Knee-jerk review: "Send Help"

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

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Six months of books, Part II

Consider this a sequel post to last summer's rundown.  Below are one-line reviews of books we read in the back half of 2025 (plus the first few weeks of 2026 - a couple of Christmas presents are in the mix).

Alright, Alright, Alright, Melissa Maerz - A gloriously exhaustive oral history of the making of one of the greatest coming-of-age movies of all time (and easily a top five movie for the Cheese Fry), Dazed and Confused.

The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt - Essential reading for any parent, curating a multitude of studies and cultural trends to create a focused, compelling argument about the urgent, addictive dangers of smartphones and social media on developing brains.

Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets, Chelsea Ichaso - A convoluted mess of a story that relies on irritating turns involving our high school student heroine again and again identifying the wrong culprit in her quest to find out who - wait for it - pushed her sister off a cliff. 

Fire in the Hole, Elmore Leonoard - One of the Cheese Fry's favorite authors, this is a collection of Leonard's short stories, each one a hard-boiled gem of quirky characters, clever plot twists, and pitch-perfect dialogue.  

A Flicker in the Dark, Stacey Willingham - A crazy Southern-fried Gothic family drama (girl's dad long ago confessed to killing teen girls but now that she's adult more teen girls are going missing, so What Exactly Is Going On?) is just soap-opera-loony enough to totally work.

Grunt, Mary Roach - Roach is a national treasure, whipping up amusing journalistic explorations in specific niche topics like - in this case - the intersection of science and soldiers (see also Stiff and Packing for Mars).

Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions, Ed Zwick - Perhaps not at the level of William Goldman's seminal Adventures in the Screen Trade, this show business memoir from one of Hollywood's more successful filmmakers (and TV showrunner) offers juicy behind-the-scenes angst and drama alongside practical advice for making TV shows and movies.

Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay - Long on the Cheese Fry's reading wish list, this book was ultimately a big disappointment, a bizarrely complicated and unpleasant meta story about the rebooting of an infamous underground horror movie and the ways the line between fiction and reality can blur.  [This one and Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets are the only books on this list currently exiled to the "give away" box in our garage.]

Lock Every Door, Riley Sager - A sharp, entertaining thriller about a down-on-her-luck woman agreeing to a too-good-to-be-true job housesitting a posh Central Avenue high-rise condo only to realize too late that there are creepy, possibly deadly shenanigans afoot among her wealthy neighbors.

Running with the Devil, Noel Monk - A fascinating glimpse into the rise of rock band Van Halen, as told by their tour manager, chronicling not just the band's extreme interpersonal dysfunction, but also the staggering amount of substance abuse and sexual conquests they pursued on the road in the late 1970s.

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Knee-jerk review: "Anaconda"

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

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

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

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Knee-jerk review: "Tron Ares"

1. There's a curious amount of negative buzz out there, but the movie is not bad at all.  For what it is, it gets the job done.
2. We did find it odd, however, that for a movie called Tron, almost all of the action takes place in the real world.  That makes for a novel approach (when we saw a Recognizer patrolling the skies over a real world city in the trailer, we were 100% sold), but the fun of Tron movies are the scenes on "the grid."  We were particularly disappointed when Greta Lee's kidnapping to the grid was cut so short.
3. Bonus points for retro 1982-era lightcycles.
4. Jeff Bridges... is he playing a wizened old Kevin Flynn here or the Dude from The Big Lebowski?
5. This movie looks really, really expensive.  Not just the digital effects,  but there's a lot of practical stunts and car crashes as well.
6. Gillian Anderson doing a British accent, presumably because she's playing David Warner's (for the original movie) daughter?
7. Bummer not even a Bruce Boxleitner cameo.
8. We were worried at first because the first five minutes or so is a huge information dump recapping a very convoluted background of the Tron universe, which is mostly just corporate backbiting and tedious business intrique.  But in the end, you get the gist.
9. Pundits have correctly noted it's a strange choice for Disney to bet hundreds of millions of dollars on a second sequel to a rather niche 1980s nerd property, especially given the so-so reaction to the last one (Tron Legacy - which was 15 years ago!).
10. There's some pretty cool action stuff in here, especially the extended chase in the first hour.  Top notch.
11. Jared Leto is definitely a solid character actor.  Quirky, smart... but also a little creepy.  We're not sold on him as a leading man hero.
12. Cool to see that the evil Dillinger family still likes to use the flat desktop glass computer keyboard and monitor.  Some things should never change, no matter how impractical.
13. Fantastic music by Nine Inch Nails, as you may have heard.
14. All of the business with the "particle lasers" (which can zap you to the grid or bring grid things to our world because... technology) is completely illogical, but it's consistent in its illogic so it mostly works.
15. The movie tries to be hip with some Depeche Mode and Frankenstein references, which is the right idea in a movie that's mostly way too serious and grim, but those moments are a little cringey.  
16. We're scared to go back and watch the first Tron again.  We suspect is has not aged well at all.
17. Derezzing is still way cool.
18. How many people will get the 1982 movie Sark reference at the very end?  In theory, that moment points to another Tron movie, but the box office results thus far suggest this is, as they say in Tron, "end of line."
19. Space Paranoids is still a terrible name for a video game.
20. Overall, it's totally fine, people.

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

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

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

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Knee-jerk review: "The Long Walk"

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

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Ten Points About 1995's "Seven"

The Cheese Fry recently watched David Fincher's serial killer masterpiece Seven with the 16-year-old, who'd never seen it.  We've watched it many times over the years, of course, but it's been a while.  We were coming into it pretty fresh.  And, of course, there's something special about watching a favorite movie with someone who's never seen it before.  And the 16-year-old knew next to nothing about Seven aside from it being about a serial killer and starring Brad Pitt.  Here's a few observations.

1. It's aged very, very well.  True, there are no smartphones or flatscreen computers so it's definitely of the 1990s, but the movie has such a timeless, fable quality that it still feels very contemporary and strangely urgent.  Morgan Freeman's big speech about living in a world where apathy is considered a virtue strikes a nerve all these years later.  It's much easier to tune out with social media than engage with people around you.
2. The ending ("John Doe's got the upper hand!") remains unflinchingly genius.  As shocking and tragic as it may be - the bad guy is more or less winning, the ending also feels completely inevitable and totally earned.  It's very hard to watch the torture on Brad Pitt's face as he wrestles with what to do, gun in hand, John Doe cuffed on his knees in front of him.  It's easy to say that a movie star like Pitt just coasts on charisma and charm, as in something like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  He's fantastic in that movie, but it's mostly just Pitt being cool.  When properly motivated, however, like in moments like this in Seven, he can deliver the actorly goods.
3. We realized for the first time that John Doe likely doesn't have a plan for the last two deadly sins (wrath and envy) until he poses as a news photographer and encounters Pitt.  Pitt goes nuts, breaking the camera and displaying his character's hot-headed rage, which John Doe will use against him.  What if Pitt hadn't done that?  How might the movie have ended?
4. There's just the one traditional action sequence when Pitt chases John Doe through apartment buildings and into the street.  Otherwise, it's mostly a seedier, grosser episode of your favorite TV police procedural with red herrings, high tech forensic geek-outs, and talky philosophizing about justice and crime.
5. Some interesting irony in that John Doe's twisted mission to showcase society's shameless evils more or less aligns with Freeman's view of the world.
6. There is no sanctuary in this infamously unnamed city.  It's always raining, dark, and crowded.  Everyone, in fact, seems in need of a bath and a fresh change of clothes.  Note also that our main characters can't even find solace in their homes: Pitt's apartment is rattled by a subway every ten minutes, while Freeman has to use a metronome at his bedside to drown out the constant yelling of arguing neighbors.  The one respite (aside from the bright desert sunshine of the movie's most devastating moment, although technically everyone had to drive for many miles out of the city to get there) is the city library after hours, where Freeman wanders the aisles in peace.
7. No surprise that Morgan Freeman turns every line into a polished jewel.  A national treasure.
8. Kevin Spacey is so very young here, but he packs such a punch, the essence of speaking softly and carrying a big stick.  It's an incredibly high bar to meet after so much build up with the gruesome, complicated deaths, but Spacey's creepy calm more than lives up to the hype.
9. We don't think Seven invented the "tired cop who's about to retire gets one last case" trope, but it certainly plays it out effectively.  When we first meet him, Freeman is a cop eager to quit.  He's seen it all and has had enough.  But by at the end, he tells his captain "I'll be around."  A big part of this transformation comes in the scene at the bar where Pitt loudly refuses to believe Freeman cares so little.  Pitt's lines here are so, so great: "I don’t think you’re quitting because you believe these things you say.  I don’t.  I think you want to believe them because you’re quitting."  You can see on Freeman's face - no dialogue needed - that there's truth in that.
10. We'd be remiss without also pointing out the insane title sequence of stuttering, skewed, overlapping images over grungy guitars.  Brilliant tone-setter.

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Knee-jerk review: "Weapons"

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

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

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

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

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

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