Knee-jerk review: "Smile"

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.

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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?

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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.

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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).

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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.  

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