Knee-jerk review: "Smile 2"

1. Too long perhaps, but fantastic.
2. You might chuckle at this notion, but actress Naomi Scott knocks her performance out of the park.  It's practically award-caliber.
3. The first Smile (2022) was a clever rip-off of scary "cursed chain" movies like The Ring and It Follows.  As they say, audiences want the same but different.  Smile checked those boxes.
4. Like so many high-concept horror movies, however, Smile didn't really know where to go or how to wrap it all up.  The explanation for the creepy, inexplicable weirdness is almost always a letdown.
5. The sequel is a huge improvement on every level... but the ending is still kind of a mess.
6. We had to go to Reddit discussion boards to figure out what exactly happened in the last 15 minutes or so.  What we found there makes sense.  We somehow overlooked a pretty clear explanation of the movie's internal logic.
7. Jump scares on top of jump scares.  You may or may not like that sort of thing.  They are cheats, yes, but they're also very effective.
8. The movie is so layered and well-developed that if you took the scary stuff out, you'd still have a very compelling drama about a tortured, recovering addict pop star unwisely trying to make a huge stadium tour comeback she's not ready for.  The pressure she feels from her icy stage mom, the tour's pushy financier, all of those hundreds of people depending on her tour for their jobs, is palpable.
9. We don't get out much, but it's been a while since we saw a movie this gory.
10. The peppy, obsequious personal assistant - who provided no value or skill beyond running around fetching things - was a fun character to hate.
11. Writer-director Parker Finn packs in a lot of glossy style.  Horror movies don't usually look this good.
12. The scene at the fancy socialite charity is something else.  Ditto the car crash at the end.  And the backup dancers in her apartment.  And the sequence with the stalker fan.  If you can string together four or five truly memorable scenes, you've pretty much done your job as a filmmaker.
13. Despite this, the 15-year-old Fry and her friend fell asleep for, like, 30 minutes during the first hour.  How is this possible?  We know why.  Because they go to the movies in slippers and pajamas and wrap themselves in fleece blankets like they're at a sleepover.
14. We have mixed feelings about movies like this that blur the line between fantasy and reality so that the hero (and the audience) can't ever be sure what's real.  But it mostly works here so we will allow it.
15. Naomi Scott.  Wow.

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Knee-jerk review: "Alien Romulus"

1. Without a doubt, it's the best one since 1986's Aliens.  And we liked Alien Resurrection (1997) more than most.
2. It's the ninth movie in the Alien franchise - if you count the Alien Versus Predator movies - so along the way, as is so often the case now with sci-fi, the mythology and backstory behind both the origin of the alien species and also the machinations of the evil Weyland-Yutani company has gotten way complicated and shaggy.
3. It's a lot to keep track of, especially at the end when the story connects to the self-important, overwrought Prometheus and Covenant sequels.  The movies probably worked better when Weyland-Yutani was a powerful faceless behemoth.  The air of mystery helped.  The more we learn about what they're trying to do with the aliens, the more ho-hum familiar they seem.
4. Cailee Spaeny is decent, if a little dull, in the lead.  The same, frankly, goes for the whole cast.  Just fine all around, but no one really pops.
5. Spaeny at times gives off Natalie Portman vibes.
6. Spoiler alert: the decision to use CGI technology to make 1979-era Ian Holm one of the supporting characters is a huge misfire.  We can understand the desperation to do as much as possible to connect this movie to the other Alien movies, but it's a gimmick that is not needed here.  The movie crackles just fine on its own.
7. Aside from the creep factor of animating a dead actor and creating a performance from scratch without his involvement, the CGI that reproduces Holm just... isn't good.  Big time uncanny valley. 
8. And from a story point of view, Holm isn't playing the character he played in Alien.  This is a different character with a different name.  But they're both androids, so the suggestion seems to be that there's this whole line of androids out there that all look like Ian Holm.  That sort of makes sense, but it's way too distracting and needlessly meta for it's own good.
9. Script-wise, the opening ten minutes are lean and mean.  We meet the main character, see her terrible predicament, then watch her grapple with a crazy, dangerous choice that might be her only way out.
10. The "big bad" alien at the very end is wild.  The filmmakers really went for it.
11. The Swiss-watch plotting of James Cameron's Aliens is second to none.  Anything that can go wrong for our heroes goes horribly wrong, again and again, but always in completely plausible ways.  Nothing feels forced.  Romulus has that same sort of feel.  Nothing is easy for the characters.
12. Zero gravity clouds of acid alien blood?  Check.
13. There's plenty of scary action set pieces here, which is really all any of us need in a sci-fi horror movie.

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Knee-jerk review: "Trap"

1. Fifteen-year-old Lil Fry assessment of Josh Hartnett: "He's so fine."
2. The first 45 minutes or so unfold about as we expected based on the trailer.  Then the story takes an unexpected detour - a variation perhaps on that trademark M. Night twist? - that turns everything around.  One critic called it a Psycho-style shifting of protagonists, a clever observation we wish we'd been clever enough to have made.
3. It's a lot of fun so long as you don't peer too closely at the creaky wheels of the plot, especially in the way these supposedly crack FBI profilers make some really dumb choices that benefit the villain.  (No spoiler here if you've seen the trailer, but if the idea is to set a surprise trap at a pop concert for a notorious murderer, it makes no sense to stack the arena with cops before the show even starts.  Why risk tipping off your prey?  Bring in the SWAT after the house lights go down.)
4. The movie may not work as well as it thinks, but there's no denying the audaciousness of a major studio movie building a premise around a vicious and insane serial killer, played by a famous Hollywood heartthrob no less, living a double life as a normal suburban dad.
5. The filmmakers did not skimp on trying to accurately portray the huge pomp and circumstance of a Taylor Swift-style concert.  We've seen countless low-budget versions of this sort of thing that never ring true.  Here it feels genuine.
6. Will a secret password really help explain away an unauthorized visit to an arena roof?
7. Alison Pill is always good, but to us the real gem here is Ariel Donoghue who plays Hartnett's daughter with heartbreaking earnestness.
8. Sure can't hurt your music career if dad is a famous movie director.
9. Bonus points for a subplot involving the casual - and sometimes unintentional - cruelty among teenage girls.  The struggle is real.

Ranking M. Night's movies (not counting his first two, pre-Sixth Sense films)
1. The Sixth Sense (1999), obviously
2. Unbreakable (2000) still feels somehow underrated
3. The Visit (2015)
4. Old (2021) is a guilty pleasure for us
5. Signs (2002), despite a very cheesy ending
6. Split (2016)
7. Trap (2024)
8. Knock at the Cabin (2023)
9. The Village (2004)
10 (tied). Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008) are total misfires

We never saw The Last Airbender, After Earth, or Glass.

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Knee-jerk review: "Longlegs"

1. The unsettled creepiness of the trailer for this movie did the trick.
2. Nicolas Cage is over the top as usual.  They hid his face - heavy with strange prosthetics - from all the promotional material, which certainly upped the curiosity factor, but what we imagined turned out to be far scarier than what he really looks like.
3. Definite echoes of Silence of the Lambs, of course (newbie female FBI agent brought in on a disturbing serial killer case) but if you're going to steal, steal from the best.
4. The tone of the whole thing just feels... off-kilter.  Eerie.  A low hum of dread. 
5. That doesn't mean the filmmakers are above employing a few traditional jump scares accompanied by a screeching music cue.
6. Lot of long takes and wide angles that makes one anticipate something's about to happen.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it's a fake out.
7. In other words, it's the kind of movie where a character sits alone at night researching scary things (our heroine apparently can't work on this case during the daytime) and the camera's pointed at them in a way that you can see an open window or door behind them.  So you're crawling out of your skin expecting something awful to appear in that window or door.
8. We've never seen Blair Underwood this gritty and terse.  Isn't he usually playing some variation of the suave charmer?
9. Things get stranger and stranger as the story unfolds.  The final reveal about what's exactly been happening with these serial murders is completely nuts.  But that's usually the case with these kinds of things (see also: most of Stephen King's novels).  The set-up is so weird and scary that there's no way to plausibly explain it all away.
10. We discussed the ending with the 15-year-old Fry on the drive home, trying to puzzle out some of the character choices at the end.  We thought we understood the rules of what was happening.  But then maybe not?  We finally decided this sort of movie is about mood more than plot.
11. For us, there's nothing scarier than someone knocking on your front door in the middle of the night.
12. The odd "longlegs" name we think is explained in a quick line of dialogue during the first encounter with the Longlegs character, but we didn't make it out.  He says something about how he didn't bring his long legs.  What the heck.  (UPDATE: apparently, the gag is that he's towering over the little girl he's talking to - using long legs - so he squats down to better communicate.)
13. The film geek in us 100% loved the gimmick of using a square aspect ratio to signal the flashbacks.
14. Obligatory scene of characters exploring a dark, scary place with flashlights.
15. A couple of allusions to T. Rex's "Bang a Gong."  No idea why.
16. If nothing else, it was a memorable experience.

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Knee-jerk review: "Twisters"

1. Traditional summer popcorn movie.  Whether or not you take that as a recommendation is up to you.
2. Glen Powell is a movie star.  Full stop.  Effortless charm, charisma, and cool.
3. A big sequence midway through depends on the audience believing that a small town in Oklahoma - surely as weather-aware as they come - can be caught totally off guard by the sudden arrival of a tornado.  Textbook definition of "suspension of disbelief."  Tornados don't appear out of nowhere like a boogeyman in the woods.  Forecasters usually know 2 or 3 days in advance that trouble is brewing.
4. We were unfamiliar with director Lee Isaac Chung, but this movie is as polished and slick as they come.
5. Never hide from a tornado under a highway overpass.
6. "If you feel it, chase it!"  If you think about it, that makes no sense.  Better is a line delivered later: "If you're afraid of it, ride it."
7. Is this ragtag community of nomadic screwball tornado chasers really a thing?
8. The most interesting element of the movie - unscrupulous land barons swooping in to take advantage of raw emotions to buy destroyed property at a discount - is so glossed over if you blink you might miss it.
9. Every amateur scientist surely has a giant laboratory in a rural barn, right?
10. Is it me or does Daisy Edgar-Jones look like should could be Anne Hathaway's little sister?
11. We remember seeing the original Twister back in the summer 1996 and liking it a lot, but aside from the crazy ending where (overrated) Helen Hunt and (always underrated) Bill Paxton are inexplicably able to ride out a tornado by hanging on to a standpipe, we don't recall many details.  And, of course, also the flying cow.  Oh, and also the terrifying prologue where Helen's dad gets sucked out of the storm cellar.
12. As a kid, we visited a relative's farm in rural Texas many times that had a storm cellar.  Like something out of The Wizard of Oz, just this set of metal doors set into ground right in the middle of the yard with a little ventilation pipe sticking up.
13. Are there really meteorologists who can just look at the clouds and figure it all out?
14. Some online chatter about whether or Twisters should have featured a character from Twister to make it an official, traditional sequel.  Not necessary.  It's not like these movies are offering some complex narrative tapestry.  (The metal Dorothy gizmos from Twister are featured.)
15. In sum, if you're looking for a movie with lots of tornados causing lots of damage, this is that movie.

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Knee-jerk review: Netflix's "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"

1. Historically, the film snob cinepile is us has avoided commenting on streaming movies.  The local multiplex is where "real" movies belong.  But we're making an exception here.  We get why Netflix would want this sequel, but we can't help but wonder what the box office might have been if it had gone into theaters this July 4 weekend.
2. We were probably too young (12) to see the original Beverly Hills Cop, which was a pretty hard R, despite the humor: bloody violence (the cold-blooded execution of Axel's buddy that kicks the whole movie off was particularly shocking to a young Cheese Fry), extreme profanity, and as a final kicker, a lengthy scene in a strip club.
3. In many ways, the filmmakers have created an 80s action comedy in 2024.  It's all stunts and fights and jokes and cool moments with the barest thread of a plot to string everything together.  They have our respect.
4. Eddie Murphy, of course, has effortless charm and presence.  What has he been doing with himself all these many years?  A quick look at IMDB tells us he's mostly been toiling in streaming titles aside from his work as Donkey in the Shrek movies.  His last theatrical movie may have been Tower Heist all the way back in 2011, which was a pretty good caper movie if you haven't seen it.
5. Aside from Bob Seger's "Shakedown" and Brigitte Neilsen, we have zero recollection of what happened in 1987's Beverly Hills Cop 2.
6. We really didn't fully understand all of the convoluted plot nonsense here with drug smuggling and cargo trucks and nefarious activity at dark, seedy shipping docks.  It's not an 80s cop movie without nefarious activity at dark, seedy shipping docks.  But the mechanics of the plot aren't really what's important in a movie like this.  Everyone wants the Macguffin SD card that will prove the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good.  How and why wasn't completely clear.  But we went with it.
7. Kevin Bacon is in 100% mustache-twirling villain mode.  It suits him.  This is no spoiler.  As soon as he shows up, you'll know he's the Big Bad.  This isn't a movie of subtlety.
8. It's not a Beverly Hills Cop movie unless Axel has to bullshit his way into some exclusive location.  Good stuff.
9. While we appreciate bringing back Billy Rosewood and John Taggart, the actors playing them show their age (Judge Reinhold is 67, John Ashton is 76) in a way that unexpectedly made us face our own mortality.
10. This movie didn't really require a dramatic throughline, but the business with Axel trying to reconcile with his very estranged daughter definitely helped add substance.  Bonus points for really making it seem like their split was Axel's fault.
11. We suppose it was inevitable to bring back Bronson Pinchot's Serge character.  We honestly could have done without.
12. We remember ever less about 1994's Beverly Hills Cop III aside from the fact that it for some reason ended in an amusement park.  Not sure we even saw it in a theater. 
13. It's almost distracting how many different ways the movie arranges and rearranges and orchestrates the famous "Axel F" theme. 
14. Gold star for a pretty solid - and brutal - Beverly Hills street shootout, but we have deduct points for staging the climax in a fancy mansion that is a totally ripoff of the original movie's ending.
15. Way, way more fun than we were expecting.

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Knee-jerk review: "A Quiet Place: Day One"

1. It's not exactly what the trailer sold. The question is whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
2. Rather than an apocalyptic sci-fi horror movie with chases and jump scares, which is what we were expecting (people-eating aliens attack Manhattan!), it's more of a moody character piece about two lost souls finding each other in a time of tragedy (a dying woman finds a reason to live!).  It's not bad for what it ends up being... but it's not the traditional horror movie audiences might be expecting.
3. Even so, there are effective sequences of what might happen if all of Manhattan had to be cut off from the rest of the world.  And the aliens do attack our human heroes more than once, so that box does get checked.
4. We've never encountered a cat that obedient or that interested in helping/paying attention to humans.
5. Djimon Hounsou is always fascinating , no matter what he does.  Apparently, he's reprising his voiceover role from the second movie.
6. We're just not sure if these monsters can sustain a franchise.  Characters try hard to be quiet, then a character makes a noise, then monsters attack.  Is that enough? 
7. The first movie, of course, was top-notch on every level.  A modern classic.
8. There's still something chilling about a New York City scene involving an explosion that covers everyone in white ash.
9. Whatever weirdness was happening in that construction site with the aliens and the eggs and whatnot, it's surely laying the groundwork for A Quiet Place: Week One.

10. Wikipedia tells us that Patsy's Pizza is a real place.  
11. Is the presence of a clickwheel iPod suggesting an early 2000s setting?  We're too lazy to work out the timeline of the original movie to estimate when the original attack was supposed to have happened.  Cool detail, though.

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Potentially Better Ideas for a "Star Wars" TV Show

We don't hate "The Acolyte," the new Star Wars show that's running now on Disney+.  But we're not exactly excited by it, either.  It's... perfectly fine.  We suspect most fans will admit that only "The Mandalorian" (first season) and "Andor" have truly delivered the goods.  More often, the shows have ranged from "meh" ("Obi-Wan Kenobi") to embarrassing ("The Book of Boba Fett").  We would argue that part of the problem is that Star Wars producers and filmmakers mistakenly assume that the only interesting thing about Star Wars is the Force and the Jedi.  Ugly truth: we barely tolerated the goofy mysticism and pseudo-religious doublespeak of the Force in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

We've proposed this sort of thing in passing before, but now we want to devote a full blog post to it.  Why not transplant traditional TV genres that have proven the test of time into the Star Wars universe?  Don't dismiss this as a joke.  We are 100% serious.  Best of all, these premises will limit Jedi characters and Force usage to limited guest star moments in very special episodes.  And another thing: no more serialized seasons that drag out simple storylines across endless episodes.  Let's get back to the old school stand-alone episodes of yore.

* Blue collar workplace dramedy in an X-wing mechanic shop
* "Law and Order"-style police procedural in Cloud City (we thought "Rangers of the New Republic" might follow this idea before star Gina Carano went off the rails and the show got cancelled)
* Medical drama on the Death Star
* 20-something coming of age romantic comedy in the Rebel base on Hoth
* "Yellowstone"-style family melodrama on an Imperial Star Destroyer
* "West Wing" or "Game of Thrones"-style political intrigue in the Galactic Senate
* Underworld crime thriller set in that Mos Eisley cantina

You're welcome, Disney.

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1990s Cultural Signifiers

We've read a few books by Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman IV).  He's an interesting author.  He reminds us of that friend we've all had who - often over drinks at a too-hip bar that they, of course, suggested - seems way smarter and erudite than the menial dead-end job they always seem to be working.  Klosterman has an opinion about everything and states those opinions with steely conviction, but his sentences can be so unwieldy and pretzel-twisty that we often feel like he's talking over our head.  And so we have no choice but to nod sagely as if we agree lest we admit we're rubes who can't follow him.  That said, it's a rare thing indeed to find an author who's so clearly thought this long and hard and deep about a subject that might seem trivial to other historians and essayists: pop culture.

In his book The Nineties Klosterman notes that marking decades can't be done on the calendar - they should be bookended through how the culture perceives that decade.  He argues that the 1990s started with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 (although he suggests that the 80s vibe may not have truly faded until 1991 or so) and ended with the September 11 attacks in 2001.  He further suggests that the Bush-Gore election in 2000 and that first year of the Bush presidency in 2001 were essentially an extension 1990s "so what?" ambivalence.  Times were pretty good and life was dull, the internet and smartphones hadn't yet turned everything upside down.

More interesting, though, is the idea Klosterman threads through the book that there will always be a disconnect between how you remember something happening and how it really was when it was actually happening.  That is, when you look back at the more dramatic turns of history from the vantage point of the present day, it can be easy to wonder how could that have possibly happened when at the time what happened seemed perfectly logical and wholly unsurprising.

Aside from all of this fancy philosophizing about the 1990s, why they were the way they were, and how we now remember them, we found pleasure simply following Klosterman as he wound his way through the decade ruminating on a number of people, places, and things that we'd forgotten about (or almost forgotten about).  We experienced a great many fizzy and nostalgic "oh yeah! we remember that!" moments. 

Here's a list of 1990s signifiers in no particular order.

* Political correctness
* Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill
* Clarence Thomas' 1991 Supreme Court confirmation
* Reality Bites
* Prozac Nation
* Grunge
* Ross Perot running for president
* The Gulf War - broadcast live on CNN
* Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction
* Star 69
* Windows 95
* Michael Jordan playing baseball
* Zima
* Dolly the cloned sheep
* Biosphere 2
* MTV's "The Real World"
* The Matrix
* Oprah Winfrey
* Titanic
* The all-purple "alternative" adjective
* The Blair Witch Project
* Eminem
* "The X Files"
* Generation X
* The long cardboard boxes CD used to come in
* George H.W. Bush
* The Unabomber
* Broadway's Rent
* 70s nostalgia ("That 70s Show," Dazed and Confused)
* Napster
* The rise of the internet (AOL and dial-up modems)
* Kurt Cobain suicide
* The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and impeachment
* Pauly Shore
* Jurassic Park
* "Achy Breaky Heart"
* Oklahoma City bombing
* Rodney King video
* Falling Down
* The Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase in 1998
* Y2K hysteria
* VHS tapes and Blockbuster Video
* Nirvana's Nevermind
* Tiger Woods
* The OJ murder trial
* American Beauty
* NBC's Thursday night "Must See TV" lineup
* The Columbine school shooting
* The Matrix
* The word "queer"
* Kids
* 1994 baseball strike and cancelled World Series

A word about that cover photo.  We had that clear Princess-style phone in our college bedroom.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Fall Guy"

1. What a mess.
2. There's a couple of mildly amusing twists at the end (that we really should have seen coming), but overall we pretty much hated it.  Constantly rolling our eyes and checking our watch.  We thought it might never end.
3. And then the 12-year-old looked at us as the credits rolled - eyes sparkling - "That was really good."  We're such a grumpy ogre.
4. Pretty much every element of the movie felt misguided and/or inept.
5. What worked was Ryan Gosling's charm as he fumbled through the mystery plot.  The movie toyed with a "fish out of water" vibe as this kind of goofy Hollywood stunt man wandered into a pretty dark criminal underworld.  But the movie never really committed to it.  Instead, we kept having to go back to the romance subplot and the movie set where Emily Blunt was directing a big action movie.  That was a big problem because...
6. The scenes with Blunt were deadly, dragging everything to a dead stop.  We'd have never guessed she could be this dull and unlikable.  At times we were wondering why Gosling had any interest in her.  There's one especially awkward sequence where she cruelly tortures and humiliates him on the set in front of everyone just to get back at him for some pretty typical bad-boyfriend-type behavior.
7. It some ways The Fall Guy seemed to want to be a romantic comedy as these two estranged lovers figured out how to get back together.  But for that to work you need laughs.  All of those endlessly talky scenes with Gosling and Blunt were completely humorless.  Those moments played more like an overcooked Lifetime drama, totally out of whack with the screwball lunacy of the action scenes.
8. There's also a weird moment when Gosling shows he can fight, but it's completely undercut because he'd just been drugged by the bad guys and so the movie adds in this weird "I'm hallucinating!" animation stuff as it's happening so we weren't sure if he was really this good at fighting (it could have been funny if the stunt guy didn't know how to really fight) or if he was just imagining it.  This is a perfect example of how the movie likes to go for the fun gag at the expense of a clear and coherent story.
9. Like we said.  A mess. 
10. Then there's this painfully convoluted bit where the plot of the movie Blunt's making has parallels to what really happened with Blunt and Gosling's characters (did Blunt's character write the script?).  It doesn't work at all, but they keep going back to it and using the movie plot to work out their own romance. Clearly, the filmmakers think this element is very clever.  
11. All they really kept from the old 1980s TV show was the name Colt Seavers (which is pretty badass), his big pickup truck, his stunt man job, and the theme song.
12. We saw the negative reviews.  But we went anyway.  A lot of critics really don't like director David Leitch (who used to be a stunt man), but we thought 2017's Atomic Blonde and 2022's Bullet Train were a lot of fun.  The issue may be that he knows how to handle hard-boiled action (Atomic Blonde) and/or snarky action (Bullet Train) but is still figuring out more "realistic" romantic elements.
13. We don't want to get too inside baseball, but most of the Hollywood stuff felt completely phony and forced on multiple levels.  Most glaring: in the middle of a multi-million dollar action movie production, the director and the crew unwind with drinks at a karaoke bar?  It's not even dark outside when they go.  Another example: the swanky hotel suite where the lead actor is staying is full of props and posters from his past movies.  So he had all of that shipped to Australia for a three-month shoot?  Little things like that can make one go crazy.
14. Bonus points for the Lee Majors cameo at the end.  We didn't even recognize Heather Thomas in her cameo in the same scene.
15. It's hard to fathom that all of the talented filmmakers and seasoned studio executives saw how this movie was shaping up and didn't step in to fix it.  Or maybe this is the improved version of the original idea?
16. Avoid.

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Ten Musical Artists We've Been Obsessed with at One Point *

* In alphabetical order.  Cringe factor is in the red on the some of these.  Please don't judge us.

1. Kelly Clarkson
2. The (Dixie) Chicks
3. The Doors
4. Explosions in the Sky
5. Heart
6. Don Henley
7. Ivy
8. Madonna
9. Alanis Morissette
10. Van Halen

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Notes on Watching the "Alien" Rerelease with a 14-Year-Old

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Alien.  To commemorate the occasion, last weekend the movie was re-released in theaters.  We were surprised that the 14-year-old seemed interested in watching it.

* Teen girls in our part of town treat moviegoing like a sleepover.  Slippers, baggy hoodies, sweatpants, a fuzzy blanket.  When you're all cuddled up like that in a plush leather Cinemark chair - that's heated, no less - in a cold movie theater, it's not surprising that you might get a little drowsy.  Fifteen minutes into the movie, we get a whispered "I'm getting sleepy."

* Concessions report: Diet Dr Pepper with cherry and vanilla for us, blue Icee for the 14-year-old.  No popcorn, no candy.

* The folks behind this re-release clearly assumed that anyone buying a ticket has already seen the movie.  And so before the movie they screen a 15-minute featurette with Alien director Ridley Scott talking to the director of this summer's new Alien sequel.  And of course, we get lots of Alien clips that spoils good chunks of the movie.  Cue exasperated sighs and groans from the 14-year-old.

* Was the 14-year-old the youngest audience member?  Probably.  There was a family there and the boy may have been 12.

* We agree that the first act of Alien - pretty much everything until the alien gets into the ship - is slow.  We tried to warn the 14-year-old.  We found that chunk of movie slow when we first watched it thirty years ago.  That measured build-up, however, is no match for Zoomers raised on endless scrolls of bite-sized TikTok videos.

* After John Hurt has his big moment at the dining table, 14-year-old asks "Is that guy dead?"  Yes.  Yes, he is.

* We did not go full geek and wear our Nostromo T-shirt.

* The movie got the 14-year-old good on the jump scare when Tom Skeritt's in the dark air vent trying to figure out where the alien is - we know it's closing in but we're not sure from where - and he swings his flashlight around behind him... and the alien is right there!  Eek!

* The 14-year-old's assessment in the hallway outside the theater: "It was okay."  That's pretty high praise actually from someone who often thinks anything made before 2010 is dusty ancient history.

* The next day, when asked what were her favorite parts, the 14-year-old could think of two: when Sigourney Weaver blew the alien into space and when android Ian Holm's creepy white sweat first appeared.

* For the record, the 14-year-old loved James Cameron's Aliens sequel.  As any decent American would.

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Knee-jerk review: "Civil War"

1. Fantastic.
2. There are reports out there suggesting that this movie is apolitical, that it's focus is on the challenges journalists face covering a war zone rather than explaining which side in the war is "right."  That's true up to a point.  The third act definitely draws some parallels to real world politics as the action converges on Washington DC.
3. The "What kind of American are you?" sequence is absolutely chilling.  That alone is worth the price of admission.  Aren't we all just one kind of American?
4. Kirsten Dunst is probably underrated as an actress.  She looks more haggard and worldly here than we can remember ever seeing her.  It suits her.
5. We're glad there are people who want to go (unarmed!) into dangerous situations like this to record and report on what's really going on in the trenches.  But to do this sort of work, you have to have a screw loose.  It's just not normal to stand passively by and record and report on horrible crimes and violence as they happen right in front of you.  To its credit, the movie doesn't shy away from that fact.  There's an adrenaline junkie vibe to some of this; it's not all altruistic All the President's Men truth-seeking.
6. It's hard to screw up a road movie structure.  They almost always work.  You have a third act destination to work towards, which then provides a second act framework for all these little moments and vignettes along the way to ramp up the conflict and develop character.
7. Likewise, you really can't ever go wrong with a story that tells a variation of the seasoned mentor teaching (and also learning from) the inexperienced newcomer.
8. If you don't think this sort of chaotic, lawless conflict can happen here, you're pretty naive.
9. We understand why Kirsten Dunst's character had to finish the story the way she did, but how it happens felt very phony.  Which was disappointing in a movie that otherwise worked so hard to seem plausible.  This moment may be our only real criticism.
10. Ms. Cheese Fry really wanted more explanation for how and why this civil war started, but we very much liked the "fog of war" ambiguity.  Does it matter who started the war when you're in the thick of it just trying to survive?  This was also another interesting way to explore the mercenary nature of war zone journalism.  They don't care who did what to who or why.  The point is the story and the photos.  Covering a gunfight in Middle America is the same covering one in Haiti or Ukraine.
11. Writer-director Alex Garland's 2014 film Ex Machina is pretty much a sci-fi masterpiece.  Go find it and watch it if you haven't seen it.  This one may not be as polished as Ex Machina but it's a very close second.  
12. For the record, last night we watched Garland's 2018 film Annihilation for the first time.  We cannot recommend it.  Visually interesting we'd have to admit, but a slow slog that really doesn't go anywhere.
13. As we sit here and type, there are so many other angles and layers from Civil War to be discussed.  That's a sign of true art.
14. No matter your politics, you may queasy like we did watching American soldiers hunting the President.
15. It must have been quite the negotiation for real-world culture enemies Texas and California to team up and form the film's Western Forces. Their flag has two stars alongside the red and white stripes, which was a nice visual touch.
16. Another great sequence: "Who are you taking orders from?"
17. Not many films can be considered Important with a capital I.  This one feels like it is.

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Twenty Things We Love

The Cheese Fry has been at times labeled a cynical, negative, pessimistic misanthrope.  Often, that's totally fair.  But just because we like to complain doesn't mean we hate everything.  We do occasionally feel happy.  Submitted, then, for your approval are twenty things we absolutely love.

1. Richard Linklater's 1993 movie Dazed and Confused
2. Ice cold Dr Pepper in a glass bottle
3. Having the local broadcast of the hometown baseball game playing in the background on a weekend afternoon (runner up: playing the broadcast of golf in the background)
4. Being at the very back of a long left-turn line but still getting through the intersection before the green arrow turns yellow
5. Neneh Cherry's 1988 song "Buffalo Stance"
6. Cheddar fries from Snuffer's (bacon, chives, jalapenos on the side)
7. CBS' "The Price Is Right"
8. That cozy stretch of autumn from Halloween to Christmas
9. Film director Steven Soderbergh
10. Seeing a 90% or more battery change on our iPhone
11. The look and smell of a freshly mowed yard
12. The Hollywood and Vermont episodes of "I Love Lucy"
13. Larry McMurtry's 1985 novel Lonesome Dove
14. Playing Madden football on a PlayStation console
15. Wandering the aisles of a bookstore with money to spend
16. Our old second-floor apartment on La Brea Avenue
17. NBC's original recipe "Law and Order"
18. Our subscription to SiriusXM satellite radio
19. Disneyland
20. Watching a new movie opening weekend in a cold, mostly empty multiplex auditorium

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Musings on Jack Reacher

As the Cheese Fry reluctantly slides into middle age, one of the membership requirements of that demographic involves partaking in the phenomenon of fictional bad ass Jack Reacher.  He's a veteran who used to be an Army investigator which means he can solve mysteries like Hercule Poirot and handle fistfights and firearms like John Wick.  Tom Cruise played Reacher in a couple of movies (Jack Reacher, 2012; Never Go Back, 2016) but now Alan Ritchson plays him in a pretty successful Amazon Prime series adaptation that premiered back in 2022.  Season three of that show is coming soon.  

If you hadn't heard of Jack Reacher prior to those movies and shows, you're likely not a male over age 40.  Because, people, the character of Jack Reacher is very big business.  Author Lee Child (who's actually from the UK) has cranked out 28 novels since 1997.  That's more or less one book a year.  He must be tired because Child is now in the process of handing Reacher author responsibilities to his little brother.

Die-hard Reacher fans howled when Cruise made his movies because Reacher on the page, you see, is a mountain of a man, while Cruise is famously more on the shorter side.  Fans seem much more pleased with Ritchson's performance.  He's a big guy, for sure - so big that it stretches plausibility that so many average-sized bad guys seems so willing to take him on.  (This obvious physical mismatch in every confrontation is a similar issue in the books.  Just how dumb and delusional are these villains?)  While the casting agent may have gotten the size right, Ritchson lacks Cruise's charisma.  Ritchson's Reacher gives a dry, deadpan performance that borders on the dull at times.  But we digress.

With our reading stack running low a few months ago, we decided to sample the paperback world of Jack Reacher (via a pile of books given to us by, you guessed it, our 80-year-old father). Since then, we've read three of Child's 28 books, which is 11% of the total Jack Reacher output.  We read One Shot (Reacher clears the name of a man accused of killing five people - this is the one that Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher movie was based on), we read 61 Hours (Reacher uncovers a drug smuggling plot with Mexican cartels), and we read The Hard Way (Reacher gets involved in a New York City kidnapping). 

To us, the Amazon series does a pretty good capturing the Reacher book vibe.  (If you're curious, season one was an adaptation of the book Killing Floor and season two adapted Bad Luck and Trouble.) 

As noted, we've only read 11% of the books, which is a small sample.  Even so, as of now we have identified six characteristics of the prototypical Jack Reacher story.

1. Reacher will be dragged into the story.  Reacher isn't really looking to help.  He stumbles into a situation, often wants very much to look the other way and mind his own business, but then his moral code demands that he help once he fully understands what's going on.  In 61 Hours, Reacher uncovers a conspiracy after his Greyhound bus crashes on a snowy highway and leaves him stranded in a very corrupt town.  In The Hard Way, he's sitting at a Manhattan coffee shop and happens to see a kidnapping ransom drop and gets asked about what he saw.  He's like an R-rated Jessica Fletcher from the old "Murder She Wrote" TV show where she finds a dead body every time she travels.

A corollary to this is what is perhaps most notable about the character: (1a.) Reacher is a drifter.  He wanders from town to town on trains and buses, spends a few weeks here, then moves along.  The books (and show) has a lot of fun with his peculiar lifestyle - the only thing he carries with him is a toothbrush, he wears the same clothes over and over until buys new ones at thrift stores, that sort of thing.  There are samurai stories (and Western copycats) similar to this about fierce warriors who walk the countryside providing help as needed then disappearing over the horizon, but we couldn't easily find a name for that sort of story.  There is a tradition of "picaresque" stories, but those seem to involve lower-class people who get into amusing adventures - one website, for example, suggested that Forrest Gump is a variation on picaresque.  (We're told "picaresque" stories often have a satirical cultural element, which is intriguing because Lee Child's plots lean hard on exposing corruption - crooked cops, lawyers, military, veterans.  Reacher is often the sole voice of honor and morality.)  In any event, Reacher is more of a Shane-style antihero figure who shows up in town, kills the bad guys, then rides off on his horse before the bodies are cold.  He does terrible things for the right reasons.

2. The mystery will be convoluted.  As we read these books, more than once we got hopelessly confused trying to follow who's doing what to do and why.  These are not straight ahead "who done its" - the books feature complex, tangled, layered conspiracies and cover-ups.  Nothing is simple.  And so we as the reader just have to keep going and accept what's happening without always fully understanding it.  (This shows how Lee Child is trying to weave together so many character needs and schemes.  But authors like Elmore Leonard handle just as many complicated characters and crossed purposes and plot turns with crisp clarity.  It can sometimes feel like Child thinks only confusing plots provide suitable gravitas and import.)

3. Reacher will showcase Sherlock Holmes-style deductive reasoning.  It took us a while to really notice this, but Reacher is as mentally sharp as he is physically powerful.  He typically takes note of the smallest details and riffs on those to spin larger theories and hypotheses.  He'll also frequently give quick lectures about human behavior to either explain why someone might do (or not do) something or how he's decided on a specific plan.  He's almost always right, of course.  When this works, it's a lot of fun, although there are certainly many times when Reacher makes a big, fairly implausible leap of logic and one can't help with offer an eyeroll in response.

4. Reacher will have sex with a female sidekick.  Like James Bond, Reacher always seems to end up solving a mystery with a smart, attractive (and conveniently single) woman.  Consenting adults then do what consenting adults do.

5. Reacher will show repeatedly that nothing fazes him.  There are two sides to this coin.

* This "unflappability" aspect is probably the biggest downside to the character and his stories.  Drama and tension arise from conflict, from worrying about what will happen to the protagonist.  While many characters around Reacher suffer and face real consequences, Reacher is a superhero.  He's never in danger.  He's never afraid.  He always has a plan.  If you think of Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves or other A-list actors, notice how their movies often work hard to make you think maybe - just maybe - the hero won't make it.  They get beat up, they suffer setbacks, they wonder how in the hell they're going to get out of an impossible situation.  One never really gets the sense that Reacher is in over his head.  He can handle whatever the story's villains throw at him.  And if the plot twists and Reacher's first plan fails, he'll quickly improvise a new plan that's better than the old plan.  He's like James T. Kirk - he literally doesn't believe in the no-win scenario.  

* Looked at another way, however, that "unflappability" is surely key to Reacher's wide popularity.  It's absolutely a positive.  This is a guy who can handle any situation.  He oozes supreme confidence.  He knows what to say, what not to say, and what to ask (and, also, what the answers he hears might really mean).  And if needed, this is a guy who can easily take care of business with his fists or a weapon.  Think about how those traits might appeal to the flabby guy killing time before another boring work day or the frazzled dad facing mortgage payments and weekends of chores and youth sports.  It may seem simplistic (or even distasteful in an supposedly enlightened 21st century world), but we here at the Cheese Fry believe that Reacher is 100% an aspirational, wish-fulfillment figure for frustrated middle-aged men everywhere.  We wish we could be him.

In other words, these stories are engaging and successful because readers aren't wondering IF Reacher will survive, but HOW he will survive.

6. Reacher will kill a lot of people.  In one of the books, Reacher briefly notes that biologically he just doesn't feel remorse or regret.  And so if you're someone he's judged to be a criminal deserving of death (or maiming), he will deliver that punishment without mercy using whatever tool he can find.  Those violent moments of delicious comeuppance deliver a real zing of pleasure.

And there you have it.  Jack Reacher is the reluctant hero who uses unflappable confidence and deductive powers to solve convoluted mysteries that end in violent punishment of the bad guys.  And he sleeps with the hot woman sidekick along the way.  Are you not entertained?

If and when we read a fourth Jack Reacher novel, we fully expect these six characteristic to be present.

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The 1990s Songs We Still Tolerate

The 1990s provided, as they say, "formative years" for the Cheese Fry as we navigated and fumbled our way through our 20s and early 30s - college (and grad school), first serious girlfriend, first jobs, apartment renting and roommates, moving to Los Angeles, driving for hours a week in Los Angeles traffic dialed into KROQ, KISS, and/or Star 98. 

Today, "90s on 9" is a pre-set channel on our SiriusXM radio and often transports us back to an oddly specific memory from our storied past.  It's like an aural time machine.  That said, some of those 1990s songs make us cringe, roll our eyes, and click to another channel.  Some songs really should stay unsung. 

Which recently made us wonder... which of the most popular songs of the 1990s stand up today?  Which ones remain timeless bangers and which ones have unexpectedly aged poorly and should be deep-sixed for the good of mankind?

For the record, accessing Billboard's official online list of the most popular songs of the 1990s requires a subscription, so we can't verify the accuracy of the free list we found plus we stipulate that how Billboard tracked popular music underwent a lot of changes during this period so the definitive list of 1990s hits is probably full of exceptions and asterisks.  But for the purposes of this informal study we'll accept it.

The Bangers - popular 1990s songs we'd listen to again right now
* The Sign (ranked #11 on the all-time 1990s list), Ace of Base
* Waterfalls (#19), TLC
* Take a Bow (#24), Madonna
* Believe (#31), Cher
* No Scrubs (#33), TLC
* Livin La Vida Loca (#38), Ricky Martin
* Smooth (#41), Santana and Rob Thomas
* Stay (#94), Lisa Loeb
* Save the Best for Last (#47), Vanessa Williams
* Another Night (#51), Real McCoy
* Nobody Knows (#61), Tony Rich Project
* I Love You Always Forever (#71), Donna Lewis
* Unpretty (#76), TLC
* Baby One More Time (#78), Britney Spears
* Nothing Compares 2 U (#82), Sinead O'Connor
* Quit Playing Games (with My Heart) (#86), Backstreet Boys
* Hypnotize (#88), Notorious B.I.G.
* California Love (#97), 2Pac
* Return of the Mack (#100), Mark Morrison

Guess we were bigger TLC fans than we realized.  Of that list, without question the most finely-crafted, perfectly realized pop song is "Livin La Vida Loca."  And there is very little traditional verse/chorus pattern to "Stay" but we know every word.  Kudos also to the crunchy hooks of "California Love" and "Hypnotize" for making white people think they were hip hop fans.

The Outcasts - popular 1990s song we never, ever want to hear again
* Macarena (#2), Los Del Rio
* I Will Always Love You (#7), Whitney Houston
* I Swear (#9), All 4 One
* Because You Loved Me (#18), Celine Dion
* Can't Help Falling in Love (#22), UB40
* (Everything I Do) I Do It for You (#37), Bryan Adams
* Black or White (#39), Michael Jackson
* Whoomp! There It Is (#44), Tag Team
* Here Comes the Hotstepper (#65), Ini Kamoze
* I'm Too Sexy (#79), Right Said Fred

No real surprise here.  Cheap, awful novelty songs ("Macarena" and "Whoomp!" and "I'm Too Sexy") were barely tolerable when they were new.  For us, there's really no Celine Dion song worth a listen - it's all too bombastic and syrupy and "look at how dramatic I can sing" self-aware.  As for "I Will Always Love You," that was ruined for us by endless radio play.  And UB40 holds a special place of irritation in our hearts - they provided not one, but two terrible and unlistenable fake reggae disasters: "Can't Help Falling in Love" and "Red Red Wine."

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