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.

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Knee-jerk review: "Confess, Fletch"

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

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Knee-jerk review: "Fall"

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

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

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

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