Knee-jerk review: "Confess, Fletch"

1. Very sharp and smart.
2. The sort of old-fashioned, low-key mystery that Hollywood doesn't really make much of anymore. 
3. So of course it was quietly released in theaters for a couple of weeks before getting quickly shuttled over to streaming services.
4. To paraphrase entertainment pundit Scott Mendelson, audiences like to complain about how youth-oriented comic book movies overrun the neighborhood multiplex, but when something like Confess, Fletch gets made, no one goes to see it.  Then again, Paramount and Miramax really didn't give this one a chance for audiences to find it.
5. Have you ever had a weird neighbor like Eve?
6. There's something strangely compelling about a movie where the stakes are so low.  This isn't about the end of the world. It's about a single murder linked to an upper-class conspiracy to steal and sell some rare art.  Marvel doesn't really do insurance fraud dramas.
7. Chevy Chase obviously made the Fletch role his own in the original two movies in the 1980s.  But Jon Hamm is unexpectedly perfect here.  He doesn't have Chase's improv wiseass vibe, but he's totally nailed Fletch's snarky and bemused "I'm smarter than you" attitude.
8. Poor Detective Griz.
9. We were strangely reminded of the Amazon Prime Jack Reacher series.  Like Reacher, Fletch here always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else.  Even when he's arrested, it's more of an inconvenience than a genuine problem.  He's completely unflappable.  Audiences won't worry about what will happen to him.
10. Instead, the movie creates interest through the serpentine plot of the mystery.  It's great fun to watch Fletch meet quirky characters, sift through the clues, follow suspects (and duck those who are following him), and concoct elaborate lies and schemes to get what he needs.
11. It's not a comedy in the usual sense of the word.  But it's definitely got funny moments.
12. Bonus points for quick references to how much Lakers and Celtics fans hate each other. 
13. "Bespoke" is a pretty pretentious word.
14. We must also applaud the ending: without spoiling anything, let's just say that Fletch isn't exactly the conventional hero who puts it all together and saves the day.
15. The Cheese Fry in middle school was fairly obsessed with the original Fletch.  We don't want to admit that we transcribed the entire movie by hand to better study the structure and dialogue... but we totally transcribed the entire movie by hand to better study the structure and dialogue.  Push play on the VCR, listen, push stop, write down what happened, push play again.  We were strange, no doubt.  It's easy to focus on the Chevy one-liners, but there's a pretty dense and layered mystery driving the plot.
16. We'd absolutely love to see a sequel.

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Knee-jerk review: "Fall"

1. Scary.
2. It's got a B-movie vibe, indie budget, no name cast.  We wanted to roll our eyes and find fault somewhere, but honestly it's lean and mean and tightly constructed.  This is played deadly straight.
3. Lionsgate was absolutely right to put this in theaters and buck the increasingly irritating "let's just stream it" default position.  We worry that aside from Marvel blockbusters, movie theaters soon won't have anything to show.  Film distributors need to, like, distribute.
4. Textbook high concept premise - two thrill-seekers climb an old isolated radio tower in the middle of nowhere, then get stranded - gets elevated by some unexpected emotional layers and character reveals. 
5. We're afraid of heights and so at times this was a very hard thing to sit through.  It's been a long, long time since we literally wanted to look away.  (Fun fact: the last time we had this much trouble hanging in there during a scary movie was M. Night Shyamalan's deeply unsettling The Visit.)
6. We must all celebrate when movie characters find reasonable, logical solutions to seemingly impossible problems.  No one cheats here, although the range of a remote controlled drone maybe stretches plausibility.
7. To us, Jeffrey Dean Morgan has an undeniable cool factor.  He's always magnetic.
8. If you're curious, there's very little greenscreen work.  The filmmakers built the top of the tower on a mountain so they could fake the height.  It looks like they're up in the air even though they're really only a few off the top of the mountain.
9. Palms were sweaty for the entire runtime, if you must know.
10. We can surely all agree that people who climb mountains for fun are certifiable.

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Knee-jerk review: "Don't Worry Darling"

1. As you might expect, the behind-the-scenes drama of sordid film set extramarital affairs, he said/she said actor firings, and angry actresses refusing to participate in press junkets was more engaging and unpredictable than the actual movie.
2. Harry Styles seems more like a little boy to us than a leading man.  Can he act?  Yeah, we suppose so.  The other characters make a big deal out of him, but his performance doesn't really back that up.  A more seasoned actor would have done far more with the role.
3. The movie does a fantastic job recreating that mid-century 1950s suburban vibe of semi-formal cocktail parties and sleek cars and jazzy LPs. 
4. The problem is that it's a such a long wind-up.  Clearly something is off with this neighborhood, but the movie makes you wait for 80 minutes -- while our heroine shuffles around tries to understand the obvious -- before finally getting to the inevitable twist ending. 
5. And when the twist finally does come and we understand what's going on, it's all a big rush to the climax (and rather abrupt fade-to-black) rather than taking more to explore what this means.
6. By the end, we sort of understood who did what and why, but not really.  There's some very interesting and important critiques of how society keeps women "in their place" and how men are terrified of losing patriarchal control.  (Note both the director and screenwriter women.)  It's like your college women's studies class come to life.  But all of that is buried way down in the subtext.  Imagine if some of that had become more overt so the characters could grapple with it.
7. We don't get Gemma Chan.  Sorry.
8. It may be unfair since Clint Eastwood has long directed himself - and in lead roles no less - but we found it odd that Olivia Wilde would give herself a big supporting role rather than focus 100% on directing.  Any number of capable actresses could have done just as well with the best friend part.
9. With such a strong "perfect community with a scary, dark secret" Stepford Wives undercurrent, for most of the running time we felt like we've seen this story before.  That didn't make it unenjoyable, just familiar. 
10. Well done but unoriginal can sometimes be more satisfying than poorly made but original. 
11. We're definitely members of the Florence Pugh fan club.  If she's in it, we want to see it.

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Observations from a Middle School Volleyball Season

This fall and last fall, the Cheese Fry has spent a number of Thursday evenings sitting on hard plastic bleachers in half-full middle school gymnasiums cheering on the 13-year-old Lil Fry.  Hers is a better-than-average team.  Last season, they got the top seed in the post-season tournament, but then were inexplicably eliminated after failing to close out (they only needed to score one more point!) what seemed to be an easy win.  The outcome of the current season remains unknown - the team may be a little better than they were as a 7th grade team, but so are the other district teams.

Forthwith, some observations made during our trip along the middle school volleyball circuit...

* Some of these gyms look like an NBA stadium what with all of their championship banners hanging from the rafters.

* While we can appreciate the attempt to create excitement and energy by blasting music during timeouts, these schools seem to all use some sort of school athletics streaming services that's supported by ads.  And so during a timeout, rather than get some amped-up top-40 song, you often get the end of a Kroger commercial.  Let's go, team!  Produce is always fresh and always affordable!

* We've gotten to see a number of gymnasium wall murals (some pretty good, others... less so) depicting school mascots, usually "breaking" through the gym's wall and looking extremely angry and fierce.  A photo compilation of these murals is desperately needed.

* Paper tickets are oh, so 20th century.  Now it's all about buying tickets online and showing your phone app at the door to a disinterested mom and/or student.

* There's always a bored police officer lingering by the gym door.

* We'd love to know why kids going to buy concessions prefer to sprint full speed from their seat to the exit doors.  It's not just little kids - a lot of the middle schoolers do it too.  Is it to avoid blocking everyone's view?  Is it to hear the loud clomps of their sneakers on the hardwood?

* Theater students have nothing on the over-the-top antics the two student line judges - with their big orange flags - perform to keep themselves entertained.

* One mental game we like to play is trying to figure out which parents belong to which player on the court.  It's always a small victory when we piece it together through subtle clues (i.e. seeing an adult hug a player offers no challenge - that's too easy and obvious).  We're like Columbo secretly eyeing the people around us, looking for little gestures and phrases.  But there remain many open cases: some adults we see at every game we cannot pair up with any of the players.

* It's always a thrill when we get to throw a ball back in.  Like we're briefly part of the action.

* A good drinking game would be to do a shot whenever someone who's not paying attention gets accidentally boinked in the head by a ball during the pre-game warmups.

* Between the shrill voices of 13-year-old girls and the terrible, echoing acoustics of gyms, it's not always easy to understand sideline cheers.  Of those we can understand, this one is the best: when the opponent hits the ball out of bounds, Lil Fry's team shouts "O! U! T! Out! See ya!"  With a little snarky goodbye salute on the last two words.  Teenaged genius.

* The most common phrase you'll hear in the stands - asked by children to their parents, of course - is "You have any money?"  Middle school athletic concessions stands have more variety than your local movie theater.

* Unofficial tally - the most popular concession items are ballpark nachos with the hot cheese sauce, popcorn (just the Orville Redenbacher microwave bags), and ring pops that turn your lips and tongue blue.

* You'll note there's always one girl way better than everyone else on a team.  Good things happen around her.  Likewise, there's one girl on every team who clearly is in over her head.  You cringe when the ball comes her way.

* Promoting sportsmanship is a good thing, of course, but the traditional line of girls at the net slapping five after the game with a monotone "Good game... Good game... Good game..." reminds us of the David Spade flight attendant sketch on Saturday Night Live where the phony cheer of "Buh bye!" really meant "Get lost."

* If you get through an evening without the scoreboard operator making an error, it was a good day.

* What's true for your college and professional sports fandom is also true for middle school: few things are more frustrating than watching "your" team lose through self-inflicted mistakes and unforced errors.  It's understandable when the other team is better.  That you can accept.  But when it's clear the teams are more or less evenly matched and your team is floundering hopelessly, that is infuriating.

One last observation - every middle school volleyball game will attract at least one spectator from these nine categories:

1. The mom who shouts and cheers at an inappropriately loud volume ("Get your ball back!")

2. While Loud Mom is trying to help in her own way, the dad counterpart who shouts and cheers at an inappropriately loud volume has more of an impatient edge ("Get your head in the game!")

3. A variation of Loud Dad is the obnoxious dad who likes to whistle really loud - this guy is usually sitting near you for maximum audio impact

4. The mom who offer encouragements by name to every single player who touches the ball like she's calling the game for Fox ("Good serve, Emma!" "Nice set, Olivia!" "What a hit, Lucy!")

5. The stoic, Vulcan-like dad who just sits there, facing forward like a wooden carving no matter what happens

6.  The dad secretly watching an ESPN game on his iPhone

7. The two moms who know all of the good gossip about the school team, the school team players, the school coaches, the last practice, and also (bonus!) what's going with the school players' individual club teams - and rest assured that each will also happily address for each other any knowledge gaps so they each end the conversation armed with new juicy intel

8. Bored younger siblings who are either running wild (sprinting to the concession stand, as mentioned) or slumped in the stands playing on a device in a far dark corner of the bleachers

9. The spectators who sit behind you and deliver an unending, podcast-style conversation and commentary about anything and everything other than the actual game everyone's paid good money to watch

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Knee-jerk review: "Bullet Train"

1. A lot more complicated and layered than we were expecting.
2. The TV spots suggested a over-the-top action comedy.  But the movie is more of a puzzle plot crime caper with a strong Tarantino vibe.  Lots of colorful criminal characters and double-crosses and flashbacks and narrative sidebars and incongruous soundtrack pop songs and interlocking plot threads that don't necessarily all make sense until the very end.
3. If we tried to explain the story, you'd never get it.  It's dense.
4. For the most part, we're suckers for neon-lit, urban-jungle, samurai-culture Japanese settings.  Love it.
5. Brad Pitt is predictably engaging, but the real revelation here is Brian Tyree Henry.  He steals the movie.
6. Even though it's a late night train, the lack of other passengers - and train staff - is sometimes a little hard to buy.  Two characters fist fight in the empty(!) bar lounge and no one really seems to notice.
7. We think we're more jaded than the average moviegoer, so it's hard to surprise us.  And yet, we were surprised a couple of times here.
8. Do these trains really only stop for 60 seconds before the doors slam closed again?
9. "I'm not Carver."
10. Not understanding at all the many Thomas the Tank Engine references made us feel very old.
11. Hiroyuki Sanada is way cooler than most people.
12. It's not particularly original, but the assassin-in-therapy bit is a lot of fun.
13. There were some pretty interesting themes in here about luck and fate - one character claims to have nothing but bad luck, while another brags about limitless good luck.  Can we escape our fate or do we make our luck?  All of that could have used some sharpening.  It's gets lost in the noise.
14. The ending - where all of these crazy plot turns and characters finally come together - gets a little... much.  In fact, it almost sort of spoiled the movie.  For 100 minutes. it's a delight, cruising on style and plot twists and wacky characters... then in the climax things go a little haywire with overwrought mayhem and unwelcome melodrama once the big villain finally shows up.
15. It's the kind of movie where people are poisoned and blood gushes from their eyes.

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Eight Thoughts on Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building”

1. The show's layered mystery narrative - chock full of red herrings and dead ends - gets more than a little convoluted, especially in the escalating illogic of the second season.  But you're not going for the plot.  You're going for the effortless charm among the three leads and the way the show peels back the layers of their characters.  As clumsy as the overall story may get at times, the writers take great care with their characters' sad backstories.
2. Steve Martin, as one of the Cheese Fry’s OG fans recently put it, is a genius.  His unique brand of dry, sophisticated self-mockery is baked deep into this show.  As long a career as Martin has had, he still feels underrated somehow.
3. Great shows all have great theme songs.  You ever notice that?
4. For us, a little Martin Short goes a long way.  He’s a bit... much.  That he’s so engaging here is completely surprising.
5. To put it mildly, all these popular true crime podcasts can be very overwrought, which makes them a very worthy (if very niche) pop culture phenomenon to satirize.  Ms. Cheese Fry loves the “Dateline NBC” podcasts and it’s hard not to roll our eyes just hearing occasional snippets of that show.  Keith Morrison's "you'll never believe this" style this of narration is a genre onto himself.
6. There’s something strangely cozy and inviting about this sort of upper-crust Manhattan story where everyone lives in posh apartments, wears stylish clothing, attends swanky parties… without ever having an actual job.  And those who do have jobs are working on Broadway or owning art galleries.  They’re not from our world.
7. Selena Gomez is a big surprise here as well, even more deadpan and dry at times than Martin.  She more than holds her own.  The show predictably mines great humor out of the generation gap between her and her costars.  It’s what you expect, but executed so well.
8. Brazzos totally would have aired on NBC, don’t you think?

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Knee-jerk review: "Thor: Love and Thunder"

1. It's a thoroughly entertaining - if also thoroughly forgettable - movie.
2. The villain takes a back seat to the action, which is surprising considering that A) he's played by Christian Bale in full scene-chewing mode and B) he's got a fairly sympathetic and complex motivation for the mayhem he unleashes.  But the film seems more interested in wacky shenanigans and audience-pleasing moments than in digging deep into truly serious angles.
3. At least until the very end, when things suddenly shift gears and get pretty heavy.
4. Also wasted: the Guardians of the Galaxy crew who show up in the first few minutes to connect back to the ending of Avengers: Endgame.  Only Chris Pratt has any lines here and he's totally going through the motions.
5. It's the sort of movie where women literally faint when they see Thor's full frontal nudity.  It's a funny bit, but completely unrealistic.  It's a gag you'd see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  Amusing, yes, but at this moment the filmmakers aren't even pretending to ground the characters in any sort of Earthling reality.
6. Likewise, there's some funny business with Thor's magical axe seeming to be jealous of Thor's fixation on his old hammer.  Cute, but what kind of crazy movie is this?
7. In other words, you'll probably like it if you just go with it.  Turn off the grown-up logic part of your brain.
8. Russell Crowe has a good time in his cameo as Zeus and he's doing some kind of European accent.  We were trying to remember if Zeus was a Greek god or a Roman god.  Is Crowe doing a Greek accent or a Roman accent?  It was hard to tell.  Maybe both?
9. We haven't seen all of the Thor movies, so we got pretty lost in the intricacies of the rules regarding the magical hammer and the magical axe and that intergalactic transport beam.
10. Did we mention the two giant goats that scream?
11. The business with Matt Damon, Sam Neill, and Luke Hemsworth as bad actors re-enacting the Thor saga for paying customers was cringey enough in Thor: Ragnarok.  But we get to see another go-round with them in Love and Thunder.  It's the sort of thing the filmmakers probably found hilarious, but doesn't quite translate on screen.
12. "Necrosword" is a pretty cool name.
13. In case you were wondering, yes, the big climax involves lots of laser lights and energy beams.
14. The ten-year-old Lil Fry asked a good question: "How come we never heard about the Eternity before?"  The Eternity, you see, is some kind of magic portal at the center of the universe that can not only grant a wish, but can be opened with Thor's sword.  Huh?  We didn't say this to her in reply, but we were definitely thinking "Maybe because the whole movie has a make-it-up-as-we-go vibe."
15. While we enjoyed the Guns N Roses music cues, we wonder what younger audiences make of it.  Marvel movies are surely aimed at teens and young adults, not Cheese Fry adults of a certain age.  "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" were released in 1988.  At this point, those songs are 34 years old.  We're trying to imagine watching the Michael Keaton Batman movie in 1989 and hearing a 34-year-old music cue from 1955.  Wouldn't "Rock Around the Clock" seem totally out of place?
16. That said, we have to acknowledge that Thor: Ragnarok has made Lil Fry like Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song."
17. Director Taika Waititi most definitely loves the wide shot of a hero leaping through the air to attack the bad guys in slow motion while lightning bolts fly all around.  It's a very memorable comic book style image.  He's used it several times in both Ragnarok and Love and Thunder. 
18. The script may be a little thin, but Waititi has style and energy.
19. Final thought: if you enjoyed the fantastic teaser trailer, you'll enjoy the movie.

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Musings on Paramount+'s "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds"

* This is the Star Trek we've all been waiting for.
* As well done as they may be, to us there's just something dour and unpleasant about the recent Discovery and Picard shows.
* It's a sign of where we are with television right now to feel this kind of joy for a show that relies on tightly-written, self-contained episodes that clearly conclude at the final fade out.  We've grown tired of suffering through seasons-long slogs of tangled mysteries and twists and cliffhangers that are extended across way too many episodes simply because that's what shows do now.
* Ethan Peck has definitely captured the Leonard Nimoy vocal vibe.
* As other critics have noted, this show did a better job in ten hours to flesh out Uhura than was done for the character in the previous fifty years.
* Extra credit for the subtle little touches that tie this show to the original series, like the door whoosh sound effect or the little strange viewer that Spock uses at his science station.
* Anson Mount is fantastic.  We can't decide if we want to be just like his Christopher Pike character or just make him our boss so we can work for him and attend his awesome cookout meeting dinners
* We liked Seth MacFarlane's The Orville because it captured the ensemble essence of Star Trek: The Next Generation despite a number of very annoying characters and a vague sort of smugness about it.  But Strange New Worlds is so top-notch on every level that it makes The Orville look like sad, stale fan fiction mimeographed after hours in an office supply room.
* The show was much pretty clicking on all cylinders right out of the gate.
* A whole lot of the fun in this show comes from the interaction of the characters.  As with The Next Generation, this is a group you'd like to hang out with.  It's not about shocking plots or gee-whiz special effects.
* All of this, plus a return of the Gorn.

Strange New Worlds episodes ranked
1. "Spock Amok" - The one where Spock and T'Pring switch bodies.
2. "The Serene Squall" - The one with the space pirates.
3. "The Elsyian Kingdom" - The one where everyone is in a fairy tale.
4. "Quality of Mercy" - The one with Captain Kirk and time travel.
5. "Lift Us Where the Suffering Cannot Reach" - The one with the creepy ascension ceremony.
6. "All Those Who Wander" - The one with the Gorn eggs.
7. "Children of the Comet" - The one with the comet.
8. "The Ghosts of Illyria" - The one with the light addiction virus.
9. "Strange New Worlds" - The one where Starfleet invents the Prime Directive.
10. "Memento Mori" - The one with the Gorn ships.

Sam Lindbergh at The Ringer also loved the show and we 100% endorse his endorsement.

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Knee-jerk review: "Lightyear"

1. It certainly looks good.  As a science fiction action story, it's appropriately packed full of cool rockets and laser guns and spacesuits and alien robots.  It's all very tactile and visceral.
2. Other than that, however, when it was over, we just sort of shrugged.  It's... fine.  But if you're looking for top shelf Pixar story magic, you're probably going to be disappointed.
3. We understand the convoluted meta story reason behind not having Tim Allen voice Buzz.  In the fictional universe of Toy Story, Allen voiced the toy that was based on this movie.  The movie had one actor, you see, and the toy company had to get another actor to do the toy voice.  Whatever.  We suspect the real reason has something to do with politics and/or actor fees.  Regardless, if you're making a Buzz Lightyear movie, you need Tim Allen.  Period.
4. There are numerous story elements here that do the job - the robot cat Sox, the ragtag team of wannabe Space Rangers, some mocking of Buzz's love of captain's log-style narration - but we're left with a nagging feeling that the whole thing just should have been sharper and funnier.  It's all so strangely flat and dull.
5. On one hand, we have to admire the courage to open the movie with Buzz making a horrible miscalculation that affects what seem to be thousands of people.  On the other hand, that's a very weird way to start a movie.  (That off-center vibe gets pushed even further with Buzz undertaking a series of test flights that involve time dilation.  It's way out there for a family movie.)
6. Even with a team of brilliant scientists there's no way we buy that people could build a giant high tech spaceport from scratch in a handful of years.  That's the sort of logic leap that can completely undermine a movie.
7. The third act twist seems fun at first, but then you start to realize that the movie cannot clearly explain why exactly that twist happened.
8. Coolest thing by far is the little gizmo that transports any object it's attached to directly onto the alien ship.
9. Judging by the trailer we saw in front of Lightyear, the next Minions movie is going to be a lot more fun.

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Knee-jerk review: "Top Gun Maverick"

1. With the fade in comes that one familiar chime (you know the one) over a percolating drum machine and it's like getting enveloped in a warm 80s cocoon.
2. This is what popcorn Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking looks like, people.  Big stunts, big emotions, big drama.  It cooks.
3. The core of the movie explores the lingering grief surroundings Goose's unexpected death in the original movie, which may be uninspired (we also get the expected insults to Maverick that he's, like, a dinosaur) but it certainly seems appropriate.
4. Ms. Fry rightly pointed out that the mission our heroes undertake here - an air strike in a foreign country - would likely be considered an act of war. 
5. This is surely the most likable that Miles Teller has even been on screen.  To us, his performances usually default to smarmy creep.
6. We don't want to spoil it and say "Danger Zone" appears on the soundtrack... but "Danger Zone" appears on the soundtrack.  Revvin' up your engine, listen to her howlin' roar.
7. Poor Val Kilmer.
8. We did the online game where you're given a Top Gun-style call sign.  Ours was Hatchet.  How lame is that?
9. It's one of those movies where you can't help but wonder how the heck did they film this?  Some of the camera angles seem utterly impossible.
10. Jennifer Connelly is as luminous as ever.  Sigh.
11. That football game on the beach makes no sense.
12. We're getting rusty.  That pitch perfect climax should have been so totally obvious, yet we didn't see it coming.
13. There's dramatic license and then there's the necessary plot point here that asks audiences to believe that American fighter jets are suddenly technologically inferior to this unnamed foreign country.  We ain't buying it.
14. "Talk to me, Goose."
15. There really is a bar where you have to buy everyone a round if you have your cell phone on the bar.  The mugs hanging from the ceiling belong to active aviators - you get the mug when you get your call sign.
16. All this, plus Ed Harris and Jon Hamm glowering in Navy uniforms.
17. We're not crying, you're crying.

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Eight quick notes on HBO's "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty"

1. Many pundits - including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - complained loud and long about the ridiculous, exaggerated vibe of the show.  To us, that was a feature, not a bug.  The show works as a fable, a larger-than-life fictionalized spin on true events that were already a little ridiculous.  HBO and the producers just gave the whole thing a little nudge into crazy.  It's practically satire in some ways.  No reasonable person should ever consider this thing a documentary.  At this point, in fact, we have Google or Wikipedia open on our phone anytime we watch a movie or TV show that's supposedly based on a true story.  An instant fact check is often essential.
2. That said, it is curious that the show made Jerry West such a wild-eyed maniac.
3. John C. Reilly was born to play Jerry Buss.  Phenomenal.  We always remember Buss as the old-timer covered in locker room champagne with Shaq and Kobe during the 2000-2002 three-peat title run.  The depiction of him here as a creepy ladies man horndog - which, apparently, does have truth to it - was rather shocking.
4. On paper, a shaggy, montage visual style seeking to create a late 70s/early 80s vibe would seem like a pretty obvious choice.  Lots of movies use different film stocks and styles and jump cuts to create a period mood.  Yadda yadda yadda.  But there was something different about this.  The grainy film stock with 8mm-style sprocket holes, the glitchy TV video images, it all came together beautifully.  Along with the wardrobe and the set design, "Winning Time" may not be 1980 accurate, but it feels 1980 accurate.
5. Was Larry Bird really that surly and angry?  Dude.  Bonus points for using a beer car to catch the tobacco spit.
6. Fun fact: so it turns out HBO didn't want to call the show "Showtime" - which was what the Lakers of the 80s called themselves and what the book was titled on which the show is based - because of the competing Showtime pay-TV service.  HBO's Showtime.  Sort of be like Showtime's HBO, we suppose.
7. Aside from Reilly, the actors who played Magic Johnson and Kareem (Quincy Isaiah and Solomon Hughes) walk that line between perfectly evoking the real person without ever lapsing into an cringey impersonation.  Like much of the show, they feel exactly right.
8. All of that tedious business with the Buss family and the dying matriarch Sally Field seemed very important to the producers, but for us it paled in comparison to the layered drama and intrigue of the players and coaches trying to make this whole thing work.

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Knee-jerk review: "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"

1. For us, the Marvel fanfare is becoming just about as exciting as the 20th Century Fox fanfare.  Builds genuine anticipation.

2. The emotional core of these Marvel superhero movies always works pretty well.  Here it's all about that nagging wonder about "what could have been."  Would you be happier in another timeline where things turned out a little different?  You married the one that got away, you avoided some terrible tragedy.  It would be different, yes, but would it better?

3. There's also fascinating elements of nature versus nurture - how much of your personality traits are innate and shared with your counterparts across endless universes and how much is uniquely yours and yours alone?

4. That said, it's still a superhero movie which means there are endless, exhausting CGI-driven scenes with characters firing colored laser beams at each other and giant buildings and rooms crashing and crumbling to the ground. 

5. These movies have come a long, long way from the relatively small-scale, tech-driven movie that was Iron Man.  Now audiences are completely okay with witches and magic and monsters and inter-dimensional travel and aliens.  Imagine showing this wacked-out movie to someone in 2008.

6. The much-discussed Illuminati scene is pretty awesome, as is the way the sequence is used to demonstrate the power of the villain.  At that point, it genuinely seems impossible for our heroes to prevail, which is exactly what you want in a movie.

7. We didn't know Rachel McAdams played this big a part in the movie.  Pleasant surprise.

8. Is it a coincidence that two mystical books play a big role in a movie directed by Sam Raimi whose Evil Dead movies centered on a supernatural book?

9. We think people would buy Pizza Poppa T-shirts.

10. Almost all of the combat sorcerer sequences go on too long.

11. You may have heard this is the darkest Marvel movie.  And that's 100% correct.  Things get really weird and really creepy at the end - there's one third act turn that we had to laugh at it's just so insane and audacious.  But it's very much in Raimi's wheelhouse.

12. We don't know much about these Marvel characters, but Benedict Cumberbatch certainly seems perfectly cast.

13. Bonus points for resolving the central conflict through emotion rather than brute force.

14. Not sure how to feel about that third eye business.

15. It's the kind of movie where the villain works so very hard to try and catch and kill someone, but then the minute they have the victim in their grasp... the villain chooses to then drag their feet, inexplicably savoring the moment rather than just going in for the kill, thus allowing the heroes time to regroup and fight back. 

16. We suspect that you're going to be way ahead of the characters more than once, seeing where this is all going but still having to sit impatiently waiting for the narrative to catch up.

17. It's definitely... decent.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Batman"

1. It's three hours long, people.  That's important to know up front.
2. Does it feel like three hours?  Not really.  Does it need to be three hours?  Not really.
3. It's well made.  And at times, there is a definite artfulness to it.  The fist fight illuminated solely by the intermittent flash of machine guns is haunting.  This is no surprise.  Director Matt Reeves knows what he's doing - Cloverfield is fantastic and his two Planet of the Apes reboot films are top notch.
4. The movie has the same sort of vibe as Christopher Nolan's overrated The Dark Knight (2008).  It's all very serious and important.  And mostly humorless.  These are sad, rather hopeless characters.
5. It may feel like The Dark Knight, but the closer cousin is David Fincher's masterpiece Seven (1995) what with following a serial killer's trail of creepy clues amid the dark and rainy streets of an amoral urban nightmare.  The Riddler is John Doe, you see.
6. Robert Pattinson's pasty, ghoulish appearance makes for the strongest onscreen suggestion yet that Batman is perhaps a little too similar to the unhinged criminals he pursues.
7. At least we didn't have to again watch Bruce Wayne's parents die in an alley. 
8. This is one dark, dark movie.  It's like someone didn't pay the electricity bill.  Even a hospital ward suffers from moody, dim lighting.  The Little Fry whispered to us at one point "Why is everything so dark?"
9. Can we agree that Jeffrey Wright elevates any movie he's in?
10. The plot is pretty complicated and doubles back on itself, connecting the leaders and gangsters of Gotham City in unexpected ways.  We weren't expecting that.
11. Cool contact lens camera.
12. Colin Farrell is unrecognizable as the Penguin, but one thing is clear: he's doing an Al Pacino impression.  And it's pretty good.
13. The ending is nice and big, but the water business seemed a bit too much to us, like someone somewhere thought the ending needed to be, you know, just a little bit bigger.
14. There is a fairly satisfying arc to Batman involving his "I'm vengeance" catchphrase.
15. Yes, Batman does spend a lot of time acting like a cop chasing down leads and examining evidence.  It's a got a solid police procedural feel.  But several of his successes come from happenstance and coincidence, like the random cop in the right place at the right time who has an uncle that installs carpets.  Okaaaay.
16. They just couldn't do a Batman movie without including the Joker, could they?
17. Did we mention it's three hours long?
18. The car chase is pretty exciting, at least what we can see of it in the dim lighting and pouring rain.
19. We suppose the biggest problem with the movie is just the question of... why?  At what point do audiences grow weary of watching yet another incarnation of the same characters exploring the same sorts of stories?  Given that The Batman has made $500 million in less than two weeks, the answer would seem to be "not anytime soon."
20. Can the next Batman be more fun possibly?  Turn on a light, Bruce.

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Knee-jerk review: "Uncharted"

1. A lot of fun. In fact, it's so good-hearted and earnest that any criticism feels like a cruel nitpick.  It know what it is and totally delivers.
2. Whether you call it a shameless rip-off or a clever homage, it's most definitely in the vein of Indiana Jones-style globe-hopping action-adventure treasure hunts.  See also: The DaVinci Code, Tomb Raider, and National Treasure.
3. Apparently it's based on a video game, but the film never feels convoluted like so many game adaptations.  The only clue to us was the Playstation logo that appeared during the producer logos at the start of the movie.
4. Tom Holland looks like he might be able to leverage his aw-shucks Spiderman success into genuine movie stardom.
5. It's the kind of movie that relies on some pretty crazy plot points, like the plausibility of working-class thieves and pickpockets figuring out a 500-year-old mystery.  While at the same time a billionaire with every resource available can't do it without their help.
6. If you can put your heroes in tuxedoes at a swanky auction heist, we're pretty much already on board.
7. Mark Walhberg is just playing himself at this point, right?
8. Everyone's after plundered treasure from hundreds of years ago: gold crosses and coins and ingots.  That's cool, but we couldn't help but wonder what you do with that once you have it?  How do you convert that into cash?  Sell it to a museum?  Melt it down into bars?  You make bars, okay, then what?  Take those to the local Wells Fargo teller?  You really would need a specialized underground precious metal fence to help you... and then we wonder, will how do you trust that person not to double-cross you?  We eventually had to stop that train of thought and focus back on the movie.
9. Yes, there are "plot twists" that do what the story needs them to do and sends the action in a new direction, but you likely won't be surprised by any of them.
10. Okay, not quite true: we were sort of shocked by one unexpected character elimination.
11. One of the little Fries was quite annoyed that the "You're a little young to be a bartender" and "You're a little old to be going to prom" exchange featured in the trailer didn't make it into the movie.  We had to explain movie editing and marketing to her.
12. It's been said that memorable set pieces are what makes a good film great.  Uncharted has three - maybe four - knockout action scenes.  The ending is particularly over the top in the best way possible.
13. It's a dumb pet peeve, but we hate when movies just begin without a title.  What's the impulse in filmmakers to play the movie and then only after the final fade out (and right before the credits roll) will we finally see in big letters... Uncharted.  What's the deal?  This is becoming more and more common and we do not approve.
14. See it.

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Ten Disappointing Things About "The Book of Boba Fett"

1. A formidable, genuinely scary antagonist - Cad Bane, what a name! - gets a truly fantastic introduction only to get immediately killed off in the next episode.
2. Temuera Morrison is 61 years old.  Maybe that age works out within the timeline of the Star Wars universe and the whole crazy complicated history of the Boba Fett character, but he just seemed old and slow.  And it's not like the show played up an Unforgiven sort of "I'm too old for this" angle, which might have helped.  Then again, the old guy did spend much of the first half of the series sleeping in an antibiotic tank.
3. It's enough of Tatooine already.  Between "The Mandalorian" and now this series, we've spent hours and hours in the desert.  Coming up next on Disney+, a spinoff with Obi-Wan Kenobi presumably set mostly on... wait for it... Tatooine.  And this is supposedly the armpit planet of the galaxy, remember.  Let's mix it up, Disney.  A conspiracy thriller on Hoth, an action comedy on the Death Star, a political drama in Cloud City.
4. All of this work was supposedly about fighting the Pike (by contrast to Cad Bane, the Pike as an alien species is most definitely not formidable nor scary) keeping the spice trade off Tatooine, but the series spends zero time explaining just what the big deal is.  What are the stakes exactly?  Why does Boba Fett care?  How is the spice trade hurting residents of Tatooine?
5. The series seemed at first to want to spin a Godfather-style web of underworld gangster intrigue with black markets and protection rackets and warring families, but it only half-heartedly committed to that plot.  Then the last couple of episodes sort of leaned into a spaghetti Western-slash-Magnificent Seven vibe with a motley band of misfits outnumbered and outgunned.  But it didn't really develop that thread either.
6. Obviously, it was deeply weird to take that big narrative detour into what was essentially a third season of "The Mandalorian."  That those episodes provided some welcome zing and zip - aside from our ongoing "huh?" when it comes to the Mandalorian religion - just underscored how "The Book of Boba Fett" paled in comparison.
7. Why cast Jennifer Beals if she's only going to get about three or four lines?  Ditto the incomparable Stephen Root.
8. What seemed like ten minutes of screen time in the finale was spent with the characters futilely blasting away at giant attack droids even though the droid shields were clearly impossible to breach.  It was more tedious than exciting, a statement also works as an overall criticism of the entire series.
9. The show tried to milk a big twist out of Boba Fett learning the Pike were behind the Tusken massacre, but shouldn't a battle-hardened bounty hunter have already figured that out?  Boba Fett too often seemed like your confused old uncle trying to keep up with the kids, when the whole reason his character is so popular is that he's this shrewd bad-ass who managed to capture Han Solo.
10. Another big selling point for Boba Fett: his armor and his helmet, yet he spent almost the entire series walking around with his helmet stuck under his arm.

We stipulate that some of these issues may have been caused by production problems related to COVID protocols.  That may explain, for example, the strangely empty streets of the big finale or the way the Beals and Root characters vanished from the action after a big introduction.  But all we can do is watch the show that gets made, not the show the producers wanted to make.

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A Few Words on Freeform's "Cruel Summer"

What seems at first glance to be a standard teen-in-peril Lifetime potboiler is elevated by a knockout cast, a complex plot spanning multiple timelines, and a nuanced exploration of some pretty heavy themes.  The Freeform "Cruel Summer" limited series (available on Hulu) tells the story of what happens to a group of suburban teenagers in the mid-1990s when a local girl is kidnapped and then later claims a classmate knew where she was being held but chose not to alert authorities.  That crazy, convoluted sentence doesn't do the series justice.  This is a layered look at teen girl angst and jealousy, media bloodlust, sexual predation, post-traumatic stress, and dark family secrets.  There's a whole lot going on here.  As the narrative slowly peels back the mystery of what happened to who and why, audience perceptions of the characters are constantly shifting.  More than once, a hero is revealed to have a mean streak, while the person who seems to be the bad guy shows an unexpectedly benevolent side.

The true genius of the show, however, is its structure.  "Cruel Summer" tells its story across three years.  Each episode covers the same calendar date, but in different time periods.  Clever editing allows for some pretty powerful dramatic contrasts.  An upscale neighborhood July 4 party, a birthday celebration, a family outing, all have very different vibes and subtexts when we see them take place during each of the three time periods: before the girl went missing, right after she was rescued, and during a very ugly year when girl she claimed didn't rescue her is now suing for defamation.  It's surprisingly easily to keep all of this straight - incredibly, the time jumps sometimes happen within in a single scene in a single location - thanks to smart cinematography and the physical appearance of the two leads.  Indeed, while the cast is uniformly strong, it's the two powerhouse performances of Olivia Holt and Chiara Aurelia that really kick things into high gear.  Their work is the sort of thing that would undoubtedly get a lot more buzz had this run on a higher-profile platform like HBO or Netflix.

But here's the problem.  This story - as rich and complex as it may be - simply cannot sustain itself across ten 45-minute episodes.  This is, of course, not an uncommon complaint.  You've probably experienced similar frustration watching one of these limited series that seem to have an episode-count mandate whether the story warrants it or not.  And so "Cruel Summer" starts with a bang for those first few episodes, droops into a mushy middle run of episodes where nothing really happens (it can't start solving all of the mysteries just yet, you see, it's still too soon), and then suddenly makes a mad dash for a satisfying conclusion in the last two episodes.  Had this been converted into a leaner set of five or six episodes, it would have been much more engaging and effective.  

(Case in point: we submit to you Netflix's "Fear Street" a similarly complex story - albeit one that is more straight horror than thriller - told across different timelines, but clocking in at only six hours it feels much leaner and more focused.  It may not be as culturally relevant as "Cruel Summer," but it's ultimately more satisfying.)

"Cruel Summer" also sort of falls into the trap of cramming as many final act plot twists and reversals as possible.  Those turns can be entertaining, but too often they have the potential to undermine everything that came before.  There's a whopper of a twist here in the final few moments that we won't spoil, but the giddy visceral "OMG!" kick it provides sort of sours once you realize how it sort of undercuts the rest of the story.  It's tricky to lead an audience on a satisfying journey with so many characters - for ten episodes, remember - only to pull the rug out at the very end just because pulling the rug out is what these shows do.

"Cruel Summer" trailer

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The "Dad Thriller"

Max Read offers a fascinating and amusing analysis of a 1990s genre he calls the "Dad Thriller."  It's definitely worth a read.  We wish we'd thought of it.

For example, here are some key questions to consider when deciding if a movie is a "Dad Thriller."

* Is Harrison Ford in the movie?
* Is the director Philip Noyce?
* Is there a satellite uplink?
* Is a key plot point a guy trying to get on the phone with the right guy to give him the correct information?
* Is there a shadowy cabal of lawyers and/or corporate executives?
* Is an American or English actor playing a current or former Irish Republican terrorist and attempting an unconvincing Irish accent?
* Is the main bad guy motivated by money? If he is motivated by ideology, are his politics incomprehensible and unrecognizable?
* Is the advice or warning of the movie's hero going unheeded by feckless bureaucrats?
* Is the main bad guy a former Soviet military commander?
* Is there a tense but ultimately productive exchange about race between a black guy and a white guy who are forced by circumstance to work together?
* Is the movie's hero obligated to go undertake a dangerous mission despite being an analyst, not field personnel?

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Trailer Check

Here are the seven trailers we sat through before seeing Spiderman No Way Home this past week. If each trailer runs two minutes, that's almost 20 minutes of coming attractions before the feature starts. It didn't used to be this many, did it? 

The Batman - As Mrs. Cheese Fry asked, "Why is Batman always so grim?" It's fairly amazing that Warner Bros. continues to make Batman movies. But if the audience keeps paying to see them, why stop? After a successful run with Christian Bale, we cycled to Ben Affleck and now to Robert Pattinson. We have to admit, as completely familiar and repetitive as this one seems to be, we find ourselves fairly intrigued as it seems to push the gritty, grim darkness to new depths, dialing all of that even past Chris Nolan levels. Lots of rain, fire, loud creepy music, and Bruce Wayne barking "I don't care what happens to me!" Very cool. Sigh. We're part of the problem, aren't we? 

Ambulance - The action-movie premise seems solid: desperate military veteran agrees to help a buddy pull a heist, then everything goes sideways, a cop is shot, hostages are taken, he's in over his head, yadda yadda yadda. Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II are always magnetic. So far, so good. But then you'll start to notice the movie's style - it's all swooping cameras, quick cuts, artfully photographed destruction - and realize that it's directed by Michael Bay. A few of his movies are fun, like The Rock, so you're trying to maintain optimism. But then comes the title. Ambulance. Presumably titled after the getaway vehicle in the movie. It's laughably obvious and unimaginative in a way that calls to mind a fake trailer on "Saturday Night Live." Imagine Speed if it were called City Bus. 

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Nope. We missed the first one and surely will be unable to follow this second chapter. We hope James Marsden was well paid. 

Death on the Nile - A sequel of sorts to Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express (which was pretty good), it doesn't seem to be a particularly exciting movie. The marketing department won't like hearing that. But the A-list cast is stacked, the Agatha Christie name carries the promise of a sophisticated plot, the setting seems exotic and luxurious, and no one will be shooting lasers. 

Crypto.com - So Matt Damon (we hope he was well paid) is telling us with a straight face that the bravery of mountain climbers, astronauts, and - get this - the Wright Brothers is very much the same sort of bravery needed to invest in the volatile emerging market of cryptocurrency, which is mostly for now a way for rich people to get richer. Got it. 

Uncharted - We're just happy to see a big budget thriller that isn't an adaptation of a Marvel comic book or 1990s video game.**  It certainly looks it's trying to emulate the treasure-hunting heroics of the Indiana Jones movies, but who knows? We're told that Mark Wahlberg can be polarizing, but we certainly like him. The trailer ends with an amazing "how will he get out of that?" cliffhanger moment that makes a huge impression. 

**Update: we have since learned that this movie is indeed based on a series of video games.  But of course it is.  So then, our only non-adapted film from this group is... Ambulance?

Morbius - At the risk of sounding like an old man hunched in a lawn chair yelling at tween skateboarders, this is what's wrong with Hollywood (or, to be fair, what's wrong with moviegoers). Another obscure Marvel character, another tedious origin story, another superpower action movie with a too-big CGI effects budget. Further demerits because it looks like the hero (antihero, whatever) is a vampire. Please, no one go see this. And yes, we certainly see the irony of our endorsement of the new Batman reboot all the while trashing this one. We're not proud of that.

To further explore this question of audiences only responded to movies based on existing IP, we looked at domestic box office for 2019 - we won't look at 2020 or 2021 since the pandemic disrupted everything.   And yes, we know Hollywood now turns on worldwide box office, but for the sake of argument, let's only consider American audiences.  As the great film journalist Scott Mendelson likes to say, audiences who complain about comic book movies need to actually, like, pay to see non-comic book movies when they get made.  Hollywood responds to what audiences pay to see.  Be sure to go see the movies you want to see more of.

So in 2019 you'd have to go all the way down to Jordan Peele's Us (#12 at the box office, earning $175 million) to find a movie not based on either a comic book or a previous movie.  After that, it's Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (#18, $141 million).  So out of the top 20 movies, only two were original, though one could argue that Peele and Tarantino are sort of a brand of their own.  In which case, there's Knives Out at #21 earning $115 million.

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Six Thoughts About Netflix's "The Squid Game"

1. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know the basics of this show.  The premise is an engaging high-concept variation of a familiar plot: for their own amusement, the rich and/or elite get the unwashed masses to fight to the death.  The Hunger Games was played straight, but those movies didn't come close to this kind of exhausted, grim hopelessness.  The marbles episode packs a devastating punch.  It's not a particularly fun experience.
2. We're not familiar with the style and format of Korean television.  Are all K-dramas this overwrought?  The villains are complete one-note caricatures, one all obnoxious bug eyes, the other sneering and scowling through every scene.
3. "Netflix bloat" is a real thing and, frankly, we're tired of it.  This show runs nine episodes (most of them almost an hour long) when the story could have easily been streamlined and told in four.  Just about every twist and turn gets talked to death by the characters, dragging the plot out to absurd lengths.
4. We suggest watching it in the original Korean with English subtitles.  Don't rely on the histrionic English actor voice dub that makes like it play like a bad episode of "Star Blazers."
5. As fascinating as it is to consider an underground death game sponsored by billionaires, the logistics here are utterly implausible.  Over 400 hundred people die in this first season, all of them seemingly with families and friends and living in big cities like Seoul.  They will be missed.  But, okay, this can maybe work.  Oh, but the contestants can vote to end the game, so it's possible that you have hundreds of people out there alive who know about the game and could talk.  Hmm.  Okay, we'll go with it.  But it's a bridge too far when later we learn this contest has been happening for years.  That's thousands of people who just vanish, their bodies disposed of in secret, and no one starts asking questions except for a single police officer?
6. In the end, we're trying to puzzle out the point to it all.  There's some dark themes about the "it's either you or me" evil people will do to survive, of course, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of death.  There are also some last-minute meditations on wealth and classism that might have resonated better had they been introduced sooner.  And then there's the epilogue, which suggests that despite winning, victory for the surviving character was a hollow one.  The character won, but they're broken.   The end most definitely did not justify the means.  Again, that's an interesting notion but one that could have maybe been clearer.  It's all mushy, which seems inexcusable given the producers had nine hours to make it less mushy.  Then again, as a Cheese Fry colleague suggested to us, this show may have been more about the morality of the game rather than the arcs and journeys of the contestants.

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Knee-jerk review: "Ghostbusters Afterlife"

* Paul Rudd is never not a delight, but the real find here is 15-year-old McKenna Grace.  The whole thing rests on her lead performance and she 100% delivers.
* We highly recommend that you watch the original first.  There's a number of connections to that 1984(!) movie, both subtle winks and big plot points.  You'll want to refresh your memory.  It will help.
* The explanation for the strange earthquakes was quite ingenious.
* On one hand, we certainly appreciate the idea of making a direct sequel to the original and engaging longtime fans.  We saw that movie twice in theaters in the summer of 1984 (most likely at the dearly departed United Artists Walnut Hill 6) and had a movie poster thumbtacked to our bedroom door. The exciting sequences of the kids strapping on proton packs, driving the Ecto-1, and even (gasp) zipping into Ghostbuster jumpsuits are the very definition of "fan fiction."
* On the other hand, remember how The Force Awakens was sort of a narrative re-do of A New Hope? The plot here not only covers similar beats to the original movie, it completely undermines the Ghostbusters' "cross the streams!" Central Park victory all those years ago.
* We don't want to spoil anything, but surely you've heard by now that some original Ghostbusters actors make cameos.  It's an awkward bit of business that borders on embarrassing.  Some of them really don't look like they want to be there.  One in particular.  We wonder who twisted their arm.
* The CGI Stay Puft marshmallow men gag is completely hilarious and charming.  And also completely forced and unnecessary, existing solely to be hilarious and charming.
* The emotional ending makes sense in a lot of ways, and we know the filmmakers got everyone onboard and were completely respectful.  You'll know the moment when you see it. But it's also a little but icky.
* It's fun, yeah, but it's also kind of a slog.  You'll likely be way ahead of the movie and subsequently tapping your foot impatiently waiting for the story to hurry up and just get there.
* Who you gonna call?

Israel Daramola has a great take on the current state of tentpole sequels like Afterlife at The Ringer.

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Knee-jerk review: "Old"

 1. We'd seen some mixed reviews, so weren't sure what to think.  All in all, a pleasant surprise.

2. The camerawork is top-notch, always gliding and roving and swooping.  It gives the action an unsettled, queasy vibe.  Like all good horror movies, what the camera shows is often just as important as what it doesn't.

3. We love Ken Leung.  

4. How are we supposed to post something about this film without revealing all kinds of spoilers?

5. The first half hour or so is something of a master class in incongruously creating a sense of dread out of the lush trappings of a fancy tropical resort.

6. It's a genius premise, the sort that makes one wonder why someone didn't make a movie like this sooner.  Fear of getting old, of mortality, of losing one's youthful vigor - those are universal worries.  The movie strikes a particularly poignant chord as well for parents everywhere dealing with the inevitable march of time as kids get older and older.
  Time is precious, don't wish your life away, carpe diem.  We often spout these pithy aphorisms, but how often do we really grasp what they mean?
7. We could totally believe there could be a well-known hip hop artist named Mid-Sized Sedan.

8. What is it about M. Night Shyamalan always wanting to put himself in his movies?  And a lot of times, it's not some Hitchcock-style character, it's a fairly large supporting role.

9. We think there's something significant or symbolic in the name of the report our characters visit, but we can't figure out what that might be.

10. Not only is it a fairly simple-yet-brilliant premise (if you've seen the TV spots you know all you really to need to know), the movie does a great job exploring it from a number of different angles.
  Aside from one horror movie gross-out scene towards the end, the film plays everything fairly straight.
11. Definitely a "Lost" vibe with creepy supernatural goings-on in a beautiful tropical setting.  Ken Leung's presence underscores that parallel.

12. There's some nice foreshadowing going on in the opening scenes.  It's a bit overt, yes, but it works.  We've heard people complain about M. Night's dialogue, but look at the crazy plots of his movies - these are big stories about very strange things.  Quiet subtlety and sly subtext wouldn't necessarily work.  His movies aren't about gritty realism and high-minded drama.
13. The ending stretches credulity - sometimes weird stories don't need everything tied up in a neat little bow - but it's still satisfying.

14. Wikipedia tells us the movie cost $18 million, which really is the perfect price tag.
15. Yeah, it's "only" PG-13, but it's a dark movie, people.


16. One big takeaway: if your swanky  resort offers to send you to a secret and secluded "no trespassing" beach, politely decline.

Our revised, ranked list of M. Night movies:

1. The Sixth Sense (1999), obviously

2. Unbreakable (2000)

3. The Visit (2015) literally gave us chills in a couple of moments

4. Old (2021)
5. Signs (2002) ridiculous ending and all

6. Split (2016)

7. The Village (2004), like most of his movies, has an ending that you just sort of have to go with

8. The Happening (2008) probably should get begrudging admiration for so audaciously tackling so looney a premise
9. Lady in the Water (2006) is better forgotten

We never saw The Last Airbender (2010), After Earth (2013), or Glass (2019).

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Knee-jerk review: "F9"

1. At this point, it's all fairly ridiculous, isn't it?
2. Two of the characters actually go into orbit, people.  It's totally crazy.
3. No matter the role, Michelle Rodriguez is just always so surly looking, like someone just killed her dog.
4. There's this weird structure where the action grinds to a halt for these gag scenes with Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris trading comic insults.  It sometimes seems like they're in a whole other movie.
5. Vin Diesel gets a crazy sequence where he goes into superhero berserker mode and fights off, like, a whole squadron of soldiers with his bare hands.
6. Bonus points: the movie has a lot of fun with some giant electromagnets during a lengthy set-piece car chase.  This is why we see these movies.
7. John Cena is pretty terrible here, making us wonder if he's better served in parts with a lighter, more comic sensibility.  He can be pretty funny.
8. We do appreciate the effort to expand the story tapestry and go back to Dom's youth to explore the death of his father, which adds a nice Shakespearean vibe to the whole thing.  That said, it's completely ballsy to ask audiences to believe that two auto racer brothers became estranged, followed totally different life paths, yet ended up both becoming James Bond-style super spies.  What?!  (And no, it doesn't work to hand-wave all of this insanity away by suggesting Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody character engineered the whole thing.)
9. If you only watched the more recent Fast movies, packed full of machine guns and electronic gadgets and world travel and melodramatic villains looking to rule the world, you'd assume this was a franchise about secret agents.  Let us remind you: these characters started out as Los Angeles blue collar street racers.  Did we mention these movies are nuts?
10. To us, the best one is 2011's Fast Five which starts with a prison break and ends with two cars dragging giant stolen banks vaults down a city street.  It's the Goldfinger of Fast movies, just the right mix of realism and wacko.
11. Paul Walker's absence throws everything off kilter (although in the world of the story he's still alive, just off-screen).  He and Diesel's bromance was the heart of the franchise.
12. As over the top as all of this is, we cannot deny the movie's soul.  Over and over, throughout the entire franchise, the characters (most of whom are not related) talk about the importance of family, risking their lives for each other, ending their adventures with communal dinners and cold beer toasts.  Lots of Hollywood movies involve some sort of makeshift family, but few wear that notion on their sleeve like these movies do.

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Observations from a Minor League Baseball Game

The Cheese Fry family recently visited a local Double-A baseball park to watch a game.  It's been well over two years - if not more - since our last visit, and while the kids grumbled and whined about going ("Three hours long?!") there were conversations on the way home about where to sit on the next visit.  The consensus seemed to be the outfield grass, which is fine with us - it's half as expensive as the infield seats.

* It's not a baseball game unless you eat a steamed hot dog ($5) wrapped up in that paper foil sheet and slathered in enough room temperature mustard to make your fingers yellow.

* All baseball games require multiple discussions of how long it will take sun to move behind the upper deck and give you the sweet relief of shadow.

* Our row was completely empty, at least 20 seats curving out to the right in our section, but we had one guy sitting right next to us.  Why?  Also: who attends a baseball game all alone?

* We don't what that mascot was supposed to be.  Sort of a giant beaver, but also orange and yellow and shaggy like a Muppet.  Whatever it was, it wore a number 2 jersey.

* There's a low-key ritual involved with baseball field preparations that can be soothing to witness.  Raking the infield, drawing the chalk lines, hosing down the infield dirt, placing the bases.  It's a ballpark reset. What's happened before doesn't matter.  What's important is now.  What happens next.  On the diamond tonight, which is being freshly assembled and cleaned and groomed just for us, anything is possible.  Anything can happen.

* We still don't fully understand the difference between the OBP and the batting average.

* At any sporting event, people-watching of course can be just as engaging at what's happening on the field.  While we secretly judged the bad tattoos, the inappropriately dressed teen girls, and the couples who didn't look like they belonged together, the winner on that evening surely went to the two old timers sitting right behind us who didn't shut up for seven innings.  Their loud running commentary most notably included a discussion of Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle and shooting skill.  They also had comments about a player named Luken.  "Why not just drop the N and go by Luke?"

* Honorable mention to the huge group one section over.  This was the boisterous relatives and friends of one of the visiting team players, all of whom cheered and shouted whenever he was on the field.  (To his credit, he hit a lead off double.)

* An post-game fireworks show allowed us to sit on the outfield grass.  Thick grass, but clipped very short.  Scratchy, not soft.  And yet, not as flawless as it might look from a distance.  We saw some divots and bald spots.

* Another baseball game essential food item: the bag of salted peanuts ($3.50).  Nowhere else can you make that big of a mess on the floor and then just walk away with a shrug.

* Scoreboards have come a long way in our lifetime.  Gone are the crude message boards made up of incandescent light bulb grids.  Now it's all gigantic flatscreen TVs.  We particularly marveled at a real-time update of the opposing pitcher's ERA as he gave up several runs in the middle of the game.

* Not a fan of the row of urinals without privacy barriers, people.

* Whoever ran the sound board was earning their paycheck.  An endless, wall to wall string of audio drops, music cues, and sound effects.  Is that person following a rigid script or just selecting on the fly what to play and when to play it?  Bonus points for the "Price Is Right" loser cue after a strikeout.

* Stadium was maybe half full, so the half-hearted attempt to start the Wave fizzled quickly.

* We often daydream about what sort of song we'd want played for us if we were a player walking up to the plate.  In those 10 seconds, how would you define yourself?  You could go the obvious route and play something hard and heavy like AC/DC.  Or you could go goofy, maybe play "Mmmbop" or "Margaritaville."  Or you could go instrumental and maybe pick the "Game of Thrones" theme or that Alan Parsons Project song "Sirius" that the Chicago Bulls made famous.  We'd probably end up picking some cheesy 80s song like "Your Love" by the Outfield.  The Outfield.  Get it?  Baseball?

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Five bite-sized movie reviews

* Army of the Dead boasts the sort of high concept logline you expect to get pitched over martinis in Hollywood: "a Las Vegas heist thriller with zombies."  The idea probably should have died there.  As much as we love Dave Bautista's wounded weariness in any role, this is a movie ripping off ideas, characters, conflicts - and even entire story beats - from other, better movies.  But the most egregious sin for us is the sinking feeling that the filmmakers are giggling at the audience by arbitrarily killing off characters just because they can.  In the end, it's pointless, grim, and unsatisfying.

* Awake is pretty terrible. It feels cheap, rushed, and totally undercooked. While the idea that a global phenomenon preventing sleep might lead to social chaos and insanity is somewhat intriguing, what should maybe take a couple of weeks to play out here takes about 24 hours: after a single night of no sleep, the world totally falls apart and a church of wild-eyed wackos is ready to sacrifice a young girl who was able to sleep the previous night.  It's that kind of movie, chock full of underdeveloped drama and supporting characters that come and go at random.  Ugh.

* Greenland stars Gerard Butler, which typically signals a cheesy, B-movie aesthetic of big thrills on a low budget.  We were pleasantly surprised that this film delivers genuine edge and grit.  Post-9/11 and post-"Walking Dead,' we've all seen countless iterations of "end of the world" stories, but this one works hard to create a sense of realistic panic and dread.  It's easy to buy that this scary breakdown of law and order and morality is exactly how things would go if the world suddenly realized that a planet-killer comet was only two days away.  It's a Gerard Butler movie, so you get the required eye-rolling moments of happenstance and coincidence, but it packs a punch.

* In the Heights is certainly an exuberant and vivid movie. Recent casting controversy aside, there's a lot of fun to be had soaking up the story's Caribbean Latin culture and spending time with these likable characters, all of them hungering for a better life. The issue is that aside from a dreamy dance on the side of a building and a fantastic showstopper number at a city pool, there's a surprising flatness to the action. It just doesn't hit the mark. None of the songs are particularly earwormy, there's no clear antagonist to create conflict, and the story rambles on for about 45 minutes too long. We wanted to like it more than we did. 

* Tenet, like all Christopher Nolan films, can give you a headache as you try to understand just what exactly is going on.  The idea of an "inversion" machine that makes time run backwards is undeniably clever and unique - especially in those truly weirdo, nonsensical moments when forwards and backwards characters cross paths - but that doesn't mean it makes for a clear story. There are some undeniably memorable moments, but in the end, the movie feels like more of a mental exercise of plot mechanics than an effective drama. That is, it's all head and no heart.

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Remote Control Inventory

When we were growing up, the family television was a big Magnavox cabinet with a little black metal wireless remote control that beeped when you pushed the buttons.  How cool is that blue "power" button?  Around third grade or so, the family updated to Qube cable.  Not only did we suddenly now get dozens more channels, but we also got a fancy wired remote control.  

Our personal little 13-inch color TV - the one that went with us to California in the mid-90s - had no such space-age luxury.  That little TV (which weighed way more than it looked) sported an actual hand-crank channel dial.  When's the last time you saw one of those?  A knob for VHF and a knob for UHF.  Tuning in your channel was always accompanied by that satisfying plastic clack-clack-clack. This was also the age of newspaper TV guides before onscreen lists were ever a thing, but that's for another blog ost.

Flash forward 30 years to a family coffee table wire basket filled with remote controls.  These are not the dusty remotes we all have that go untouched.  The list below, for example, does not include the PlayStation 3 remote that gets dusted off every so often whenever someone wants to play a game or watch a Bluray DVD, nor does the list include the even more dusty remotes that go to unplugged DVD players and VHS decks and even an original Tivo-branded DVR stacked neatly in a back closet.  Those remotes are all stashed away out of sight.

No, the four remotes in the basket see frequent use.  Multiple scrapes and dog-tooth marks are proof.  

1. DirecTV - This is the granddaddy, the big gray plastic beast that controls channel selection and play functions for the built-in DVR.  The biggest frustration with this one - aside from a perpetual need to replace the batteries - is the fact that, even as bulky and colorful as it is, it's easy to mix up the buttons.  Invariably, when watching a DVRd show, we go to push "pause" but instead accidentally push "exit" and get zapped back to the main menu, requiring multiple steps to drill down into the right menu and resume the recording.  Profanity in these situations is unavoidable.

2. Vizio TV - This remote has endless rows of tiny rubber buttons with nooks and crannies that trap filth and grime, but we really only use two buttons - the one that turns the flatscreen on and off and the one that lets us toggle between video inputs.

3. Vizio soundbar - In theory, we were all excited to connect the new fancy soundbar to our iPhones to play music via Bluetooth, turning our living room into a hip, funky hangout with a 21st century digital jukebox.  And yet, we've used that feature... maybe five times in two years.  Note also: whatever you do, please do not attempt to adjust the volume with any remote other than this one.  You'll just mess everything up.

4. Amazon Fire Stick - This is a late addition to the basket, only arriving last fall.  But it's certainly made up for lost time and has very much become a fan favorite.  At this point, the Cheese kids probably consider  streaming platforms like Amazon, Netflix, and Disney+ as "TV" more than traditional outlets like ABC, NBC, or even old school cable stations like TBS.  Our big irritation here is the remote's size.  It's barely bigger than a pack of chewing gum.  It's also one of those remotes trying to be clever with just four or five buttons that do everything.  Even better, it's surprisingly difficult to remember which button is the "pause" button - remember that this is a family that sits still for nothing, so we have to frequently stop the action for popcorn making, for dog wrangling, for bathroom going, for blanket adjusting... the list goes on forever - especially when the Cheese family insists on a pitch black living room to watch anything, which means that we're unable to actually look at the remote to help us remember which tiny recessed plastic nub is the right one. 

This surely sounds familiar to all of the readers out there.  Every viewing experience requires a complex series of inputs and adjustments across multiple remote controls.  Good luck finding them all when you need them.  The sofa is black, the remotes are black, the room is dark.  When we booked a house sitter years ago, the directions we had to create for TV operation looked like technical specs in their flowchart if/then confusion.

You can tell Generation X by our nostalgic affection for those handcrank dials.

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Knee-jerk review: "Wonder Woman 1984"

1. To us, it's not a step down from 2017's original Wonder Woman... but it's not exactly a clear improvement, either. 

2. We have never been fans of the curious insistence of superhero movies to cram multiple villains into a single movie.  That splits the focus of the conflict, limits screen time for the characters, and adds unneeded narrative confusion.  It's a terrible idea.

3. That said, the two villains here get pretty sympathetic, fleshed-out backstories.  Even if it's still one too many.

4. The whole "monkey's paw," careful-what-you-wish-for premise felt fresh.  It's the execution of that idea that didn't always pack a punch.  The basic mechanics of the wish fulfillment, for example, weren't always clear, which seems like a pretty important thing to make clear.

5. While the shopping mall action bit that kicks things off was surprisingly dull, we did love the big truck chase sequence that called to mind Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Honorable mention: the White House fight.  The movie could have used a few more moments like those.

6. We don't see very much of the Wonder Woman costume.  Diana Prince spends most of her screen time in civilian attire.

7. We suppose that's as good a way as any to bring back a character who clearly died in the previous movie.

8. There's some interesting things happening here with female objectification and how pretty women have completely different experiences than "regular" women.  Unwanted male attention is a hassle for supermodel Gal Gadot but something Kristen Wiig's character ("homely" by Hollywood standards) craves.

9. If that was an attempt to put President Ronald Reagan into the movie as a minor character, they could have done a better job.

10. Gal Gadot may have limited range as an actress, but this does seem to be a role she was born to play.

11. Seems like the filmmakers could have done more with the 1980s timeframe.  What was the point exactly?

12. With every comic book movie ending with huge CGI bombast, deafening sound design, laser light shows, and multiple climaxes, we appreciated how different this ending felt.

13. Our biggest complaint involves the villain.  Max Lord gets what he wants pretty early on, but then inexplicably continues to take needless steps that plunge the world deeper and deeper into chaos.  It's not enough to just shrug it off with "I want more power."  His choices are what's creating the conflict, so the motivation needs to be airtight.

14. The prologue set at some kind of Olympics event in Themyscira was fun.

15. Much online has been made about implausibility issues with a plane flight from the U.S. to Africa.  We don't want to spoil anything, but those online complaints are completely valid.

16. Seems like the golden lasso is a bigger deal this time around.  Has Wonder Woman been practicing with it between movies? 

17. As with most big-budget movies like this, it's about 20 minutes too long.

18. A fun movie for sure, but we wish it had been better.

A word about distribution.  As you may know, Warner Bros. chose to release Wonder Woman 1984 simultaneously in theaters and also on the streaming platform HBOMax, which has apparently lagged far behind Disney+ in subscriber numbers.  Warner Bros. has further decided to follow this same pattern for all of its 2021 releases.  Those titles will get a theater release on the same day they also go onto HBOMax for 30 days.  If streaming is indeed the future of Hollywood content, Warner Bros.' choices make business sense as a way to boost HBOMax's profile and get more subscriptions.  The pandemic has inexorably changed society in every possible way: how we work, how we buy groceries, how we eat out, and - the point here - how we consume entertainment.  The theatrical moviegoing experience as we knew it "before times" in 2019 will likely never return.  We understand this fact, but we certainly don't have to like it.

 

Streaming has been growing for years. Way before anyone heard of COVID, Amazon Prime and Netflix (and Disney+ which debuted last fall) were changing the paradigm.  But 2020 accelerated those trends.  Exhibitors like Cinemark have had next to zero business since March.  Many theaters may close for good.  And as people grow more and more comfortable watching movies at home, and with studios like Warner Bros. understandably leaning into that trend (and admittedly, some Hollywood mavericks have long pushed the idea of releasing new movies in theaters and homes on the same day), they may resist going back to the theater once the pandemic ends.  (For the record, Disney's Mulan and Universal's Trolls World Tour led the charge in moving from an intended theatrical release to a streaming launch.)  Habits can be hard to break.  People may buy tickets and popcorn for big movie spectacles, but what about comedies and smaller dramas and thrillers that were already getting squeezed in a world of sequels and remakes and superheroes?  Is Hollywood unwisely cannibalizing itself?  Can a streaming subscriber base paying a reliable $15 a month take the place of a few $500 million-grossing movies each year?  Time will tell, of course, but we lament the possible end of an in-person, theatrical moviegoing culture that has been such an important part of our lives.

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