Knee-jerk review: "The End of Oak Street"

1. Suburban neighborhood time-warp bubbled to prehistoric dinosaur age.  The kind of premise so obviously genius that you can't believe it took this long for someone to develop it.
2. You really cannot go wrong with time-warp bubbles.  Bonus points that the plot don't spend a lot of time trying to understand how or why happened, only that it did.
3. We also love that the movie takes full advantage of this crazy premise, especially as our hero family starts to figure out what's going on.  This is a textbook example of the part of any movie that screenwriting guru Blake Snyder calls "fun and games."
4. We're still not 100% sold on Anne Hathaway.  Is that terrible?  She's solid no doubt, but she's also so often clearly "acting."
5. The movie is set in the 1980s and the production design is, of course, spot on.  Like Netflix's "Stranger Things," it's also an homage to genre movies of that period as a family on the brink of separation and divorce come together to grapple with a supernatural adventure.
6. In fact there's a whole John Updike-style 1970s suburban malaise vibe (dad's a drinker, mom's writing a secret novel and dreaming of running away, nerdy sister is kind of an outcast, neighbor is a jerk) bubbling under the surface adds nice gravitas.
7. We know the characters had to get out of the house and into the neighborhood for there to be second act action, but there surely is a more plausible and understandable reason than the kids chasing after a dog that got out out of the yard and then parents chasing the kids.
8. Blink and you'll miss a throwaway moment showing why Anne's character is so good with a shotgun.
9. Yes, people do get eaten.  Doesn't seem like a great way to go.
10. Weird that the neighbors don't join forces and share resources.  Instead, it's very much every house for itself.
11. We're ashamed of ourselves for saying it, but we really disliked the little brother.  What a mess.
12. The ending - and especially the tag - takes a pretty wild left turn via those time-warp bubbles.  Very memorable, but also - the more you think about what Anne did to solve the problem - very  dark.  (Also, did she really have that much time to put her plan into motion?)

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Knee-jerk rewiew: "Coyote vs. Acme"

1. Most definitely clever.
2. Is it great? More like very good.
3. The Ninth Grade Fry definitely liked it, but we're not sure if she appreciated it as much as we did.  It's definitely a love letter to Looney Tunes cartoons.  The movie is layered with all kinds of obscure gags and references that reward nerds like us.
4. Let's put it this way: if you get the joke of setting the movie in Albuquerque, then you're our people.
5. The visuals are fantastic, definitely the best blending of live-action and animation since Who Framed Roger Rabbit?  No expense has been spared.
6. Will Forte is doing his thing, and his character does fit his hangdog vibe. But we kept wondering what a more energetic and charismatic actor might have done.
7. Indeed, the big problem is the cast.  They're just so forgettable and vanilla.  Even Jon Cena is kind of lame.  Maybe with the money they spent on the visual effects they decided to go cheap on the cast?
8. We're glad they didn't try to give the Coyote a voice.  There are some cartoons where he talks.
9. Senator Elmer Fudd.  How could they not?
10. Does anyone under the age of 60 even know who Peter Lorre is?
11. Every morning before elementary school (i.e., for years and years), the Cheese Fry would spend a good 20-30 minutes with a bowl of cereal watching Three Stooges shorts and Looney Tunes cartoons.  Plus a solid sprinkling of Tom and Jerry.  We've seen them all.  Many times.  Many.
12. Even as a kid, we never liked Tweety or Granny.  Holds true today.
13. Same with Pepe Le Pew who's 100% not funny.  How many different ways can a female black cat accidentally get a white stripe? 
14. Bonus points for going with the more insane version of Daffy Duck.
15. Definitely some big themes here about corporate greed and immorality, which dovetails nicely with Warner Bros.' cold-hearted attempt to try kill this movie as a tax write-off.
16. Wile E. Coyote is kind of a jerk, isn't he?
17. If you're unfamiliar, check out Chuck Jones' rules for Roadrunner cartoons.
18. The emotional ending is a total surprise, but also totally plausible.
19. Meep meep.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Odyssey"

1. Now this is what we call a movie.  Wow.  Big, sweeping, expensive-looking visuals.  A cast fully stocked with A-list talent having a great time chewing the scenery.  Complex, thoughtful (and Important!) themes.
2. Writer-director Christopher Nolan will not hold the audience's hand.  He's telling his story and you have to do what you can to keep up.  We missed probably 20% of the dialogue, but got the gist.
3. And good luck keeping the Greek character names straight.  Afterward, to discuss the movie with the family we all had to just rely on the actors' real names.
4. The shipwreck scene was pretty intense.
5. Jon Bernthal is intense and scary as always.
6. Nothing like a good sniveling, cowardly villain to root against.
7. So we drove 30 minutes farther than we usually go for movies just to see this in IMAX.  It was a big, tall screen.  Crisp, yes.  Great sound.  But we didn't notice a magnitude order of better quality... not in today's world of perfect digital projection.  (Remember back in the day when theaters projected actual film so you'd have scratches or blurry focus?)  Ms. Fry disagreed, however, and found the experience better than usual.  We'd be curious to see it in 70mm IMAX. 
8. But this was an older AMC theater in a mall.  Gross on many levels.  Trash cans overflowing, soda machines out.  We apparently have been very spoiled by our local Cinemark theater with plush reclining chairs with wide aisles and leg room.
9. Never heard of Zeus's Law.  Is that really a thing?
10. Multiple sequences of sailors running like hell to their boats to escape mythical monsters. 
11. To write this post, we skimmed the Wikipedia plot summary.  Holy cow is this movie complicated and confusing.  Then again, the non-linear structure works wonders peeling all of these layers back in just the right order.
12. This is the first time we really thought about the unpleasant logistics of quietly hiding inside a giant wooden horse for many many hours.
13. Twenty years is a long time for us.  Imagine that much time passing for folks back when life expectancies were much much shorter.
14. The melodramatic ending, what with all the bloody revenge and silly disguises and reuniting lovers, is very Shakespearean.  And also very satisfying.  Guess Homer and Shakespeare knew what they're doing.
15. Tom Holland gives good sad weepy eyes.
16. We heard of the Sirens and the Cyclops, of course.  But we definitely didn't see it coming when Circe showed up. 
17. Biggest lesson: don't eat lotus flowers offered by Charlize Theron.
18. Christopher Nolan is a skilled, accomplished artist.  No question he is a master filmmaker.  But he leaves us a little cold.  It's often a lot of sizzle and little heart.  We still love Batman Begins, Memento, and The Prestige best.  Interstellar is a close fourth, but it's too long.  A lot of his movies feel too long.  This is especially true of the loud, forever endings of The Dark Knight and Inception.
19. We should all take a minute and think about this movie's incredible success.  A three-hour, R-rated movie about an ancient Greek poem.  This is not a teen-centric popcorn comic book movie.  This is serious cinema and the masses are totally eating it up.  The folks in our AMC theater represented a remarkable cross-section of moviegoers of all ages and backgrounds.  Yes, word of mouth is keeping the momentum going - good movies do that - but a lot of this is driven by Christopher Nolan's name on the poster.  Spielberg and Lucas could do that at one time, but not lately.

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Knee-jerk review: "Obsession"

1. Whoa. 
2. If you're looking for a violent horror movie that fully commits to its dark and disturbing premise, this is the one for you.
3. Don't trust gimmicky toys purchased at New Age crystal shops.  That's the lesson we learned.
4. There's really no other way for the story to end, is there?  Like we said... whoa.
5. Bear is one weak-willed, cowardly protagonist.  We liked him less and less as the movie went along.  We understand that's the whole point (he certainly grows to understand the error of his ways), but it didn't make for a fun experience.  He gets what's coming to him.
6. Best scene: the creepy customer service call.
7. Runner up: "I like watching you sleep."
8. After one particularly shocking moment that was bloody and horrifying in ways far worse than was needed to make the point, we sort of checked out.  Gleefully grisly violence isn't as appealing to us as it used to be.
9. Inde Navarrette certainly knocks it out of the park with her performance.
10. "Kiss the person to your left."
11. Everyone can appreciate how scary it is to consider telling a close friend you want to be more than friends.  The fear of rejection is vivid and real.  But Bear had a couple of perfect openings to make his move and he totally chickened out.
12. Michael Johnston gives Billy Crudup vibes.
13. Made for $750,000 and it's grossed $300 million so far.  That's serious word of mouth.  We saw it a month into its release and the theater was packed.
14. This movie is surely resonating with moviegoers because of the way it dissects the difficulties of navigating romantic relationships, putting a horror spin on secret workplace crushes and emotional manipulation and wondering if your partner loves you as much as you love them.  These are all universal worries and fears that writer-director Curry Baker expertly taps into.
15. Mix into that a layer of sexual predation themes with Nikki not exactly a consciously willing participant in any of this.
16. We don't understand why Bear didn't try to undo the wish sooner.

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Knee-jerk review: "Backrooms"

1. There's some old-fashioned jump scares, yes.  But mostly this thing is powered by a sense of growing dread and surreal weirdness.
2. Mark Duplass alert.
3. There are certainly familiar horror movie elements, like the fear of being stalked by some unseen bad guy -- there's also a fun but kind of stale "Stranger Things"-style twist at the end -- but for the most part this felt wholly original and inventive.  Some really crazy "what in the world am I watching?" moments.
4. Renate Reinsve is a little stiff.
5. Opening sequence is dynamite.
6. The movie's set in 1990, but the set design is 100% late 1980s and chock full of ugly decor ripped right out of our teenaged memories.
7. So who did install those creepy off-kilter breakers switches?
8. What helps makes the movie so memorable is that so much of it's ambiguous.  While we get the overall gist of what's happening, there's a whole host of strange, smaller details that just aren't fully spelled out.  You really have to read between the lines to piece everything together.  The family Cheese Fry have had many "did you notice..?" discussions sharing pet theories about What It All Means.
9. There's no way we'd be able to find our way back out of that maze.
10. We went into this with only the most basic understanding of the "backrooms" premise, which is probably the way to do it.  We, of course, conducted extensive, obligatory internet sleuthing after the fact to learn more.  Some of what we saw in the movie comes right from the internet series.
11. It's true: the buzz of harsh fluorescents can be pretty oppressive.
12. Bonus points to the Little Fry for figuring out what that little radio was broadcasting.
13. So is Clark a good person or not?  Discuss.
14. Palm sweating moment: the stairs up to the ceiling.  You'll know it when you see it.
15. "It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen a dog."

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Knee-jerk review: "The Mandalorian and Grogu"

1. No, it's not terrible, but it's definitely disappointing.
2. The movie probably spends 20 minutes of its total runtime on our heroes fighting CGI monsters.  That gets really tedious.
3. You can't tell us that this movie's development didn't start from a stack of 40-minute TV scripts.  An episodic "here, then there" is structure okay for a quest story, but this all feels very stitched together.
4. The big climax should be rousing and cathartic.  We were bored.
5. Also a weird downbeat subplot detour towards the end right as the action should be ramping up.
6. We're guessing it's an intentional retro choice to make Grogo seem like a foam rubber puppet?  His hands don't move.
7. Bonus points, however, for letting Grogu actually do something other than just look cute from the sidelines and use the Force every once in a while.
8. We really didn't need to see more Hutts.  That whole species is just a little ridiculous.
9. Also a problem: no central antagonist.  Who are we rooting against?  Who's the hero fight ing against?  Instead, it's just a series of thugs and bounty hunters.  That's not ideal when you're trying to build momentum and tension.
10. The four little mechanics - also fam rubber puppets - pretty much steal the movie.
11. So Pedro Pascal was for sure on set at least for the water fight sequence.
12. Amazing how Blade Runner's neon, rainy cityscape aesthetic so totally changed the way movies visualize the future.
13. Odd to have this whole 1950s-style noir boxing melodrama storyline.  Someone actually says "The fix is in."
14. Like we said, there's way, way too many CGI alien monsters.  Less is more.
15. Big fans of the Dave Filoni animated Star Wars shows will probably like it more than us.  Like so many big-budget brand movies like this (see also: Marvel), it sometimes like it's more for the die hard nerd fans than mass audiences.  At some point, Hollywood will learn that the safer odds lie in appealing to everyone and generating good word of mouth rather than inside baseball fan service.
16. What's the point of the iconic white stormtooper armor if laser blasters can still kill them with one shot?
17. There may may be a throwaway gag that calls back to the hologram chess game in the original Star Wars movie.  If that's the case, that's really cheesy cringe.
18. We heard others complain that the movie is overall very dim.  We agree.  All of the action happening inside or at night needs the brightness knob turns way up.
19. We still very much love the first season of "The Mandalorian" and the way it leaned so hard into Star Wars' Western origins.  Great stuff.

Updated Star Wars movie ratings
1. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
2. Rogue One (2016)
3. Star Wars (1977)
4. Return the Jedi (1983)
5. The Phantom Menace (1999)
6. Solo (2018)
7. The Force Awakens (2015)
8. Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
9. Revenge of the Sith (2005)
10. The Last Jedi (2017)
11. Attack of the Clones (2002)
12. The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

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Knee-jerk review: "Project Hail Mary"

1. It's really, really good.  A sure-fire audience pleaser with lots of humor and suspense and sci-fi spacewalk action.
2. But is it a cinematic masterpiece?  Eh.  Some fans may be overstating things just a little.
3. On the other hand, some of the moviegoers criticizing the movie come across as weirdly bitter and sullen nitpickers.
4. The music is pleasantly quirky at times, lending a goofy charm to a fairly serious situation.
5. We knew we knew Carl from somewhere.  Wasn't until later we realized he's the pastry chef on "The Bear."
6. Ryan Gosling really has it, doesn't he?
7. Honestly, it's probably hard for us to be completely objective since we read the book a couple of years ago.  It was pretty amazing.  The story has more than one pretty great plot twists.  So for us, watching the movie in a way was a lot of waiting for the next narrative moment from the book to happen.  (What must it have been like for Ms. Cheese Fry to experience all of that for the first time?  For the record, she loved the movie.)
8. Rocky is great, of course, as you may have heard.
9. It's probably a little cringey for the savior of the world to be a rumpled middle school science teacher with a wiseass personality, but that's part of what makes the movie great.  A nobody without faith in himself who rises to the occasion.
10. Any good writer just wants to put their characters in impossible situation where there is no good choice.
11. The flashback structure is cliche, but cliches are cliches because they work.
12. Incredible that they kept the ending.
13. Everyone's surely familiar with 2015's The Martian (which kind of is a masterpiece), another adaptation of a science-heavy Andy Weir novel.  Weir also wrote a sci-fi suspense thriller set on a moon base called Artemis which is really good.

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Knee-jerk review: "Send Help"

1. Director Sam Raimi is a filmmaker maestro, playing the audience's emotions like an instrument.
2. We were surprised to realize Dylan O'Brien has pretty good actor chops. 
3. This is a wild ride chock full of plot twists... and copious amounts of body fluids from both man and animal.
4. Half our fun was looking to see the frequent looks of abject repulsion and horror on the 13-year-old Fry's face.
5. Yes, there will be eye gouging.
6. The set up of Rachel McAdams' (swoon!) mousy and cluelessly awkward cubicle worker is perhaps a bit over the top, but we get it.  She's the heroine of the movie, yet that fact is totally undercut by the fact that we've all worked with weirdos like this.  It's not fun.
7. This is a tight script, but also one that wholly relies on the contrivance that a hardcore fan of the show "Survivor" (with bookshelves full of survivor texts) winds up stranded on an island with the skills needed to survive.  But was it Hitchcock who said audiences will buy one - and only one - dramatic coincidence?
8. It's a good point: none of your coworkers want to smell whatever it is you're eating for lunch.
9. "No help is coming."
10. Now that's what we call a heel turn.  Totally understandable based on what we know about the character, but still 100% monstrous.
11. "Planning and strategy" isn't the same thing as "accounting."
12. What's your go-to karaoke song?
13. For a second there, we thought she was actually, really going to do it.  When you see the movie, you'll know what we're talking about.
14. Bonus points for the old school, grainy 20th Century (now Studios, not Fox) logo and fanfare.
15. Is it a thriller?  Is it a black comedy?  Yes.

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Knee-jerk review: "Anaconda"

1. It can be hard to accurately judge the comic content of a movie when you're sitting in a crowded theater surrounded by people howling with laughter.  You can definitely get swept up in it.
2. But this movie certainly seems hilarious.
3. There's at least three moments of over-the-top, are-they-really-doing-that insanity.
4. The boar sequence alone is worth the price of admission.
5. Jack Black's sweaty, arched brows intensity is an acquired taste that we still haven't yet fully acquired, but it works pretty well here.
6. Paul Rudd, on the other hand, is 100% always a slam dunk.  He's fantastic.
7. This movie is the very definition of looking-glass meta, taking place in a world where the original 1997 Anaconda exists and this gaggle of frustrated filmmakers - played by recognizable stars of 2025 - decide to remake it, which leads to an unending run of inside baseball gags about the movie business and a commentary on sequels like the one we're watching.
8. At first we were going to argue that movies about people in the movie business aren't usually appealing to mass audiences, but this one at least tries to make it more about the friendship of this group of misfits and a need to chase your dream no matter what.  It'll do.
9. "Sometimes I go to Trader Joe's just to feel the air conditioning" is a fantastic living-in-L.A. joke and we are here for it.
10. Yes, we get some obligatory cameos from the original movie.  Of course we do.
11. Selton Mello - playing a deeply weird snake wrangler - steals the movie, which is hard to do when Black and Rudd (and Steve Zahn doing funny Steve Zahn things) are around.
12. Effective movies, even goofy diversions like this, have to sell in the first few minutes that the hero's life is in some significant way an unsatisfying dead end.  The adventure in the movie we're watching is what will ultimately pull the hero out of that awful life.  Anaconda spells this out explicitly with some business about Jack Black's life being "B, maybe B-plus."
13. Bonus points for a pretty decent character reversal plot twist involving stolen gold.  Remember the old adage that comedy plots still need to work without the jokes.
14. For the record, Sir Mix A Lot's comic "Baby Got Back" rap song with its infamous anaconda lyric came out in 1992, five years before the Jennifer Lopez movie.  But we have no recollection whether her Anaconda featured the song.  As you might imagine, Jack Black's Anaconda most definitely does use the song.
15. Way more funny than we expected.  This has to have really good word-of-mouth, right?

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Knee-jerk review: "Now You See Me Now You Don't"

1. Not our choice.  The Eighth Grade Fry wanted to see it.
2. Completely implausible and illogical in so many ways, but certainly also entertaining.
3. What a bizarre concept: world-famous magicians who broke up years ago have such a rabid following that (and two key plot points hinge on this fact) any hint of a possible reunion show attracts thousands of people.  It's like they're the Beatles crossed with Taylor Swift.  Only this group doesn't sing hit songs... they do magic.
4. Like superheroes, these heroes all have their own secret power.  There's the mentalist, the escape artist, and.. well, one of them can fling playing cards like weapons.  Seriously.  Let us remind you that this is a three-movie franchise now.
5. We can't recall many details of the first two movies (2013 and 2016), but this one definitely has a pleasant Ocean's Eleven con artist, let's-get-the-bad-guy vibe.
6. We would probably watch Woody Harrelson do anything.  Always an excess of charm and charisma.
7. This may be the first-ever movie police chase involving an F1 racing car.  Fun!
8. "What's the trick?"
9. Jesse Eisenberg always just sort of plays himself, doesn't he?  He's very good at it, of course.  But is it acting?
10. As silly as so much of this is, gold star for the big twists at the end.  Satisfying.

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Knee-jerk review: "Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale"

1. We admit that's a pretty stuffy, arrogant title for a movie.  Let us decide how "grand" this finale is, okay?
2. If you liked the show and the last two(!) movies, you're certainly going to like this one.  A wonderful immersion in this fascinating world, like putting on an weathered, cozy coat on a blustery day.
3. What is it about Americans that makes period English stories about class and station so interesting?  That's also part of what made Game of Thrones so fun - the royals scheming concurrent with drama among the peasants. 
4. As usual, everyone makes a huge fuss over Mary (Michelle Dockery).  Good grief.  So much hand-wringing and furrowed brows about making sure she's okay and she doesn't need anything.  Between the two Crawley sisters, the real catch, of course, has always been Edith (Laura Carmichael).
5. Not much plot, really, other than more of the same as everyone worries about how the world is changing and ending their way of life.  Sort of been the background theme since the show started all the way back in 2010.  It's more like a TV show - little storylines that bump along (some funny, some serious) with only this broader thread involving a character who may be a con artist trying to worm his way into London society tying it all together.
6. Without a traditional storyline, then, the real fun comes from these characters interacting.
7. We call this production design porn - you can entertain yourself just by soaking in the layered, detailed 1930 period costumes and sets and exteriors.  Downtown London, a horse race, a carnival?  Yes, please.
8. If you step back and really look at this... franchise?  [Is this a franchise?  A long-running television show and now three movies.  That's a franchise, right?]  If you step back and really look at this franchise, it's a little awkward to realize you're rooting for A) a wealthy aristocrat family always concerned they may soon be a little less wealthy and B) a fleet of servants so fully shaped and indoctrinated by the culture that they can imagine no other worthwhile life than running around catering to the silly social whims this aristocratic family.
9. It's rare that we have an issue with casting in a Hollywood movie, but Alessandro Nivola simply isn't as charismatic and charming in his performance (not by a long shot) as the film needs him to be for the story to make sense.
10. It took us a moment to realize that - per number 8 above - the Crawleys not only have this huge mansion called Downton Abbey, but they also have this sprawling, posh house in London called Grantham House.  Seems like every house needs a name.
11. We didn't know there was a mid-credits scene until after we left the theater.
12. We wish we could speak with the polite charm and dry wit of these people.  Truly.  In fact, when the villain gets a comeuppance, the insults and threats are so totally cloaked in London niceties that we as an audience member felt wholly unsatisfied.  Did he even understand that he's been told off?

Favorite Downton Abbey characters:
* Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville is especially good in this one as the dad who's totally getting left behind by progress)
* Edith Pelham (smooth where Mary is sharp)
* Bertie Pelham (smart, clever guy but his wife Edith is totally out of his league - good for him)
* Charles Carson (the stuffiest of stuffy butlers but if you need a butler who knows his stuff, he's your guy)
* Tom Branson (you always need a guy like this who shows up from out of town and knows exactly what to do)

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Knee-jerk review: "The Long Walk"

1. Yeah, it's pretty bleak.  
2. And very gory.  The filmmakers certainly don't shy away from the violent, shocking brutality of gunfire.  Seems a little gratuitous maybe.  Then again, too many movies make gunfights unrealistically bloodless and tidy.  
3. We were in a serious Stephen King phase back in middle school and high school.  We read everything, including terrible books like The Tommyknockers, which King famously wrote while high on painkillers.  So we read The Long Walk probably in... 8th grade?  (For the record, The Shining and It remain two of the scariest books we've ever read.)
4. Mark Hamill makes a pretty good villain.  He's completely unrecognizable here.
5. The book was written in the late 1960s and is very clearly a Vietnam War allegory: young men enter a hopeless situation and die horrible deaths one by one, forging strong friendships and sharing personal secrets along the way.  The brotherhood stuff here is very powerful.  Too bad it's forged in such a terrible, grim fire.
6. Stories like this clearly inspired The Hunger Games.  Aside from the first movie, all of the Hunger Games sequels were directed by Francis Lawrence, who's also the director here.  One could argue he's making a companion movie.  While The Hunger Games had an over-the-top, exaggerated vibe - it may be set on Earth, but no one would mistake Panem for our America - The Long Walk has a drab, gritty, urgent feel to it.  This is what our world could become.  If The Hunger Games is a fairy tale, The Long Walk is a "60 Minutes" story.
7. There's really no way to end a film like this well.  Just about everyone is going to be dead before the final fade out.  But how it all plays out was particularly disappointing to us.  One character makes a choice that goes against everything he's been arguing for 90 minutes.  The Long Walk, it seems, broke him.  We get it, but we don't have to like it.
8. "Warning!"
9. Actors Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, the two main characters, are fantastic together.  There's an interesting dynamic that emerges as they debate vengenace and hate versus love and forgiveness.  It practically turns religious.
10. Some of the flashbacks involving secret police, summary judgments, and the suppression of speech feel uncomfortably timely.  This sort of cultural synergy is always fascinating to us because those scenes were surely shot at least a year ago.  The zeitgeist always finds its way into art whether we know it's happening at the time or not.
11. It is good?  Absolutely.  Is it fun?  Not especially.

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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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