1. If you saw Top Gun Maverick in theaters, you likely remember well seeing the creepy "what the heck was that?" teaser trailer.
2. The ending gets pretty scary and gross, but for the most part the movie coasts along more on dread and unease than traditional horror.
3. Though there are, of course, a number of music-screeching jump scares. There's no way around that.
4. Scary movies like this always seem to work better with a cast of mostly unknowns. Somehow feels more real.
5. Yes, the monster-as-virus premise calls to mind The Ring. But a closer cousin may be the underrated It Follows.
6. It's pretty ingenious to use the monster as a metaphor for trauma and the way trauma can both consume you and infect those around you. It's not just the victim that suffers.
7. There are a couple of cheats here where what you think is happening turns out to be a dream. We're not fans of that gimmick. But fine, whatever.
8. Certainly helps with story exposition when the heroine has an ex-boyfriend who's a police officer who can look up stuff on his laptop.
9. The most "no way!" moment comes at a child's birthday party. Yikes.
10. The movie creates genuine sympathy for the lead because while we've seen everything through her eyes and know it's real, when she's trying to explain her situation to others she sounds absolutely insane. Irony alert in that she deals with a mental patient in the first scene that sounds crazy... but looking back, maybe he's telling the truth.
11. Little moments like that add welcome nuance and depth. There are actual story themes here. It's not just about scares.
12. Kal Penn does what Kal Penn always does, look thoughtfully concerned and/or concernedly thoughtful.
13. Is it as scary as that teaser trailer? Probably not (though it freaked the Cheese Fry's 13-year-old enough to swear she'd never see the movie), but it definitely mines the premise well and delivers the goods.
12.30.2022
Knee-jerk review: "Smile"
12.27.2022
Knee-jerk reviews: "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery"
1. We liked it a lot.
2. But then, of course, we see all these online articles about how terrible and poorly made it was and we briefly doubted our taste.
3. But no, it's fun and entertaining.
4. Probably not as good as Knives Out (see our 2019 "knee-jerk"), but that film benefitted from Ana de Armas' sympathetic character caught in the middle of everything. There's no one here that compelling. (Which is a benefit in a weird way - this is a sequel with an entirely new set of characters and conflicts.)
5. Daniel Craig continues to have a great time as Benoit Blanc. We wish we were half as unflappable and quick on our feet.
6. We don't see any reason why this can't become a long-running franchise. We certainly want more.
7. So far, these movies work because of the clever writing, not because of any expensive spectacle. Attract some movie stars, set the story in a posh location, create some obnoxious-yet-kinda-sympathetic rich characters with grudges, and then kill one of them off.
8. We make it sound so easy, right?
9. Some critics (grouches?) seem put off by some of the more wacky plot turns, but those plot turns are cliches in the Agatha Christie genre of convoluted whodunits. And so this movie is paying homage to those cliches. That shouldn't be so hard to grasp.
10. Plus, the world of these Knives Out movies isn't tethered to our reality. In the first movie, remember, the main character vomited whenever she told a lie. Benoit Blanc's cases are not the real world. There are, in fact, some elements that border on fantasy like the impossible-seeming invitation box puzzles.
11. It's a complicated story, yes, so there are going to be moments when you're scratching your head. Not all of it fits seamlessly together. That's okay because it mostly comes very close. Go with it.
12. The loathsome, name dropping, windbag billionaire who takes credit for the work of others - played by Edward Norton - was supposedly modeled on Jeff Bezos, but since the movie was completed Elon Musk now seems the more appropriate real-world counterpart. (One online commenter suggested that Norton's character is, in fact, an embodiment of Netflix itself - the cocky "disruptor" who isn't half as smart as it thinks.)
13. We love David Bautista.
14. We're glad writer-director Rian Johnson got paid (Netflix spent close to $500 million for the rights to the two Knives Out sequels), but we hate the ongoing marginalization of the theatrical release. Movies need to be seen in theaters with others.
15. Unless it's a loud, visual effects-heavy franchise movie (which we don't hate), it's now all about streaming. Mid-budget dramas and comedies are vanishing from the local multiplex. They may still be getting made, but good luck finding them across all of those platforms you're paying $15 a month for. Netflix put this one in theaters for a week or so, then yanked it. Who knows how much money they left on the table. It all seems backwards. Nowadays, if you don't catch something in theaters in the first week or two, it's gone. Hollywood seems to be actually training its customers to ignore the movie theater.
16. This all means that the days of two or three big Friday releases may be over. Someone smarter than us noted that in the old days, a movie had many sources of revenue - first the box office, then home video like DVDs, then cable network licenses. Films collected money as it worked their way through a big system of distribution. Now it's sort of just come down to streaming subscriptions and nothing else. That can't be sustainable, can it?
Knee-jerk review: "Avatar - The Way of Water"
1. It's an undeniably beautiful film. If cinema is about transporting audiences to another time and place, then it succeeds tenfold. The visuals are a knockout.
2. Writer-director James Cameron remains a top shelf action director, especially when it comes to those "everything goes wrong" sequences that so skillfully ratchets up the tension.
3. Few sequels are ever truly demanded by audiences. They're almost always a business decision by studios and filmmakers to chase box office money. But this sequel in particular seems to be answering a question no one was really asking.
4. But when Cameron wants to make a movie, for now Hollywood will open the checkbook. That's what happens when your last two movies break all global box office records. (We do often wonder what other awesome movies we might have gotten had he not decided to spend 15+ years obsessed with this franchise.)
5. It is pretty amazing that it doesn't take long to get totally immersed in the film and forget you're watching ten-foot-tall blue cat people. If you think about it, it's totally insane.
6. This is not a lean and mean movie where the three-hour running time just flies by. It often feels like a real slog. We were frequently checking our watch to work out how close we were to the ending.
7. The middle hour in particular - where our hero family gets touchy-feely with nature and learns the "way of water" - probably is a half-hour too long. Let's get on with it.
8. Film Twitter has been pretty snarky towards the human boy who hangs out with the Navi aliens, calling him "Tarzan," but we found his character's situation pretty engaging.
9. The whaling sequence was uncomfortable. That was probably the point, but we didn't need that level of icky detail to preach to us the horrors and cruelty of chasing and killing smart animals for so little need.
10. Right or wrong, the ending has very strong Titanic vibes. That's not to say it didn't work.
11. Interesting that the hero of the first movie is now a father and presented in the sequel as the typical distracted, brusque parent who doesn't properly listen to or trust his kids.
12. The suggestion of an immaculate conception may be a corny, self-serious myth-making bridge too far for us.
13. It's done as creatively as possible, but it's still a letdown that the sequel finds a way to bring back the villain from the first movie despite the fact we all saw him killed dead.
14. It's hard to miss the guerrilla themes of "never fight a war on your enemy's turf."
15. Movies that earn billions at the box office, like Titanic or the Star Wars and Avengers movies, rely on multiple viewings. Repeat customers are the key. We don't know if this movie will inspire that sort of fervor (and apparently, it needs to collect billions with B to earn back its budget). It's just too dang long.
12.26.2022
Sight and Sound's Top 100 Films
The British Film Institute recently unveiled its updated "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time" from Sight and Sound magazine, which tallied votes from 1600+ film critics. The list caused a big hullabaloo with film nerds who complained that the title at the top of the list - Jeanne Dielman, an obscure 1970s social realism drama from Belgium written and directed by a woman - replaced the usual "best of" movies like Vertigo and Citizen Kane.
We just figured it was film snobs doing what film snobs do best: impress other film snobs by championing the most unknown and challenging movies possible. But there have been accusations of a purposeful "woke" agenda that may have rigged the ballot box to be sure underrepresented filmmakers got in and bumped out more traditional titles. A more charitable spin is that the voters may have simply wanted to encourage film lovers to sample movies they might not otherwise watch, especially those from international filmmakers. Shrug.
Anyway... we took a look at the list to see how our own moviegoing has stacked up with the fancy critics of Sight and Sound.
How many of these "greatest movies ever" have you seen?
One interesting side note: we saw one critic suggest that these sort of lists should never include recent titles, that it can take 10-15 years to properly evaluate a film's lasting value and import. This makes sense. Will Parasite and Get Out really be regarded as the best ever ten years from now?
Category 1: We saw it and we love it. We'd have no issue watching any of these again and again.
Ranked #6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
12 on the list. “The Godfather” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
19. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
24. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
36. (tie) City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
38. (tie) Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
38. (tie) Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
54. (tie) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott 1982)
63. (tie) Casablanca (Michael Curtiz 1942)
63. (tie) GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese 1990)
78. (tie) Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder 1950)
88. (tie) The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
95. (tie) The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)
Category 2: We saw it and we like it. Solid, top tier movies everyone should see, but not necessarily ones we're eager to sit down and watch again.
2. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
3. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
8. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
10. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1951)
15. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
29. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
31. (tie) Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
41. (tie) Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
45. (tie) North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
50. (tie) The Piano (Jane Campion, 1992)
54. (tie) The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
63. (tie) The Third Man (Carol Reed 1949)
67. (tie) Metropolis (Fritz Lang 1927)
67. (tie) La Jetée (Chris Marker 1962)
78. (tie) Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin 1936)
95. (tie) Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
95. (tie) Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
Category 3: We saw it and once was enough. Big props to our film theory and criticism classes that allowed me to see most of these movies. We appreciate the importance of these titles, many of which helped create film "grammar" as we know it. But they're not the easiest things to sit through.
13. La Règle du Jeu aka Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
21. (tie) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)
23. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
38. (tie) À bout de souffle aka Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
43. (tie) Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
50. (tie) The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
54. (tie) Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
84. (tie) Blue Velvet (David Lynch 1986)
Category 4: We haven't seen it, but we'd certainly like to. These remain on our "to do" list.
4. Tokyo Story (Ozu Yasujiro, 1953)
5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2001)
20. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
25. (tie) The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
30. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)
36. (tie) M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
41. (tie) Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
45. (tie) Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
45. (tie) The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
54. (tie) Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
60. (tie) La dolce vita (Federico Fellini 1960)
60. (tie) Moonlight (Barry Jenkins 2016)
72. (tie) My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki Hayao 1988)
75. (tie) Spirited Away (Miyazaki Hayao 2001)
88. (tie) Chungking Express (Wong Kar Wai, 1994)
90. (tie) Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019)
Category 5: We haven't seen it, and, honestly, probably won’t. Maybe this makes us film heathens, but file these under "life is too short."
7. Beau travail” (Claire Denis, 1998)
9. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
11. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
18. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
31. (tie) 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
43. (tie) Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)
60. (tie) Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash 1991)
67. (tie) The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1948)
72. (tie) L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni 1960)
75. (tie) Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk 1959)
90. (tie) Ugetsu (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953)
90. (tie) Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 1999)
Category 6: We never heard of it. In some cases, we've heard of the filmmaker. But either way, a good chunk of these titles are the sort you'd find on film school syllabi across the country or whispered at swanky cocktail parties. Since this is the longest list, turns out were are indeed film heathens.
1. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
14. Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
16. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943)
17. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)
21. (tie) Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)
25. (tie) Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
27. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
28. Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)
31. (tie) Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
34. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
35. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
48. (tie) Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
48. (tie) Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
52. (tie) News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976)
52. (tie) Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
54. (tie) Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard 1963)
59. Sans soleil (Chris Marker 1982)
66. Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty 1973)
67. (tie) The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda 2000)
67. (tie) Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky 1966)
72. (tie) Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini 1954)
75. (tie) Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi Kenji 1954)
78. (tie) A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang 1991)
78. (tie) Sátántangó (Béla Tarr 1994)
78. (tie) Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette 1974)
78. (tie) A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1946)
84. (tie) Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard 1965)
84. (tie) Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard 1988-1998)
84. (tie) The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
90. (tie) Madame de… (Max Ophüls, 1953)
90. (tie) The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1962)
95. (tie) A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
95. (tie) Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1965)
95. (tie) Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
For the record, the Cheese Fry's "Best Film" list is incomplete and always pending, but among those you'll find on the list (in addition to Category 1 above) are Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993), Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003), Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), Out of Sight (Steven Soderberg, 1998), The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974), and Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1990).
12.22.2022
The Best Ten Lines from "Elf"
The Cheese Fry hadn't set out to make Elf a holiday tradition, but at this point it sort of has. For at least the last four years, Elf has been a part of the living room flatscreen rotation just as often as the granddaddy of them all, "you'll shoot your eye out, kid" A Christmas Story. (Runner-up: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We love It's a Wonderful Life, of course, but that movie is a four-course meal rather than a fun bite-sized snack, you know what we mean?)
Both Elf and A Christmas Story deliver sharp jokes and - essential for any enduring classic - several memorable set pieces that have aged well. But you cannot discount the cozy nostalgia factor. Just as we'd like to image a simpler life in a 1940s Indiana with department store window dressings and double-dog dares, there's something equally appealing about spending Christmas as upper-class professionals living in Manhattan. We'd argue it's that same snuggly hot chocolate "wouldn't it be great?" vibe that keeps the unending conveyor belt of Hallmark Christmas movies rolling.
Here are our favorite lies from Elf.
1. “You sit on a throne of lies.” - Perhaps the best joke in the whole movie as Will Ferrell's Buddy confronts an impostor Santa that smells like "beef and cheese." Upon further review, however, would a fancy department store like Gimbels hire someone this awful to be Santa? Fun fact about Gimbels here.
2. “We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup.” - Watch Buddy pour maple syrup (which he carries with him for just such an occasion) on spaghetti. Moments later comes the movie's most hilariously juvenile gag, when Will Ferrell lets loose an epic burp from guzzling an entire two-liter of Coke.
3. "I'm a cotton headed ninny muggins." - Apparently the worst insult an elf can muster, given the shocked expressions and horrified gasps that follow.
4. "Buddy, you're more of an elf than anyone I ever met. And the only one I would want working on my sleigh tonight." - Ed Asner perfectly cast as Santa resolves Buddy's story in a Screenwriting 101 moment. The character who's been so despondent to have his identity as an elf put into question gets complete and total validation. He may be a human, but he's the best elf ever.
5. “You did it! Congratulations! World’s best cup of coffee! Great job, everybody!” - The perfect moment showing Buddy's fish-out-of-water naïveté. See also: eating chewed gum off a subway handrail, tasting perfume, running around and around in a revolving door, and trying to give a wild raccoon a hug.
6. “This place reminds me of Santa’s workshop. Except it smells like mushrooms and everyone looks like they want to hurt me.” - Buddy's dad Walter (James Caan's most appealing role? discuss) gets rid of Buddy by sending him down to the sweaty, smoky Empire State Building mail room.
7. "Son of a nutcracker!" - We really should add this one to our cuss list.
8. "The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!” - Part of the Code of Elves, which gets planted early in the first act and a perfect payoff in the third act. The script (credited to David Berenbaum) may seem silly, but it is tight and polished. Bonus points for giving Zooey Deschanel's Jovie an arc of her own: she faces her own fear in the climax by having to sing in public to, you know, save Christmas.
9. “I planned out our whole day. First we make snow angels for two hours, and then we’ll go ice skating, and then we’ll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookie Dough as fast as we can, and then, to finish, we’ll snuggle.” - It's the idea of suggesting a snuggle to James Caan that takes this joke to a whole other level.
10. (tie) "He's an angry elf." and "He must be a South Pole elf." - Buddy's clueless scuffle with Peter Dinklage's arrogant book author is still shocking in its "are they really doing this?" irreverence.
Today we learned we're the same age now as Mary Steenburgen was when she played Emily Hobbs.
11.29.2022
Knee-jerk review: "The Menu"
1. The trailers certainly suggested the possibility of cannibalism. (Remember the old "To Serve Man" episode of The Twilight Zone? It wasn't a book about helping humanity, you see - it was a cookbook. Sorry about the spoiler, but by now a 1960s TV show is fair game.) But the movie is much more nuanced and political than that.
2. This Ralph Fiennes guy is a pretty good actor.
3. The plot gets a little sloppy and loose at times, but this is a film steeped in Big Ideas and Important Themes. We mean that as a compliment. Horror (and sci-fi) like this always offers a powerful way to critique culture and satirize the powers that be.
4. There are a lot of villains here, from the self-important critic who delights in criticizing the hard work of others, the sycophant who breathlessly validates anything his boss says and refuses to mutter a single contradictory statement, the finance bros proudly embezzling money for an off-short account, the creepy father whose sexual deviancy may have pushed his daughter to suicide. The list goes on. The one thing these people all have in common is that they're part of the 1%, upper class royalty who are never satisfied and never hear the word "no." They're ripe for a comeuppance.
5. Don't mess with Elsa.
6. Perhaps the most overt element of satire is the way the restaurant staff (and especially the unctuous sommelier) describe the courses with over the top explanations and breathless importance. It's all so hilariously pretentious. And likely familiar to anyone who's watched a show on the Food Network.
7. The same sort of thing happens, of course, with any art. Whether it's film or music or literature, there are always drawing room snobs who enjoy proving their intellectual bona fides with obscure, niche references and fancy, high-brow opinions.
8. If you ever eat at Hawthorne, be very wary of the tortillas.
9. Added into this mix is the idea of how the world is divided between those who create art and those who consume and critique that art.
10. There's a lot going on in this movie.
11. Our favorite moment comes with one of the more pretentious foodies gets the chance to cook something. He may have consumed countless blogs and books and TV shows about cooking, but he's completely clueless in the kitchen.
12. We agree with the idea here that there's not many things more satisfying than a greasy cheeseburger.
13. Anya Taylor-Joy is so very odd looking, yet also undeniably beautiful at the same time. She definitely commands your attention. Her scenes with Fiennes crackle.
14. We never really thought about the perspective of the five-star celebrity chef. Are chefs happy making elaborate, complicated dishes for the insufferable wealthy (who may not even appreciate their hard work aside from the social status it provides)?
15. "Don't eat. Taste. Savor. Relish."
16. This seems to be director Mark Mylod's first feature film after spending years directing and producing television. It's a strong debut.
17. If smoking kills your palate, then why do so many kitchen workers chain smoke?
18. 100% fantastic.
11.27.2022
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.
11.21.2022
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.
11.12.2022
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.
10.10.2022
Observations from a Middle School Volleyball Season
* 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.
* 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.
10.04.2022
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.
9.25.2022
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?
8.06.2022
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.
7.09.2022
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.
6.27.2022
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.
5.28.2022
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.
5.22.2022
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.
5.14.2022
Knee-jerk review: "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"
3.15.2022
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.
3.06.2022
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.
2.12.2022
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.
2.03.2022
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