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

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

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Knee-jerk rewiew: "Coyote vs. Acme"

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

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Top Nine Topics of Suburban Nextdoor Posts

These are all first world problems, people.  Overall, life is pretty good in a big city suburban bubble.

1. Complaints about kids driving golf carts*
2. Complaints about HOA fees going up (which will always include several snarky people reminding the OP that A. the HOA board is comprised of neighbors and B. is available to join during elections)
3. Complaints about teenagers driving too fast*
4. Questions about random police activity (e.g. anyone know what's going on in the Target parking lot?)
5. Questions about what's getting built at the corner of some random intersection
6. Complaints about a contracted service (e.g. sprinkler repair, lawn care, handyman)
7. Rave reviews about a local restaurant that is probably way too far from where you live to be a feasible option (better yet: the rave review is weirdly useless because it's promoting a well-known restaurant the community already knows is great)
8. Complaints about the local city council and/or mayor
9. Reports on wild animal sightings in the neighborhood

* Bonus points if the post also features a blurry smartphone photo of the offending kid/teen.

And consider this a public service announcement... if you don't have something informative and useful to contribute to a Nextdoor discussion, don't engage.  No one wants to read your lame dad jokes ("probably building another car wash! lol"), your condescending attitude to the OP's question ("the police are probably there to investigate a crime"), or your pathetic attempt to spin a harmless post into a political op-ed piece ("don't California our Texas").  Everyone hates you.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Odyssey"

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

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Six months of books, Part III

Here's a three-quel post to our January 2026 and July 2025 one-line book reports. This one covers our reading in the first half of 2026.

6:40 to Montreal, Eva Jurczyk - This Agatha Christie locked-room murder mystery set on a snowbound stranded train certainly seems like it should be a good book, but the execution (not to mention a ridiculous ending) is ultimately just too implausible.

The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty - This detailed account of the making of eight sci-fi/fantasy movies released in the core-memory summer of 1982 (including classics like Star Trek II and Poltergeist) is a delightful gift for Generation X sci-fi nerd movie buffs like us.

The Gone World, Tom Sweterlitsch - For the first 200 pages, this seems like the smart, complicated, epic time travel novel - with big doses of alien horror! - we all desperately need, but it never truly soars because of a tangled climax that gets too convoluted and artsy for its own good.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald - Yes, it's pretty good. And yes, to wring as much meaning and understanding out of the text as we could, we geeked out and actually bought and read the Cliff Notes version as well.

History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage - A fascinating way to examine world history using popular beverages (starting with beer and ending with Coca-Cola) to explore civilization's economic and cultural evolution.

The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar - This dull book about a man who can see a few seconds into the future which leads to all kinds of trouble with government forces - and which we most definitely did not finish - proves that there's more to a good novel than a great premise.

Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown - This erudite thriller featuring The Da Vinci Code's symbologist Robert Langdon stumbling into yet another deadly conspiracy is talky and tedious, especially the final 100 pages that feels like the world's longest epilogue, but it more or less works.

She Kills, Skip Hollandsworth - A reprinting of some of the author's best true-life crime articles (some are more engrossing than others) from Texas Monthly magazine works as a literary equivalent to those sordid Netflix documentaries Mrs. Cheese Fry loves so much.

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien - A haunting, somber collection of interconnected Vietnam War short stories - written by a veteran of that conflict - that we're grateful landed in our book pile after our 11th grader read it for English class.

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Starlight Rollercade Memories

We were amazed that Google image search dug up this image of the dearly departed Starlight Rollercade that resided on a stretch of Harry Hines Boulevard that was already pretty seedy in the early 1980s.  Judging by the pristine look of the building and the fins on the cars in the parking lot, this photo looks like it came from an advertisement postcard from the 1960s.  But we remember well those glass doors leading to the cashier alcove - that entrance remained wholly unchanged through the early 1980s.

The Cheese Fry didn't spend a lot of time at Starlight, which is probably what made a trip there so special.  A few birthday parties, some church youth group excursions, an end-of-sixth-grade celebration.  Going there was an event, people.  The smelly, unnaturally heavy rental skates.  The dark and dank vibe in the concourse around the edge of the rink, contrasted by the harsh fluorescents of the in-house pizza joint.  The feel of rolling off the sluggish worn-out carpet and onto the fast and shiny wooden rink floor. 

But the reason we even came up with this blog post subject was the music, played by an actual deejay (likely spinning actual records in dual turntables) from a far corner of the rink, sitting up high like a judge presiding over a courtroom of pre-teen, PG-rated fun.

To this day, we cannot hear these songs without being transported to the twinkling disco ball flashes of the Starlight Rollercade and those exhilarating moments of skating so fast that the wind whipped our hair, trying hard to look cool as we struggled desperately to not wipe out.

"Break My Stride" by Matthew Wilder (1983)
"Driving My Life Away" by Eddie Rabbit (1980)
"Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant (1982)
"Funkytown" by Lipps, Inc. (1979)
"Magic" by Olivia Newton-John (1980)
"Queen of Hearts" by Juice Newton (1983)

There's a roller rink still in operation in a suburb not too far from here.  It's the only one know of - and for a few years there, it was a popular destination for our kids' friends' birthday parties.  Going there was fascinating because it reminded us of Starlight in so many ways, but at the same time it was also so very different.  Like a sort of funhouse mirror version of the roller rink of our youth -- too clean, too bright, too new.  And they didn't play any early-1980s music.

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Knee-jerk review: "Obsession"

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

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"Ted Lasso" Characters, Ranked

The Cheese Fry is extremely late to the "Ted Lasso" party.  Only recently did we finally finish the third season.  No big deal, right?  It's only been about three years since that final episode first aired on Apple TV.   But season four is coming this summer - we'll watch that one a little sooner.

"Ted Lasso" is a national treasure.  Put simply, it's one of the best television shows, full stop.  You just don't see this kind of high quality sustained for that many seasons.  We haven't watched everything that's out there, but the only other show we've watched in its entirety that was this good for that long, so perfectly cast and written and directed, was FX's "The Americans." 

Beyond just admiring the show's elite level of execution, it's the upbeat, feel good vibe of "Ted Lasso."   This is a show with heart.  These characters are good, decent people working through everyday challenges.  Just think about how so rare that is in a television landscape chock full of cynical themes (criminals run amok, housewives run amok), missed opportunities (so many shows start strong only to fizzle), repetitive premises (we love post-apocalyptic stories, but it's enough already) and tiresome formats (reality TV, for the most part, is a cultural blight that does no one any good).  

There's echoes of NBC's "This Is Us" in the way "Ted Lasso" manipulates your emotions and skillfully surfs sad and happy moments alike, but "This Is Us" was deadly serious and self-important whereas "Ted Lasso" is chipper and frothy.  The best comparison we can come up with is NBC's "Friday Night Lights," a similar show where everyone was so dang likable and interesting and fully realized that the plots were almost beside the point.  You just wanted to hang out in that world for an hour.   Even better, "Ted Lasso" is in so many ways an old-fashioned workplace comedy like "The Office." "Friday Night Lights" never made us laugh out loud.  With "Ted Lasso" there's always a gag or a joke, but it's not following a cheesy, laugh track sitcom set up/punchline structure.  The jokes and humor here flow naturally from these screwball characters.  Nothing ever feels phony.  It's a polished gem of a show.

If you haven't seen it, give it a shot.  Full disclosure: this is one extremely profane show that loves the F-bomb.

And now, we present the main characters ranked in order, starting with the most layered, complicated, and funny one at the very top.

1. Roy Kent, obviously
2. Rebecca Welton
3. Jamie Tartt
3. Coach Beard
4. Leslie Higgins
5. Ted Lasso, how crazy is it that the supposed main character barely cracks the top five; that's how stacked this show is
6. Keeley Jones
7. Nate Shelley
8. Trent Crimm of The Independent
9. Sam Obisanya
10. Dani Rojas
11. Isaac McAdoo
12. Zava
13. Sassy Collins
14. Colin Hughes
15. Dr. Sharon Fieldstone
16. Rupert Mannion

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Knee-jerk review: "Backrooms"

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

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