Knee-jerk review: "Super 8"

1. We went in with very high expectations. And mostly, we weren't disappointed.

2. The ending gets a little sentimental and implausible, which is to be expected from producer Steven Spielberg. Even so, it left us with a sour taste in our mouth. Some of those last beats just weren't needed. We got the point without needing the cinematic highlighter pen.

3. Elle Fanning. Wow. Steals the movie.

4. It's been compared to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., similarly unsettling sci-fi movies involving the otherworldly intruding on suburbia. Those films mostly played things very straight and skillfully evoked a grand sense of wonder and awe. But the closer cousin - especially in the above-mentioned, mildly disappointing finale - may be The Goonies, a fun movie that was proudly over-the-top in how it allowed a group of 13-year-olds to rather implausibly become action heroes.

5. In many ways, the outcast-friends-hanging-out scenes in 1979 suburbia (which crackle with Spielbergian attention to coming-of-age detail) are more engaging than the familiar sci-fi/fantasy subplots (enough with Area 51, please) that fill out most of the movie. Dealing with absent parents, struggling with crushes, finding your own voice. Those things are far more universal than dodging evil Air Force officers.

6. Stay for the credits.

7. A lot of people mock director JJ Abrams' visual style (seemingly started with the Star Trek reboot) that includes lots of blue-white lens flares in his shots. We don't understand what the big deal is. We like the flares. Something "real" about them, a messiness that suggests this is all really happening. If it were all make-believe, the cinematographer would have made sure to mask the flares, right?

8. We recently watched Abrams' Star Trek a second time and found it somewhat lacking. We wonder if our initial enthusiasm was mostly driven by relief that he and his team didn't screw it up. Strong cast saved a rather ordinary story and a completely impotent villain.

9. Yeah, if we saw what Martin saw, we'd probably throw up too.

10. That is one heck of a train derailment. The sound design alone is amazing.

11. We remain big fans of Kyle Chandler, even if his performance here is merely a darker, edgier version of his "Friday Night Lights" character Coach Taylor. That is, we never saw Coach Taylor throw a punch or handle a rifle.

13. The cube thing? Now that's cool. It's got to be so hard to surprise audiences who have seen everything and anything at this point. Never would have guessed what the cubes did.

14. We want Ron Eldard's car.

15. Good stuff.

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Knee-jerk review: "X-Men: First Class"

1. It's way better than the ads suggest. We went in thinking it'd be about a 6. It's actually a 9.

2. It may not be as solid as the top-notch X-Men 2, but it's certainly way better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which we'd stupidly deluded ourselves into liking two years ago. First Class definitely has a place in the pantheon of A-plus superhero movies

3. As one critic put it, it's a James Bond spy caper with superpowers. As in, the bad guy has a yacht with a secret submarine in the hull. It's that kind of movie.

4. January Jones, Rose Byrne, and Jennifer Lawrence in miniskirts and knee boots? Yes, please.

5. As always with the X-Men movies, there's some fairly sophisticated subtext about racism and self-acceptance, xenophobia and empathy. The mutants serve as perfect stand-ins for any oppressed group. Which makes us wonder: what would the world do if a group of people turned up with superhuman abilities? Odds are they wouldn't get a ticker-tape parade. Probably end up in Guatanamo Bay.

6. Brilliant idea, setting the movie in the 1960s against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Energizes what had sort of become a rather stale franchise. Honestly, other than Hollywood accountants, who was really clamoring for another X-Men movie?

7. The gimmicky cameo that 20th Century Fox surely thought would amuse the popcorn masses is actually, to us, rather cheesy and wholly unnecessary. As for the other cameo, we barely recognized her.

8. As hot as she may be, Hollywood, please... no more January Jones. We cry uncle. She's always stiff and uncomfortable. Blech.

9. But James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, on the other hand, dynamic and engaging. Why isn't Fassbender a movie star yet?

10. Moreso than in any of the previous X-Men movies, it's very easy here to see Magneto's point of view and understand his suspicion and mistrust of humanity.

11. By the way, Thirteen Days - about Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis - is one of our favorite movies.

12. There are gruesome ways to kill the villain... and then there's the gruesome way this movie kills its villain. Wow.

13. Some icky 9/11 allusions in a scene where people fall to their deaths with loud crashes ala the Twin Towers. And this got a PG-13 rating, people.

14. Go see it.

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A binder full of movie tickets

Regular readers know the Cheese Fry's obsessive-compulsive fixation on movies started at an early age. But it much worse than that: since 1984, we've saved the ticket stub to every movie we've ever paid money to see. Ever. As of now, that's 848 titles. What was surely an amusing quirk for a middle-schooler has now become a somewhat embarrassing secret habit for an adult pushing middle age. But it's a streak we can't possibly stop now. Can we?

Watch how the admission prices increase. It's true, kids, movies actually used to cost less than $5 per person. Also true: before the arrival of Lil' Fry, we often saw a movie or two every weekend.

1: Witness, Uniter Artists' Walnut Hill 6, $3.00 - date illegible

50: Big, Furneaux Creek GMC, $3.50 - June 18, 1988

100: Spirit of 76, Glen Lakes AMC, $3.50 - March 10, 1991

150: Jennifer 8, AMC Highland Park, $6.50 - November 13, 1992

200: The Ref, Hollywood USA Furneaux Creek, $3.25 - March 26, 1994

250: The Net, United Artists, $3.75 - August 5, 1994

300: A Very Brady Sequel, Mann's Hastings Ranch, $4.50 - August 30, 1996

350: Face/Off, Mann's Hastings Ranch, $4.50 - June 28, 1997

400: The Big Lebowski, Pacific's Crest Theater, $6.00 - April 11, 1998

450: Rushmore, Laemmle's Playhouse 7, $7.50 - February 6, 1999

500: Mansfield Park, Cinemark Legacy, $4.75 - December 27, 1999

550: O Brother, Where Art Thou, Laemmle's Sunset 5, $7.00 - January 28, 2001

600: Panic Room, Pacific Theater's The Grove, $9.50 - April 9, 2002

650: Chicago, Pacific Theater's The Grove, $7.50 - February 16, 2003

700: The Stepford Wives, Mann's Chinese Theater, $11.00 - June 12, 2004

750: Superman Returns, Mann's Chinese 6, $11.25 - June 29, 2006

800: Juno, Cinemark Legacy, $8.50 - December 26, 2007

848: Bridesmaids, L.A. Live, $10.00 - May 17, 2011

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Knee-jerk review: "Bridesmaids"

1. It's about what you would expect from a Judd Apatow-produced movie. Funny but sweet. Hilarious but sometimes disgusting. Fairly realistic main characters surrounded by strangely eccentric minor characters. Check, check, check. Our favorite, of course, remains Superbad.

2. Kristen Wiig, that sound you hear is your Hollywood stock rising. For once, she plays a relatively normal person. And she does it well. We like her very much.

3. Someone once told us that a comedy needs three big funny scenes to make it stick in viewer's minds. Here they are (your results my vary): dress fitting scene, airplane scene, bridal shower scene.

4. Melissa McCarthy steals the show without question, looking and acting nothing like the cutesy stock character she seems to play on the CBS sitcom "Mike and Molly" (we haven't seen an episode, but have bore witness to countless promos).

5. We, too, loved Wilson Phillips circa 1990.

6. The one false note, to us, is the wacky British roommates. Too much.

7. Would cops really let civilians (i.e. possible new girlfriends) ride along with them in a patrol car when they're on duty? Or let them sit on the hood of their car in a parking lot? Or let them work a radar gun?

8. Stray dogs in a restaurant parking lot is never a good sign.

9. Funny that Maya Rudolph's fiancee gets zero lines.

10. Dropping off a junker car at a swanky valet stand? We've been there, people. Not fun.

11. Good stuff. And will hopefully help get more smart, female-centric movies made.

12. As an aside, we saw trailers for Friends with Benefits and What's My Number, both of which seem atrocious, the sort of paint-by-number, connect-the-dots romantic comedies that feel completely artificial and contrived (and usually star Kate Hudson and/or Katherine Heigl). No thank you. Bridesmaids is no documentary, but at least it feels like it's a part of the real world.

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"Survivor" Hall of Fame

Boston Rob, who won "Survivor: Redemption Island" last night, is surely the most deserving winner in "Survivor's" 22-cycle history.

"Survivor" juries can sometimes let their own bitterness and disappointment cloud their judgment, as when the "Samoa" jury infamously refused to give the $1 million prize to Russell, even though he'd dominated the game at Boston-Rob-like levels. Indeed, it never ceases to amaze the Cheese Fry when juries display such ridiculous sanctimony, preaching to the finalists about integrity and honor in a game where backstabbing is practically one of the rules. In this case, however, there was no doubt that Boston Rob pulled the strings from start to finish, making him a first-ballot inductee to the "Survivor" Hall of Fame. His was a master class in personal manipulation, poker-faced lying, physical and mental toughness, and social politicking.

The complete list of 2011 inductees:

* Boston Rob ("Marquesas, "All-Stars," "Heroes vs Villains," "Redemption Island") - Only four-time player. Dominates the social game and the challenges.

* Russell ("Samoa," "Heroes vs Villains," "Redemption Island") - Two-time finalist, two-time loser. But unfairly robbed of the prize in "Samoa" due to a sour-grapes jury that could appreciate his brilliance. His one liability is an apparent inability to play the social game and avoid antagonizing others.

* Parvati ("Cook Islands, "Fans vs Favorites," "Fans vs Favorites") - Perhaps the best social player in the show's history. Those who considered nothing more than a flirt often learned otherwise the hard way.

* Richard ("Borneo") - The godfather of it all. Inventor of the "alliance" strategy that has defined how the game is played. Too bad he's in prison right now and can't attend the induction ceremony.

* Stephenie ("Palau," "Guatemala," "Fans vs Favorites") - Toughest female competitor ever.

Didn't make the final cut:

* Amanda ("China," "Fans vs Favorites," "Heroes vs Villains") - Made it to the finals twice, lost twice. First contestant to log 100 days in the game.

* Amber ("Australian Outback", "All-Stars") - Standard-bearer for how the "coat-tails" strategy works. Boston Rob did all of the work, she came along for the ride and wound up winning.

* Coach ("Tocantins," "Heroes vs Villains") - One of the strangest contestants on the show, equal parts crazy-talk philosophizing, competitive determination, earnest sincerity, and outrageous let's-play-to-the-camera performance.

* Erik ("Fans vs Favorites") - Perhaps the most bone-headed strategic play in the show's history. Badgered into giving his immunity idol up to another contestant, then voted out. Classic.

* Phillip ("Redemption Island") - See Coach above.

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You are now leaving Dillon, Texas

For those with a DirecTV subscription, we hope you were smart enough to watch the last season of "Friday Night Lights" this past winter. If not, then you're hopefully catching up as the show reruns its final episodes on NBC. If Emmy were just, this show would get a slew of nominations for its final go-round. It really is that good. (And the closing moments of the series are supremely satisfying in a way we were not expecting - fans of the show are indeed rewarded.)

Those who've seen it, love it. But it was always tough to get audiences to sample the show. Too adult for teens, too teen for adults; too much football for non-football fans, not enough football for sports nuts. It was never an easy sell in a world where pre-sold titles drive ratings. Slap a "NCIS" on the title or revive some old fossilized brand like "Hawaii Five-O" and, bingo, you have yourself a top 20 show. Quality too often seems beside the point. If the networks don't have to take a chance to get a hit, why should they? (Rumor has it NBC brass insisted on a rather contrived and melodramatic "Desperate Housewives"-"One Tree Hill"-style murder-subplot in Season 2 in a desperate effort to up the ratings, one of the show's rare missteps.)

We've praised this show before, but it's worth repeating: there have perhaps been better dramas on television, but those typically involve high-stake, high-conflict jobs like cops, detectives, criminals, and doctors. It's very rare to find a show that wrings genuine emotion and tension out of "mundane" everyday situations: paying the rent, maintaining a marriage, coping with divorce, grappling with family problems, separating work pressures from home pressures. There's no wry one-liners or polished movie-star charm here, no handguns or out-of-breath footchases. This is a show that always strived for suburban realism, which may be another reason audiences had trouble with the show. It's easy to escape into an overblown world of rampaging serial killers and lovelorn wealthy doctors, less so when the middle-class TV characters deal with the same impossible problems from which you're trying to escape. This is a show, after all, where major characters by turns went to prison, took steroids, lost everything in a bad real estate deal, had an estranged father killed in action in Iraq, and suffered quadriplegic injuries. And that doesn't even include the fact that our hero was transferred to a horrible high school with no tradition of winning football - the horror.

NBC and DirecTV deserve our thanks for cutting a deal to share the costs and keep the show on the air. Critically-beloved, but low-rated shows like this simply don't run five seasons any more. Indeed, we may not again see this sort of quiet drama on network television, although "Friday Night Lights" showrunner Jason Katims' new NBC show "Parenthood" does seem to be cut from the same cloth.
Also worth celebrating...

* The show's distinctive visual style. "Friday Night Lights" employed a loose, raw feel in which actors were encouraged to improvise and cameramen filmed the action handheld as if shooting a documentary. This is a show that never felt staged. It felt captured.

* Real locations. "Friday Night Lights" was produced two time zones east of Hollywood and it showed in every frame. The Texas locations (mostly in and around Austin) added another element of grit and realism, whether a rundown hamburger shack, a crowded high school football stadium, a modest suburban house, or a proud (but struggling) car dealership.

* The moody country-rock soundtrack. The dreamy, wistful instrumentals were provided by Explosions in the Sky, but the show also added liberal doses of bands you don't always find on top-40 radio. End result: "Friday Night Lights" didn't really sound like any other show.

* A healthy marriage. Eric and Tami Taylor were surely two of the healthiest spouses ever depicted on television. They got into fights and disagreements, the worst of which of course comes in the final episodes of the series, but there was never any doubt of their commitment and admiration for one another. Marriages on TV are too often a narrative tool, a way to create a ratings event (let's have the main characters get married!), add vague backstory sorrow (let's have the main character be brooding because his wife left him!), or provide conflict (he can't be a doctor because his wife won't let him!). Real marriages just aren't that exciting - they involve constant compromise and negotiation, just like the sort we saw the Taylors engaged in.

* Football. For those who do like football, this was a show steeped deep in the obsessive culture of Texas high school football, exploring what it means to play on the field, coach from the sidelines, watch from the cold rickety stands, or long for your own teenage glory days years after you should have moved on. Yes, the show's climactic games almost always came to some ridiculous, gadget-play, last-second series of downs engineered by Coach Taylor... but it didn't always work. In keeping with the show's interest in realism, Taylor's teams often won, but sometimes they lost.
And so we bid goodbye to the sights and sounds of Dillon, Texas. Gone but not forgotten (thanks to DVD box sets).

For the record, our favorite character was always Buddy Garrity, but we sure did like looking at Tyra Collette.
Alan Sepinwall at Hitflix does a great job recapping the best moments of the series.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.

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A few words on "Law & Order: Los Angeles"

We didn't watch the original "Law & Order" until about the time that Benjamin Bratt started. Remember him? Where'd he go? All of those old Chris Noth and Michael Moriarty episodes? Don't exist, as far as we're concerned. We are not "L&O" traditionalists. The last cast iteration featured our favorite character in all of the "L&O" pantheon: Linus Roache's Mike Cutter, who was more of a renegade, take-no-prisoners rule-breaker than Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy ever was.

So we came to "Law & Order: Los Angeles" with genuine excitement. It seemed like the perfect idea. Transplant a successful format to a new location, watch the ratings climb. Worked out well for the "CSI" shows... depending on how you define "well." Alas, the first batch of "LOLA" (it's a little too precious a nickname, don't you think?) episodes struggled and Dick Wolf took the show to the TV mechanic's shop, opened up the hood, and rebuilt the engine.

The new version of "LOLA" is certainly different, but is it better?

What works:

* We'd forgotten how good Alfred ("Throw me the whip" - Raiders of the Lost Ark) Molina can be. The doughy face makes him seem sleepy and lazy. And while we hate the contrivance that moved his character from the DA's office back to the police force, so far he's energized the "Law" elements of the show in a way that the monotone, blank-faced Skeet Ulrich never could. Molina didn't have much to do in the first round of episodes, but now it looks like he's going to be front and center. The better to chew the scenery and glare at people with sleepy, lazy, doughy eyes.

* Terrence Howard. Gold.

* Kind of cool how the show names its episodes based on the Los Angeles neighborhood in which the crime was committed. We're the sort of TV geek that pays attention to episode titles. And we appreciate purpose and consistency, like the clever titles of "Friends" and "The Big Bang Theory" episodes.

* While the revamp has reportedly tried to tamp down some of the Southern California sunniness to recapture the bleak, somber grays of the original series, there is still something fresh about the new setting. It's fun to see the detectives spend so much time in cars, driving from place to place, and it's also nice to see police work happening in places with trees and sunshine, not dank streets filled with tall buildings.

* For those of us familiar with Los Angeles, there's no better game that identifying the location of an L.A.-shot show. "Hey, that's the place over there by La Brea and Sunset!" "That's the thing by the thing in Santa Monica!"

What doesn't work:

* What's with the cheesy slow-motion new title sequence? It plays like a bad deodorant commercial. When you're chasing crooks and facing an angry press and trying to look like a bad-ass as you climb out of your car, don't stay dry. Stay extra dry. We preferred the rapid-fire, stock-photo montage of the original New York-based "Law and Orders."

* The narrative formula is getting a little creaky. We've covered this before. Crime, followed by interviews, followed by the red-herring wrong-suspect, followed by arrest of the right suspect, followed by trial curveball, followed by big courtroom showdown that may or may not lead to the punishment of the guilty. The more the show can deviate from that template, the better off it will likely be. As another critic noted, at this point there are literally thousands of hours of "Law & Order" out there in the world. How much more do we need?

* Enough with the lingering shots of corpses. It's bad enough that we hear the details, but do we need to see the horrors as well? We get it. Killing: bad, our cops and lawyers: good. The older we get, the more aggravated we are with the way cop shows like this fetishize murder scenes and zoom in on the bruises and blood. The kinkier and more outrageous the death, the better - though in "Law & Order's" defense, a great many of the murders are committed in the name of money, not depraved bloodlust. We harbor particular disgust with grubby, pseudo-scientific shows like "Criminal Minds" that wade into the bloody muck with glee, suggesting that the country is filled with serial killers and suggesting that there is no crime that science cannot solve, which is - of course - not always true. Seriously, who watches that stuff? And how can we find out where they live so we can stay away?

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"Idol" odds

Lauren, 3:2

James, 2:1

Scotty, 3:1

Jacob, 5:2

Casey, 7:1

Stefano, 10:1

Haley, 15:1

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Knee-jerk review: "Hanna"

1. Eric Bana is always cool. And the dude can rock a German accent.

2. But this movie belongs to Saoirse Ronan. With this, Atonement, and The Lovely Bones, she prove she's the real deal. Impressive. (Bonus points for the exotic first name.)

3. "I just missed your heart."

4. Imagine Salt or The Bourne Identity if the lead, killing-machine character were a 14-year-old girl.

5. How'd they manage to make Cate Blanchett look so unattractive?

6. A great soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers, especially the techno score that accompanies an incredible escape attempt.

7. This seems awfully harsh for PG-13. Lots of people get killed. Does it really make a difference if the violence is bloodless or off-screen? Guess the MPAA thinks so. And does the less-restrictive rating really open this movie up to wider audiences? We didn't see any kids in the audience. Why not just go for it and make it an R?

8. As great as the script is, we're particularly impressed by director Joe Wright. It can't be easy to strike just the right tone between tense action-thriller, poignant coming-of-age, and oddball black humor. It's a very strange, very quirky movie. And purposefully so, it seems. His last film, Atonement, is fairly genius as well.

9. Great use of some unusual exteriors, particularly a rundown, weed-choked amusement park in the finale.

10. That said, there is a bit of a pacing problem in the first 45 minutes or so.

11. Funny what happens to the boy who tries to kiss little assassin Hanna. She has some intimacy issues.

12. We liked it.

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Top four somewhat criminal acts

1. That time we drank too many beers and had too far to drive to get home, resulting in a unavoidable need to find a deserted alley in which to urinate for what seemed like three full minutes. You're never as aware of your surroundings as you are when you're looking in every direction all at once to be sure no one's around. That said, we couldn't have stopped even if a cop rolled up.

2. That time in college we stepped away from a first-run episode of "Seinfeld" to buy beers for a couple of freshmen. The store was right up the street, so it didn't take that long. But we did feel a pang of moral regret. Trust us, those knuckleheads had no business drinking.

3. That time in high school we helped steal a Dallas Morning News newspaper vending machine to try and get the change out of it. Turns out those things are pretty secure. Sorry, Belo Corporation.

4. That other time in high school we helped steal a bunch of fire extinguishers from a parking garage, then set them off in a creek behind a church. The resulting plume of CO smoke led someone to call the fire department. As we were leaving, we passed the fire truck, lights and sirens blazing. It's very hilarious when you're 17.

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Evaluating the Charlie's Angels

The Cheese Fry was well aware of the ABC hit drama - and we use that term loosely - "Charlie's Angels" back in the late 1970s. Though were a little too young to fully appreciate its unique, shall we say, charms, we remain big fans of that groovy title music, the vaguely sexist "But I took them away from all of that" voiceover, and the exploding-fireball silhouettes:

If we were putting together a detective agency comprised of nothing but Hollywood starlets and our disembodied voice coming through a 1975 speakerphone, who'd make the cut?

1. Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd) - If Farrah Fawcett was the senior who sneered when she caught you looking at her, Cheryl Ladd was the cute girl next door who'd go roller-skating with you on weekends. Big Angel crush.

2. Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith) - She stuck with the show for its entire five-season run, so she gets points for that. And she seemed to be the smart one because, you know, she had brown hair. Hollywood's rule, people, not ours.

3. Julie Rogers (Tanya Roberts) - We don't remember her on the show very well, but she's really really pretty. Gold star.

Left looking at the want ads:

1. Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson) - Now Sabrina's the really smart one: brown hair that's also short. But there's just something know-it-all about her, don't you think? Pass.

2. Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett) - Honestly, we never understood the whole Farrah thing. All of that hair. Plus she always seemed a little dim. Overrated.

3. Tiffany Welles (Shelley Hack) - Who?

For the record, yes, the first Charlie's Angels movies was fantastic, whereas the sequel Full Throttle was unwatchable.

"And now they work for us. Our name is the Cheese Fry."

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The best of 2009 (15 words or less)

That's no typo, people. The mid-2009 arrival of the Li'l Fry put something of a damper on our ability to see movies each weekend at a theater near us, which thus put a damper on our yearly best-of list. We know there are at least seven people out there who'd come to look forward our year-end rundown of the best and worst in movies. To those seven, we do apologize. Better late than never, right?

Now, sixteen months after most Best of 2009 lists were published, we can release ours. Thank you, Netflix and DirecTV's free trial of HBO and Showtime.

Sadly, for the aforementioned reason, this may well be the last Cheese Fry best-of list for quite some time, ending a tradition started on our black-and-white Macintosh Classic in 1994 (our top five movies back then: Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, Speed, Forrest Gump, and Little Women - not too shabby, though we'd argue in 2011 that Forrest Gump has aged not well at all).

To make things interesting, our recaps will be no more than 15 words.

1. The Hurt Locker - Oscar got it right. Sweaty, tense, urgent, and vividly real. A minor masterpiece.

2. Up - Certainly the darkest Pixar movie, but also the most poignant. And with unexpected whimsy.

3. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino's best since Pulp Fiction (1994 callback!). Complex, layered, bloody wish-fulfillment. Christoph Waltz zings.

4. District 9 - Proving how sci-fi can provide sophisticated social satire while pretending to be a conspiracy thriller.

5. (500) Days of Summer - Clever jigsaw plotting explores ups and downs of romance. Best ending of the year.

6. Up in the Air - Strong characters, sharp dialogue, movie-star acting, important themes, all polished to a shine.

7. The Fantastic Mr. Fox - Hard to describe the quirky charm and oddball sensibility of Wes Anderson's animated caper.

8. Zombieland - We love zombies almost as much as we love the deadpan talents of Woody Harrellson.

9. Taken - Slambang action. Doesn't always make sense, but it always commands your respect and attention.

10. Precious - Sometimes movies show you things you'd rather not see. Happy ending measured in baby steps.

Honorable mentions: Avatar (we begrudgingly admire the visuals), Away We Go (the token Sundance-style indie), 2012 (ridiculously over the top, but it, like, completely commits to its ridiculousness), Angels and Demons (way better than we thought it'd be given the dreck that was The DaVinci Code), The Hangover (so hilarious and well-done that it almost made our top-ten list), He's Just Not That Into You (Gennifer Goodwin's sunny presence carries the movie), Knowing (we know, we know - this should have been terrible, but it wasn't), The Proposal (classic Hollywood romantic comedy done very well), Star Trek (not as good as everyone made it out to be, but appropriately epic and important).

The two worst movies of 2009:

Terminator Salvation - There's a fine line between a dark, gritty future that's fun and cool (like Blade Runner) and a dark, gritty future that just makes you depressed and numb (like this monstrosity). We wish they'd stop making Terminator movies but with Schwarzenegger out of politics, it's surely only a matter of time before they recruit him again. And we wish Hollywood would stop force-feeding actor Sam Worthington on us. We'd offer a witty comment about the ending, but we fell asleep before we got to it.

Sherlock Holmes - The rapport between Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law is exceptional. And we're happy to look at Rachel McAdams any day. But this movie is so cumbersomely plotted and crammed full of subplots and sideways red herrings that at the end, we were exhausted and just wanted it to be over. We're also not cool with the movie's decision to withhold Holmes' deductive powers until the very end. What fun is that? It makes us feel as stupid as everyone else who meets Holmes.

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15 songs we never want to hear again

We really, really hate these songs.

1. Thomas Dolby, "She Blinded Me with Science"

2. Blondie, "Heart of Glass"

3. Snow, "Informer"

4. David Bowie, "Let's Dance"

5. Ini Kamoze, "Here Comes the Hotstepper"

6. Toni Basil, "Mickey"

7. UB40, "Red Red Wine"

8. U2, "Pride"

9. Digital Underground, "The Humpty Dance"

10. John Cougar, "Hurts So Good"

11. Whitney Houston, "I Will Always Love You"

12. Kool and the Gang, "Celebration"

13. All-4-One, "I Swear"

14. Pearl Jam, "Jeremy"

15. Counting Crows, "Mr. Jones"

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Smoking hot brackets

To try and balance out the bleary-eyed, pimply-faced geekiness of the Sci-Fi Bracket post below, we took the time to fill out Esquire magazine's Sexiest Woman Alive Madness. Real men may not be able to understand the difference between The Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters Bossk and IG-88, but they know a hot girl when they see one.

* Fashion bracket

Our age is showing. As attractive as these supermodels may be, A) we haven't heard of half of them and B) when we try to get an idea of what they look like (thank you, Google image search), we find that they mostly all look alike. This wouldn't have been the case 12 years ago when all top supermodels would have filled the pages of our monthly Maxim magazine.

#1-seed Brooklyn Decker (her, we know) defeats #2-seed Miranda Kerr to advance to the Final Four.

* Music and Sports bracket

We would argue there's many more candidates from the world of music, but Esquire may be trying to balance music with sports. Not as many, ahem, candidates from the world of sports, it seems; the ones they find are mostly women we never heard of.

#14-seed Gwyneth Paltrow (music? really?) defeats #4-seed Erin Andrews (though we still prefer the smart-girl looks of Rachel Nichols or Bonnie Bernstein) to advance to the Final Four.

We stipulate that Gwyneth in the movies can be an icy, cold experience. But the Gwyneth who's suddenly found new juice on Fox's "Glee" and become a minor singing star has real oomph.

* Movies bracket

This one's in our wheelhouse, people. We know almost all of these actresses, but lament the absence of Cheese Fry guilty-pleasure Jennifer Aniston.

#2-seed Olivia Wilde defeats #1-seed Mila Kunis (who almost lost to #4-seed Ashley Greene, FYI; you got lucky, Kunis)

* Television bracket

We must protest the inclusion of #2-seed Kim Kardashian. We, in fact, protest everything about Kim Kardashian. And yes, she did advance a round in our bracket.

#8-seed "those girls from Glee" (and Esquire isn't even including actresses Naya Rivera and Heather Morris) defeats #3-seed Christina Hendricks (last year's big winner)

* Final Four results

Olivia Wilde defeats Brooklyn Decker (see Tron Legacy and you'll know why)

"Those girls from Glee" defeat Gwyneth Paltrow

* The championship game

Olivia Wilde defeats "Those girls from Glee" and spares us the indiginity of having to defend our inexplicable interest in a Fox show about a high school choir.

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May the brackets be with you

We are many things here at the spacious, shag-carpeted Cheese Fry offices, but college basketball fans is not one of them. Thankfully, geek website io9 kindly created a March Madness bracket consisting solely of sci-fi movies.

How'd the movies fare? Glad you asked.

From the northwest bracket (the io9 brackets aren't labeled, but it sounds cooler to name them, don't you think?), #1-seed Star Wars advanced without breaking a sweat, while #3-seed Terminator 2 had no trouble beating #2-seed Day the Earth Stood Still and #7-seed District 9.

There were likewise no shocks in the southwest bracket as #1-seed 2001: A Space Odyssey and #2-seed The Empire Strikes Back advanced. It was a real nail-biter however, as #13-seed Independence Day almost edged 2001. It's become hip to trash Independence Day, but it's hard to find another world-wide disaster movie that puts as much effort (or tries to, at least) into special-effects as it does its characters. And while we do stipulate that the beginning and end of 2001 are pretty out-there, the middle section with HAL is gold.

Big upsets in the northeast bracket as underdogs stampeded over the favorites. #12-seed Total Recall ("Consider it a divorce") blows past #4-seed Back to the Future and #1-seed E.T., while #10-seed Sunshine (yes, we know the ending is absolutely terrible) beats #2-seed Wall-E.

And in the southeast bracket, things proceed as the selection committee surely intended, as #1-seed Blade Runner and #2-seed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan advance to the Elite Eight.

And here's what happened next in the Elite Eight round... (By the way, how nerdy is this entire exercise? Good grief.)

#3 Terminator 2 defeats #1 Star Wars (we all have fond feelings about Star Wars, but it's about 20 minutes too long - search your feelings, you know it to be true)

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 2001: A Space Odyssey (2001's ending finally catches up to it)

#12 Total Recall defeats #10 Sunshine (Sunshine's ending finally catches up to it)

#1 Blade Runner defeats #2 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (we love Khan, but Blade Runner's look shaped the entire genre - there's sci-fi before Blade Runner and sci-fi after Blade Runner)

And in the Final Four round...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #3 Terminator 2 (bubble gum beats dark-and-grim)

#1 Blade Runner defeats #12 Total Recall (visual style beat narrative pretzels)

And in the championship...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 Blade Runner

This feels right, don't you think? And not just because we have a toy Tauntaun sitting on our bookshelf.

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Goodnight, Frank Herbert

Until the Li'l Fry came along, we were completely unaware of the classic (and rather creepy) children's book Goodnight Moon. Which is why two years ago, we would have been unable to appreciate the strangeness of Goodnight Dune, a spoof that involves elements of Frank Herbert's sci-fi/fantasy books - and the very strange, very flawed David Lynch film.

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