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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