drawing lines and circles to try and Understand What Is Happening.
13. The ending is bonkers in the most completely satisfying way.
14. The citizens of Maybrook are going to need a whole lot of therapy after all of this.
15. If you're going to see it, avoid spoilers so you won't know what's coming.  100% unpredictable.

Sidebar: To the teen girls in front of us checking social media on their phone 90 minutes into the movie, at least have the common courtesy to dim your screen.
Sidebar #2: If movie theaters are going to insist on running 20 minutes of commercials (we're not talking about "coming attraction" trailers, we're talking about the endless ads for insurance and cars and soft drinks), at least have the common courtesy to not run the same spot twice.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"

1. It's definitely... okay.
2. But we were hoping for more than "okay."  The snazzy, candy-colored trailers had us pretty excited, but the movie was a let down.

3. The best part, hands down, is the retro-futuristic Space Age production design.  We want to live in that world of reel-to-reel-powered robots, clunky CRT displays, groovy magazine covers, and 1960s fashion.  But when you spend $150 million, you probably want elements other than costumes and sets to stand out.
4. To us, Vanessa Kirby always gives cold, brittle performances so casting her as a supposedly warm, maternal figure seems pretty questionable.  Joseph Quinn also feels miscast as the Human Torch. 
5. Considering how ridiculous their powers are, the Fantastic Four characters are pretty dull and flat here.  They may be freed from the shackles of 20th Century Fox movies, but this cast is not that much of an upgrade over the Ioan Gruffudd (2005) or Miles Teller (2015) teams.
6. We do wonder about Pedro Pascal and his agent.  What a time those two are having right now.  He's literally everywhere.
7. Mole Man!
8. We will stipulate that this one is certainly more polished and epic-feeling than the Fox movies, which are pretty forgettable.  But First Steps feels undercooked and weirdly slapdash in many ways (rumors of big reshoots and last-minute edits may be true).  A truly awesome movie is in there somewhere.
9. Bonus points to the Galactus climax that was pretty satisfying and also to the clever teleporter subplot.
10. Perhaps most surprising of all is that there's so little humor.  We kept wondering what James Gunn could have done with this ragtag dysfunctional family and the supposedly wisecracking characters of Ben and Johnny.  We needed more gags like the car seat bit.
11. Thunderbolts* was better.
12. Meh.  
13. Are we all just about done with these Marvel movies?  This one is the 37th MCU movie.  Holy cow.  Even the big post-credits stinger scene here with someone who appears to be Doctor Doom - setting him up as the Big Bad for yet another string of movies - feels tiresome.

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Knee-jerk review: "Superman"

1. You've never seen a Superman movie like this.  Take that as either a compliment or an insult.  This is a world of flying cars, sentient robots, alien dragons, and black hole portals.  Plus a Kryptonian dog.  It, like, totally goes there.
2. As expected, with James Gunn writing and directing, it's a got a weirdo Guardians of the Galaxy vibe to it.  Even with all the comic book strangeness, the movie's packed with real emotion and humor.
3. The most evil and awful Lex Luthor ever.  We're way past the avuncular charm of a Gene Hackman.
4. There's definitely a lot going on.  Lots of characters and plot, but it mostly all comes together.
5. Whether intentional or not, this is a movie with a lot of political layers, like the manipulative propaganda power of social media, the raging mistrust and fear of people who aren't like you, and the very real-world problem of countries invading other countries for secret, nefarious reasons.
6. But we remind you that it takes years to go from script to screen.  Media can maybe comment on hot topic current events with something like "Law and Order" or a pop song, things with quick production turnarounds. Movies, on the other hand, are too slow and creaky.  Especially giant movies like this.
7. The more we think about it, the more we like it. 
8. That's definitely an interesting choice for Jimmy Olson's character.
9. Wendell Pierce sighting.
10. An "interdimensional imp" is a thing apparently.
11. Superman is tricky thing for us because the first two Richard Donner movies (especially 1980's Superman II, which we know, we know was technically credited to director Richard Lester) are a big pop culture part of our youth.  We remember those movies with rose-colored glasses, willfully overlooking their flaws and occasional accidental cheesiness.  As an 11-year-old we even tried hard to really like 1983's Superman III, but surely we can all agree that is an awful movie in spite of (or because of?) the countless times we watched it on HBO.
12. We sort of appreciated what Superman Returns (2006) was trying to do as a Donner homage, but it was a pretty limp, forgettable movie.
13. The "Snyderverse" thing continues to baffle us.  Man of Steel (2013) was at least a real movie with strong actors and a distinctive sensibility, albeit a humorless and dour sensibility.  We really liked Henry Cavill as Superman.  But no one can honestly and objectively look at Batman v. Superman (2016) or Justice League (2017) as anything other complete disasters of filmmaking, bleakly self-indulgent, narratively confusing, and completely off-putting and unsatisfying.  And yet those movies have a sizable - well, loud anyway - legion of fans who act like they're the pinnacle of Hollywood storytelling.  As a result, these Snyder fans are out there attacking this new movie.  Right now there's a lot of online chatter about which film made more in the opening weekend box office, as if that's the only arbiter of a successful movie (plus keep in mind that the mass media entertainment environment of 2013 is way different than 2025, so it's apples and oranges anyway).  
14. Christopher Reeve was perfect casting, no doubt, but David Corenswet has that same sort of square-jawed earnestness to him.  He's pretty good, people.
15. "I'm not Superman" indeed.
16. That's quite a twist with Jor-El.  Marlon Brando wouldn't have liked that.
17. Nice to actually get Lois Lane into the action to help save the day.
18. What you may have heard is true: Mr. Terrific steals the movie.
19. It's a solid B+, which isn't bad.

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Knee-jerk review: "Jurassic World Rebirth"

1. So look, this movie knew what it needed to do and it delivered it exceedingly well.  Polished, competent, efficient.
2. We weren't really looking forward to seeing this, but the family decided watching dinosaurs eat people was the perfect way to spend July 4th.
3. All in all, a pleasant surprise.  It's pretty dang good, people.
4. We weren't huge fans of the last three Chris Pratt/Bryce Dallas Howard Jurassic movies and can't even remember the storylines, but this one introduces a whole new (if familiar) set of characters and quickly strands them on a dinosaur island.  Back to basics.
5. Jonathan Bailey looks like Guy Pearce's younger brother.  Seems like he could be a real movie star.
6. No self-respecting Jurassic movie would ever miss the chance to put a tween character in harm's way.
7. Most of the movie is a string of exciting impossibly-close-call, escape-the-hungry-dinosaur set pieces.  Good enough.
8. Shout out to the guy sitting next to us who had to keep explaining everything to his daughter.  You made our experience so much better as a result.  
9. Mahershala Ali is probably slumming here, but that's okay.  He brings welcome gravitas.  And he likely got a good paycheck.
10. We should talk about the sailboat family.  It's good that the movie took time to develop their characters before the dinosaurs attack so we feel more of an investment in their safety, but their little cruise seems incredibly reckless given the exposition audiences were provided about the world of the movie.  We also noted that without the family's side adventure, the run time would probably only 90 minutes.
11. When it comes to concocting a reason to undertake yet another dangerous mission to an off-limits dinosaur island, the one the filmmakers come up with (gathering samples from three live dinosaurs) is pretty good.
12. The D-Rex is a bit much perhaps.
13. Even after all of that, we're still skeptical of Xavier.
14. Sci-fi research facilities always have huge vent systems to allow for convenient hero escapes, don't they?  They must all use the same architectural firm.
15. Scarlett Johannson, pony-tailed action hero?  More please.
16. We appreciated the Jaws homage.
17. Ending is probably a little long, but the plot pieces all come together nicely.  Ticking clocks are always welcome.
18. Honestly, it may be the best one since Spielberg's 1993 original.

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Knee-jerk review: "28 Years Later"

1. Don't let the creepy marketing strategy fool you - this is actually a traditional sort of coming-of-age domestic drama that just happens to take place in a crazy post-apocalyptic setting.
2. That doesn't mean, however, that there's any shortage of scary, suspenseful sequences of "how will our heroes survive this?"
3. We'd somehow forgotten Ralph Fiennes is in the movie.  What a treat to be surprised by his entrance.
4. There are plenty of good movies out there, but not a lot of truly great filmmakers.  Danny Boyle movies aren't always great (see: Yesterday and the last 20 minutes of Sunshine), but there's no denying they are always artistic and exceptionally well-made.
5. Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later are top-notch, of course, but we always thought Trainspotting was way overrated.
6. Of course they'd eventually run out of arrows.
7. They're not zombies, you see.  They're infected with the rage virus.
8. How does he still have a supply of tranquilizers?  It's, like, 28 years later.
9. We don't want to spoil anything, but there's a rather shocking moment that Changes Everything about the infected.
10. There's always something tragic about that moment when you realize your parents are actually just flawed people who don't always make wise decisions.
11. Bonus points for the "Jimmy" call back at the very end.
12. Only in an English movie would the hero be called Spike.
13. The Swedish soldier delivers a welcome dose of humor in an otherwise very serious, dour movie of Important Themes.
14. The doctor may not be as crazy and dangerous as the villagers think he is... but he still seems to be little bit nuts.  In a benevolent cuckoo sort of way.
15. Much better than you might imagine.

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Knee-jerk review: "Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning"

1. We were getting worried because the first half-hour or so is exceedingly tedious with long info-dump exposition and table-setting. Eventually, though, it kicks into gear and becomes a proper summer action thriller.
2. We regret to inform you that Tom Cruise is genuinely starting to show his age.  He's in his early 60s now.
3. We love Hayley Atwell, but the pointless death of Rebecca Ferguson's spy character in the last movie remains a huge unforced error.  Did she insult the filmmakers somehow?
4. More and more, it's hard to dazzle us with an action sequence.  Hasn't everything been done already?  Turns out the answer is "no."  This movie has two knockout set pieces - the submarine dive and the biplane fight, neither of which has any dialogue.  Simply incredible.
5. A vast improvement over the disappointing and confusing Dead Reckoning, Part 1, but still not in league with the very best of the series (Ghost Protocol 2011, Rogue Nation 2015, Fallout, 2018).  Those three are action near-masterpieces.
6. In the real world, Cruise's character would have died four times over in this movie.  He makes a ridiculous "hail mary" decision, rolling the dice, and then just hopes for the best.  No one is that lucky.
7. The world needs more smart submarine thrillers.  Can we please have a sequel set entirely on the Ohio?
8. We almost laughed out loud when someone mentioned that a purely theoretical super-advanced piece of next-generation computer hardware was finally built by... Ving Rhames' character Luther.
9. Ditto the moment where Simon Pegg's character Benji explains in detail to computer novice Hayley Atwell's character Grace how to hack into a hyper-secure government facility.  How can Benji possibly know anything about that system?  These movies are crazy and often succeed in creating their own reality where anything can be hacked by Luther and Benji.  This was not one of those moments.
10. Nice Fail Safe call back.  If you know, you know.
11. Angela Bassett can be an acquired taste.  She's gives off that same steely, angry edge in every role.  But that's exactly what is required here.
12. After the disappointing (relatively; it still earned $570 million) last movie, you can see that the filmmakers tossed out all of that mumbo-jumbo philosophical AI nonsense and went back to basics: in The Final Reckoning, Cruise and his misfit team have to find and mate together two pieces of hardware to save the world.  Simple is better.
13. Clever and completely organic return of a character from the very first movie all the way back in 1996.
14. There's no way Paramount lets this golden goose die.  Cruise can totally return as a sage mentor figure and let some other young star do the action work.
15. Go see it.

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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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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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Knee-jerk review: "Drop"

1. Pretty enjoyable and sharp.

2. Bonus points to the attempt by the filmmakers to give the two leads fairly well-developed backstories.  That can only help.

3. Whether you realize it or not, a lot of movies follow the trope of "the ending is the same as the beginning, only different."  Textbook example here.  It's the best way to clearly show how the main character has grown.  Same situation, different choices.

4. A simple premise - woman is ordered by an unseen villain to kill the man she's meeting on a first date - isn't necessarily the same thing as a plausible premise.

5. It's an obvious point, yes, but still effective: if you're in a public place and think someone is threatening you with a smartphone, take a look around.  Everyone is on the phone!  Everyone is suspect.

6. Pretty sure that wasn't the Blackhaws logo on that Chicago hockey puck gift.  Could the producers not get permission?

7. We were unfamiliar with Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar.  Impressed.

8. It's a Hollywood thriller rule that if you have a scene set in a room with a lot of glass that's multiple stories off the ground, that glass is going to break and someone's taking a swan dive. 

9. Can totally see a swanky (the hostess is such a shamelessly unpleasant snob) sky rise restaurant like this called "Palate."  Second choice must have been "Taste."  We couldn't help but wonder how much they were charging for that duck salad.

10. In the real world, even an understanding, nice guy would have run out of patience with his loony date's constant distraction and absence from their table.  No way he sticks around.  Way too may red flags, no matter how low cut that top might be.

11. We're not entirely clear how the villains learned enough about this first date to insert themselves into the proceedings.  Seems like they picked her because she'd be a good patsy, so then did they somehow manipulate the couple's dating app?

12. Only in movies does poison come in sleek little glass vials.

13. The biggest problem is the third act.  The villain seems pretty smart and has thought of everything... except for the quality of the henchman hired to hold the heroine's family hostage.  That guy is a total amateur and his stupidity is the only reason there's a happy ending.  He does his job with any level of professionalism and the movie's over.  That choice totally undermines those last few moments of conflict - just as things should be reaching a fever pitch, the tension totally fizzles.  The plot is cutting corners and bending logic to help our resourceful and determined heroine, who really up to that moment hadn't needed that kind of help.

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Knee-jerk review: "Novacaine"

1. Maybe this is the old man perspective, but it sure seems like there was lot more of these kinds of entertaining, highly-polished B-movie actoiners back before streaming took over the world and people used to actually go to theaters every weekend.
2. We were pleasantly surprised that the filmmakers took so long to establish the main characters and their relationship before the shooting started.  If audiences care about the characters, they'll be more emotionally invested in what happens to them.  Screenwriting 101.  The dialogue in that first act sets up the entire movie.  Lean and sharp.  Plot comes from character wants and needs.
3. We really, really should have seen that plot twist coming.  We've gotten so rusty.
4. Gruesome.  We didn't understand at first how the bad guy died at the end, but then suddenly we realized and it was completely insane.  Gross.
5. Jack Quaid has definitely got the gawky, stammering geek thing down.
6. Imagine slurping down a shot of ghost pepper sauce.
7. We love movies that take a high-concept premise like "imagine a guy who feels no pain tangling with ruthless bank robbers" and then explore it in every possible way.
8. We can take take most movie violence no problem since we know it's all fake, but there's something about breaking bones that crosses the line for us.  Maybe it's just the sound effect that adds that extra level of squeamish realism.
9. By now doesn't everyone know that the bad guy is never really dead the first time he's "killed"?
10. Poor Nigel.
11. Everyone is hiding something.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Substance"

1. We've been trying to limit these "knee jerk" posts solely to theatrical releases we see in a darkened theater, but, more and more, Hollywood makes distribution deals with streamers that limits traditional releases just long enough to make movies eligible for awards.  We had to rent this one from something called Mubi even though Demi Moore just won a high profile Golden Globes award for her performance.  
2. We hate streamers.  Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+... they all ruined Hollywood with the lure of quick bucks that in the end has completely undermined the box office model for movies and the syndication/rerun model for television and, along with it, killed most of the traditional entertainment economy in Southern California.
3. So here's the deal with The Substance.  The first 3/4 is mostly a masterpiece of unsettled dread, queasy satire, and icky body horror about the absurd lengths women go to in chasing youth and popularity because of cruel social pressures.
4. We won't spoil how exactly this all plays out.  There's a black market experimental drug that does something to Demi Moore's character.  That's all you need to know.
5. We learned after the fact that the writer-director is French, which makes sense.  This is a movie with a dark, cynical European sensibility.  And a lot of full frontal female nudity that an uptight American director would never dare include.
6. What also makes sense is that the director apparently calls David Cronenberg and David Lynch among her inspirations.  If you know anything about those two filmmakers, then you know what kind of movie The Substance is.  Everything's a little off and weird like Lynch - it looks like our world, but it's a generic sort of simulacrum.  And then things also get gross and squeamish like Cronenberg - bodies are abused and mutated and transformed in gross ways.
7. To offer an example for how this movie is Lynchian, two locations feature ridiculously long narrow hallways that are completely impractical and totally weird.  But the characters treat them as perfectly ordinary.
8. It's that last 30 minutes or so that really spoils the whole thing.  Our best comparison is Danny Boyle's sci-fi movie Sunshine (2007), which we found to be a brilliant and masterful movie for the first 90 minutes before the wheels totally came off in the last act.  With The Substance, writer-director Coralie Fargeat goes way over the top for ending, then decides to go even further in pushing her premise to extremes.  Audacious without a doubt.  But also completely off-putting.  Which, admittedly, is probably her point.
9. Not much dialogue, really.  This is a very visual movie.  The art direction is top notch.
10. And considering it's a movie about Hollywood and show business, the cast is pretty small too.  There's a claustrophobic, lonely vibe to it all that works.
11. The horror elements of the movie are getting all the attention, but the most powerful sequence comes when we see Demi Moore struggle with debilitating anxiety and self-doubt as she prepares to go on a date.  As objectively beautiful as she may seem, she only sees an old ugly woman in the mirror.  It's tragic.
12. Dennis Quaid chewing the scenery.  Good for him.
13. If a scary organization tells you that the weird drug they supplied you is for a single use only, believe them.
14. We are suckers for movies like this about secret underground companies with hidden entrances and mysterious leadership.  One of our favorite movies is The Parallax View, which features a secret company that recruits assasins.  Other favorites: The Game which offers customized experiences for the wealthy, and Old which involves an unethical clandestine lab seeking medical cures.  Another variation of this is the entire community (complete with rules and bureaucracies) of killers in the John Wick universe.
15. The yellow coat is a symbol for an egg yolk, right?
16. "What has been used on one side, is lost on the other side. There's no going back."  Scary.
17. Special recognition to the opening sequence that uses a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to chart the familiar rise and fall of the lead character.  Brilliant.
18. Demi Moore probably deserved that Golden Globe.

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Knee-jerk review: "Wicked Part 1"

1. We saw Wicked on stage in Los Angeles years ago.  It was a pleasant experience, yes, but we barely remember it.  The songs didn't seem to be at all catchy or earwormy.  (We couldn't believe folks were in the lobby buying soundtrack CDs.)
2. So watching the movie adaptation was like experiencing the story for the first time.  Engaging, but maybe a little too forgettable?
3. Songs still aren't catchy.  Fun at the time but then gone from our memory banks.  (We had a similar problem with the otherwise fantastic La La Land.)  Where are the hooks?  Our four favorite movie musicals (don't laugh) are Grease, Chicago, The Greatest Showman, and Annie.  All with very sticky, very hummable songs.  Even the melancholic Billie Eilish Barbie song is at least memorable.
4. As an addendum, too often the lyrics in Wicked are hard to understand.  If it's not Ariana's high register, it's a goopy sound mix that buries the vocals.  Are our ears too old?
5. Pretty genius idea to take a infamous villain from pop culture and find ways to make her sympathetic and likable.
6. Until recently we mostly disliked pop star/tabloid darling Ariana Grande - despite her one banger radio hit "No Tears Left to Cry" - but a recent appearance on "Saturday Night Live" changed our mind.  She really does have a good sense of comic timing, self deprecation, and a killer voice.  And in Wicked, she's perfectly cast as a shallow, spoiled, boy-crazy, slightly ditzy Galinda.
7. Obviously, though, it's Cynthia Erivo who steals the movie as Elpheba.  Erivo seems like a bit of an weirdo oddball in real life, but as an actor she's a slam dunk in everything we've ever seen her in.  Don't judge a book.
8. Presumably, Shiz University is supposed to be a sort of college-style boarding school.  But every student there is in their 30s, which is kind of funny.
9. Michelle Yeoh cashing a paycheck and little more.
10. The production design, as expected, is fantastic, packed with layers of lush details.  Dig those golden gears that power the Emerald City express train.  How much time and money went into that for maybe five minutes of screen time?  This is Hollywood craftsmanship operating at very high levels.
11. Bonus points for invoking the 1939 Wizard of Oz title font.
12. Curious that in this polarized day and age, a box office smash like this deals in themes of dictatorships and disinformation.
13. At this point, Jeff Goldblum just sort of does his thing no matter the role.
14. Like most big movies, it's probably 30 minutes too long.  We appreciate getting original Galinda and Elpheba (Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel) in the movie, but we totally checked out during their convoluted number explaining the complicated history of Oz.
15. Amusing that the movie works so hard to reference as many Wizard of Oz elements as possible, the more obscure the better.
16. Always satisfying - and right out of Screenwriting 101 - for the protagonist to finally at long last get what they want... but realize that they no longer want it.
17. Yes, the animal rights business was part of the stage musical as well.  We were surprised as well.
18. Two standout sequences: the library dance (the circular book stacks!) and the cave club sequence where everyone laughs at Elpheba (we're not crying, you're crying).
19. Very good but... ultimately not great.  But, honestly?  That may well be good enough.

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Knee-jerk review: "Smile 2"

1. Too long perhaps, but fantastic.
2. You might chuckle at this notion, but actress Naomi Scott knocks her performance out of the park.  It's practically award-caliber.
3. The first Smile (2022) was a clever rip-off of scary "cursed chain" movies like The Ring and It Follows.  As they say, audiences want the same but different.  Smile checked those boxes.
4. Like so many high-concept horror movies, however, Smile didn't really know where to go or how to wrap it all up.  The explanation for the creepy, inexplicable weirdness is almost always a letdown.
5. The sequel is a huge improvement on every level... but the ending is still kind of a mess.
6. We had to go to Reddit discussion boards to figure out what exactly happened in the last 15 minutes or so.  What we found there makes sense.  We somehow overlooked a pretty clear explanation of the movie's internal logic.
7. Jump scares on top of jump scares.  You may or may not like that sort of thing.  They are cheats, yes, but they're also very effective.
8. The movie is so layered and well-developed that if you took the scary stuff out, you'd still have a very compelling drama about a tortured, recovering addict pop star unwisely trying to make a huge stadium tour comeback she's not ready for.  The pressure she feels from her icy stage mom, the tour's pushy financier, all of those hundreds of people depending on her tour for their jobs, is palpable.
9. We don't get out much, but it's been a while since we saw a movie this gory.
10. The peppy, obsequious personal assistant - who provided no value or skill beyond running around fetching things - was a fun character to hate.
11. Writer-director Parker Finn packs in a lot of glossy style.  Horror movies don't usually look this good.
12. The scene at the fancy socialite charity is something else.  Ditto the car crash at the end.  And the backup dancers in her apartment.  And the sequence with the stalker fan.  If you can string together four or five truly memorable scenes, you've pretty much done your job as a filmmaker.
13. Despite this, the 15-year-old Fry and her friend fell asleep for, like, 30 minutes during the first hour.  How is this possible?  We know why.  Because they go to the movies in slippers and pajamas and wrap themselves in fleece blankets like they're at a sleepover.
14. We have mixed feelings about movies like this that blur the line between fantasy and reality so that the hero (and the audience) can't ever be sure what's real.  But it mostly works here so we will allow it.
15. Naomi Scott.  Wow.

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Knee-jerk review: "Alien Romulus"

1. Without a doubt, it's the best one since 1986's Aliens.  And we liked Alien Resurrection (1997) more than most.
2. It's the ninth movie in the Alien franchise - if you count the Alien Versus Predator movies - so along the way, as is so often the case now with sci-fi, the mythology and backstory behind both the origin of the alien species and also the machinations of the evil Weyland-Yutani company has gotten way complicated and shaggy.
3. It's a lot to keep track of, especially at the end when the story connects to the self-important, overwrought Prometheus and Covenant sequels.  The movies probably worked better when Weyland-Yutani was a powerful faceless behemoth.  The air of mystery helped.  The more we learn about what they're trying to do with the aliens, the more ho-hum familiar they seem.
4. Cailee Spaeny is decent, if a little dull, in the lead.  The same, frankly, goes for the whole cast.  Just fine all around, but no one really pops.
5. Spaeny at times gives off Natalie Portman vibes.
6. Spoiler alert: the decision to use CGI technology to make 1979-era Ian Holm one of the supporting characters is a huge misfire.  We can understand the desperation to do as much as possible to connect this movie to the other Alien movies, but it's a gimmick that is not needed here.  The movie crackles just fine on its own.
7. Aside from the creep factor of animating a dead actor and creating a performance from scratch without his involvement, the CGI that reproduces Holm just... isn't good.  Big time uncanny valley. 
8. And from a story point of view, Holm isn't playing the character he played in Alien.  This is a different character with a different name.  But they're both androids, so the suggestion seems to be that there's this whole line of androids out there that all look like Ian Holm.  That sort of makes sense, but it's way too distracting and needlessly meta for it's own good.
9. Script-wise, the opening ten minutes are lean and mean.  We meet the main character, see her terrible predicament, then watch her grapple with a crazy, dangerous choice that might be her only way out.
10. The "big bad" alien at the very end is wild.  The filmmakers really went for it.
11. The Swiss-watch plotting of James Cameron's Aliens is second to none.  Anything that can go wrong for our heroes goes horribly wrong, again and again, but always in completely plausible ways.  Nothing feels forced.  Romulus has that same sort of feel.  Nothing is easy for the characters.
12. Zero gravity clouds of acid alien blood?  Check.
13. There's plenty of scary action set pieces here, which is really all any of us need in a sci-fi horror movie.

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Knee-jerk review: "Trap"

1. Fifteen-year-old Lil Fry assessment of Josh Hartnett: "He's so fine."
2. The first 45 minutes or so unfold about as we expected based on the trailer.  Then the story takes an unexpected detour - a variation perhaps on that trademark M. Night twist? - that turns everything around.  One critic called it a Psycho-style shifting of protagonists, a clever observation we wish we'd been clever enough to have made.
3. It's a lot of fun so long as you don't peer too closely at the creaky wheels of the plot, especially in the way these supposedly crack FBI profilers make some really dumb choices that benefit the villain.  (No spoiler here if you've seen the trailer, but if the idea is to set a surprise trap at a pop concert for a notorious murderer, it makes no sense to stack the arena with cops before the show even starts.  Why risk tipping off your prey?  Bring in the SWAT after the house lights go down.)
4. The movie may not work as well as it thinks, but there's no denying the audaciousness of a major studio movie building a premise around a vicious and insane serial killer, played by a famous Hollywood heartthrob no less, living a double life as a normal suburban dad.
5. The filmmakers did not skimp on trying to accurately portray the huge pomp and circumstance of a Taylor Swift-style concert.  We've seen countless low-budget versions of this sort of thing that never ring true.  Here it feels genuine.
6. Will a secret password really help explain away an unauthorized visit to an arena roof?
7. Alison Pill is always good, but to us the real gem here is Ariel Donoghue who plays Hartnett's daughter with heartbreaking earnestness.
8. Sure can't hurt your music career if dad is a famous movie director.
9. Bonus points for a subplot involving the casual - and sometimes unintentional - cruelty among teenage girls.  The struggle is real.

Ranking M. Night's movies (not counting his first two, pre-Sixth Sense films)
1. The Sixth Sense (1999), obviously
2. Unbreakable (2000) still feels somehow underrated
3. The Visit (2015)
4. Old (2021) is a guilty pleasure for us
5. Signs (2002), despite a very cheesy ending
6. Split (2016)
7. Trap (2024)
8. Knock at the Cabin (2023)
9. The Village (2004)
10 (tied). Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008) are total misfires

We never saw The Last Airbender, After Earth, or Glass.

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Knee-jerk review: "Longlegs"

1. The unsettled creepiness of the trailer for this movie did the trick.
2. Nicolas Cage is over the top as usual.  They hid his face - heavy with strange prosthetics - from all the promotional material, which certainly upped the curiosity factor, but what we imagined turned out to be far scarier than what he really looks like.
3. Definite echoes of Silence of the Lambs, of course (newbie female FBI agent brought in on a disturbing serial killer case) but if you're going to steal, steal from the best.
4. The tone of the whole thing just feels... off-kilter.  Eerie.  A low hum of dread. 
5. That doesn't mean the filmmakers are above employing a few traditional jump scares accompanied by a screeching music cue.
6. Lot of long takes and wide angles that makes one anticipate something's about to happen.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it's a fake out.
7. In other words, it's the kind of movie where a character sits alone at night researching scary things (our heroine apparently can't work on this case during the daytime) and the camera's pointed at them in a way that you can see an open window or door behind them.  So you're crawling out of your skin expecting something awful to appear in that window or door.
8. We've never seen Blair Underwood this gritty and terse.  Isn't he usually playing some variation of the suave charmer?
9. Things get stranger and stranger as the story unfolds.  The final reveal about what's exactly been happening with these serial murders is completely nuts.  But that's usually the case with these kinds of things (see also: most of Stephen King's novels).  The set-up is so weird and scary that there's no way to plausibly explain it all away.
10. We discussed the ending with the 15-year-old Fry on the drive home, trying to puzzle out some of the character choices at the end.  We thought we understood the rules of what was happening.  But then maybe not?  We finally decided this sort of movie is about mood more than plot.
11. For us, there's nothing scarier than someone knocking on your front door in the middle of the night.
12. The odd "longlegs" name we think is explained in a quick line of dialogue during the first encounter with the Longlegs character, but we didn't make it out.  He says something about how he didn't bring his long legs.  What the heck.  (UPDATE: apparently, the gag is that he's towering over the little girl he's talking to - using long legs - so he squats down to better communicate.)
13. The film geek in us 100% loved the gimmick of using a square aspect ratio to signal the flashbacks.
14. Obligatory scene of characters exploring a dark, scary place with flashlights.
15. A couple of allusions to T. Rex's "Bang a Gong."  No idea why.
16. If nothing else, it was a memorable experience.

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Knee-jerk review: "Twisters"

1. Traditional summer popcorn movie.  Whether or not you take that as a recommendation is up to you.
2. Glen Powell is a movie star.  Full stop.  Effortless charm, charisma, and cool.
3. A big sequence midway through depends on the audience believing that a small town in Oklahoma - surely as weather-aware as they come - can be caught totally off guard by the sudden arrival of a tornado.  Textbook definition of "suspension of disbelief."  Tornados don't appear out of nowhere like a boogeyman in the woods.  Forecasters usually know 2 or 3 days in advance that trouble is brewing.
4. We were unfamiliar with director Lee Isaac Chung, but this movie is as polished and slick as they come.
5. Never hide from a tornado under a highway overpass.
6. "If you feel it, chase it!"  If you think about it, that makes no sense.  Better is a line delivered later: "If you're afraid of it, ride it."
7. Is this ragtag community of nomadic screwball tornado chasers really a thing?
8. The most interesting element of the movie - unscrupulous land barons swooping in to take advantage of raw emotions to buy destroyed property at a discount - is so glossed over if you blink you might miss it.
9. Every amateur scientist surely has a giant laboratory in a rural barn, right?
10. Is it me or does Daisy Edgar-Jones look like should could be Anne Hathaway's little sister?
11. We remember seeing the original Twister back in the summer 1996 and liking it a lot, but aside from the crazy ending where (overrated) Helen Hunt and (always underrated) Bill Paxton are inexplicably able to ride out a tornado by hanging on to a standpipe, we don't recall many details.  And, of course, also the flying cow.  Oh, and also the terrifying prologue where Helen's dad gets sucked out of the storm cellar.
12. As a kid, we visited a relative's farm in rural Texas many times that had a storm cellar.  Like something out of The Wizard of Oz, just this set of metal doors set into ground right in the middle of the yard with a little ventilation pipe sticking up.
13. Are there really meteorologists who can just look at the clouds and figure it all out?
14. Some online chatter about whether or Twisters should have featured a character from Twister to make it an official, traditional sequel.  Not necessary.  It's not like these movies are offering some complex narrative tapestry.  (The metal Dorothy gizmos from Twister are featured.)
15. In sum, if you're looking for a movie with lots of tornados causing lots of damage, this is that movie.

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Knee-jerk review: Netflix's "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"

1. Historically, the film snob cinepile is us has avoided commenting on streaming movies.  The local multiplex is where "real" movies belong.  But we're making an exception here.  We get why Netflix would want this sequel, but we can't help but wonder what the box office might have been if it had gone into theaters this July 4 weekend.
2. We were probably too young (12) to see the original Beverly Hills Cop, which was a pretty hard R, despite the humor: bloody violence (the cold-blooded execution of Axel's buddy that kicks the whole movie off was particularly shocking to a young Cheese Fry), extreme profanity, and as a final kicker, a lengthy scene in a strip club.
3. In many ways, the filmmakers have created an 80s action comedy in 2024.  It's all stunts and fights and jokes and cool moments with the barest thread of a plot to string everything together.  They have our respect.
4. Eddie Murphy, of course, has effortless charm and presence.  What has he been doing with himself all these many years?  A quick look at IMDB tells us he's mostly been toiling in streaming titles aside from his work as Donkey in the Shrek movies.  His last theatrical movie may have been Tower Heist all the way back in 2011, which was a pretty good caper movie if you haven't seen it.
5. Aside from Bob Seger's "Shakedown" and Brigitte Neilsen, we have zero recollection of what happened in 1987's Beverly Hills Cop 2.
6. We really didn't fully understand all of the convoluted plot nonsense here with drug smuggling and cargo trucks and nefarious activity at dark, seedy shipping docks.  It's not an 80s cop movie without nefarious activity at dark, seedy shipping docks.  But the mechanics of the plot aren't really what's important in a movie like this.  Everyone wants the Macguffin SD card that will prove the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good.  How and why wasn't completely clear.  But we went with it.
7. Kevin Bacon is in 100% mustache-twirling villain mode.  It suits him.  This is no spoiler.  As soon as he shows up, you'll know he's the Big Bad.  This isn't a movie of subtlety.
8. It's not a Beverly Hills Cop movie unless Axel has to bullshit his way into some exclusive location.  Good stuff.
9. While we appreciate bringing back Billy Rosewood and John Taggart, the actors playing them show their age (Judge Reinhold is 67, John Ashton is 76) in a way that unexpectedly made us face our own mortality.
10. This movie didn't really require a dramatic throughline, but the business with Axel trying to reconcile with his very estranged daughter definitely helped add substance.  Bonus points for really making it seem like their split was Axel's fault.
11. We suppose it was inevitable to bring back Bronson Pinchot's Serge character.  We honestly could have done without.
12. We remember ever less about 1994's Beverly Hills Cop III aside from the fact that it for some reason ended in an amusement park.  Not sure we even saw it in a theater. 
13. It's almost distracting how many different ways the movie arranges and rearranges and orchestrates the famous "Axel F" theme. 
14. Gold star for a pretty solid - and brutal - Beverly Hills street shootout, but we have deduct points for staging the climax in a fancy mansion that is a totally ripoff of the original movie's ending.
15. Way, way more fun than we were expecting.

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Knee-jerk review: "A Quiet Place: Day One"

1. It's not exactly what the trailer sold. The question is whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
2. Rather than an apocalyptic sci-fi horror movie with chases and jump scares, which is what we were expecting (people-eating aliens attack Manhattan!), it's more of a moody character piece about two lost souls finding each other in a time of tragedy (a dying woman finds a reason to live!).  It's not bad for what it ends up being... but it's not the traditional horror movie audiences might be expecting.
3. Even so, there are effective sequences of what might happen if all of Manhattan had to be cut off from the rest of the world.  And the aliens do attack our human heroes more than once, so that box does get checked.
4. We've never encountered a cat that obedient or that interested in helping/paying attention to humans.
5. Djimon Hounsou is always fascinating , no matter what he does.  Apparently, he's reprising his voiceover role from the second movie.
6. We're just not sure if these monsters can sustain a franchise.  Characters try hard to be quiet, then a character makes a noise, then monsters attack.  Is that enough? 
7. The first movie, of course, was top-notch on every level.  A modern classic.
8. There's still something chilling about a New York City scene involving an explosion that covers everyone in white ash.
9. Whatever weirdness was happening in that construction site with the aliens and the eggs and whatnot, it's surely laying the groundwork for A Quiet Place: Week One.

10. Wikipedia tells us that Patsy's Pizza is a real place.  
11. Is the presence of a clickwheel iPod suggesting an early 2000s setting?  We're too lazy to work out the timeline of the original movie to estimate when the original attack was supposed to have happened.  Cool detail, though.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Fall Guy"

1. What a mess.
2. There's a couple of mildly amusing twists at the end (that we really should have seen coming), but overall we pretty much hated it.  Constantly rolling our eyes and checking our watch.  We thought it might never end.
3. And then the 12-year-old looked at us as the credits rolled - eyes sparkling - "That was really good."  We're such a grumpy ogre.
4. Pretty much every element of the movie felt misguided and/or inept.
5. What worked was Ryan Gosling's charm as he fumbled through the mystery plot.  The movie toyed with a "fish out of water" vibe as this kind of goofy Hollywood stunt man wandered into a pretty dark criminal underworld.  But the movie never really committed to it.  Instead, we kept having to go back to the romance subplot and the movie set where Emily Blunt was directing a big action movie.  That was a big problem because...
6. The scenes with Blunt were deadly, dragging everything to a dead stop.  We'd have never guessed she could be this dull and unlikable.  At times we were wondering why Gosling had any interest in her.  There's one especially awkward sequence where she cruelly tortures and humiliates him on the set in front of everyone just to get back at him for some pretty typical bad-boyfriend-type behavior.
7. It some ways The Fall Guy seemed to want to be a romantic comedy as these two estranged lovers figured out how to get back together.  But for that to work you need laughs.  All of those endlessly talky scenes with Gosling and Blunt were completely humorless.  Those moments played more like an overcooked Lifetime drama, totally out of whack with the screwball lunacy of the action scenes.
8. There's also a weird moment when Gosling shows he can fight, but it's completely undercut because he'd just been drugged by the bad guys and so the movie adds in this weird "I'm hallucinating!" animation stuff as it's happening so we weren't sure if he was really this good at fighting (it could have been funny if the stunt guy didn't know how to really fight) or if he was just imagining it.  This is a perfect example of how the movie likes to go for the fun gag at the expense of a clear and coherent story.
9. Like we said.  A mess. 
10. Then there's this painfully convoluted bit where the plot of the movie Blunt's making has parallels to what really happened with Blunt and Gosling's characters (did Blunt's character write the script?).  It doesn't work at all, but they keep going back to it and using the movie plot to work out their own romance. Clearly, the filmmakers think this element is very clever.  
11. All they really kept from the old 1980s TV show was the name Colt Seavers (which is pretty badass), his big pickup truck, his stunt man job, and the theme song.
12. We saw the negative reviews.  But we went anyway.  A lot of critics really don't like director David Leitch (who used to be a stunt man), but we thought 2017's Atomic Blonde and 2022's Bullet Train were a lot of fun.  The issue may be that he knows how to handle hard-boiled action (Atomic Blonde) and/or snarky action (Bullet Train) but is still figuring out more "realistic" romantic elements.
13. We don't want to get too inside baseball, but most of the Hollywood stuff felt completely phony and forced on multiple levels.  Most glaring: in the middle of a multi-million dollar action movie production, the director and the crew unwind with drinks at a karaoke bar?  It's not even dark outside when they go.  Another example: the swanky hotel suite where the lead actor is staying is full of props and posters from his past movies.  So he had all of that shipped to Australia for a three-month shoot?  Little things like that can make one go crazy.
14. Bonus points for the Lee Majors cameo at the end.  We didn't even recognize Heather Thomas in her cameo in the same scene.
15. It's hard to fathom that all of the talented filmmakers and seasoned studio executives saw how this movie was shaping up and didn't step in to fix it.  Or maybe this is the improved version of the original idea?
16. Avoid.

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