1. There's some old-fashioned jump scares, yes. But mostly this thing is powered by a sense of growing dread and surreal weirdness.
2. Mark Duplass alert.
3. There are certainly familiar horror movie elements, like the fear of being stalked by some unseen bad guy -- there's also a fun but kind of stale "Stranger Things"-style twist at the end -- but for the most part this felt wholly original and inventive. Some really crazy "what in the world am I watching?" moments.
4. Renate Reinsve is a little stiff.
5. Opening sequence is dynamite.
6. The movie's set in 1990, but the set design is 100% late 1980s and chock full of ugly decor ripped right out of our teenaged memories.
7. So who did install those creepy off-kilter breakers switches?
8. What helps makes the movie so memorable is that so much of it's ambiguous. While we get the overall gist of what's happening, there's a whole host of strange, smaller details that just aren't fully spelled out. You really have to read between the lines to piece everything together. The family Cheese Fry have had many "did you notice..?" discussions sharing pet theories about What It All Means.
9. There's no way we'd be able to find out way back out of that maze.
10. We went into this with only the most basic understanding of the "backrooms" premise, which is probably the way to do it. We, of course, conducted extensive, obligatory internet sleuthing after the fact to learn more. Some of what we saw in the movie comes right from the internet series.
11. It's true: the buzz of harsh fluorescents can be pretty oppressive.
12. Bonus points to the Little Fry for figuring out what that little radio was broadcasting.
13. So is Clark a good person or not? Discuss.
14. Palm sweating moment: the stairs up to the ceiling. You'll know it when you see it.
15. "It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen a dog."
6.01.2026
Knee-jerk review: "Backrooms"
5.25.2026
Knee-jerk review: "The Mandalorian and Grogu"
1. No, it's not terrible, but it's definitely disappointing.
2. The movie probably spends 20 minutes of its total runtime on our heroes fighting CGI monsters. That gets really tedious.
3. You can't tell us that this movie's development didn't start from a stack of 40-minute TV scripts. An episodic "here, then there" is structure okay for a quest story, but this all feels very stitched together.
4. The big climax should be rousing and cathartic. We were bored.
5. Also a weird downbeat subplot detour towards the end right as the action should be ramping up.
6. We're guessing it's an intentional retro choice to make Grogo seem like a foam rubber puppet? His hands don't move.
7. Bonus points, however, for letting Grogu actually do something other than just look cute from the sidelines and use the Force every once in a while.
8. We really didn't need to see more Hutts. That whole species is just a little ridiculous.
9. Also a problem: no central antagonist. Who are we rooting against? Who's the hero fight ing against? Instead, it's just a series of thugs and bounty hunters. That's not ideal when you're trying to build momentum and tension.
10. The four little mechanics - also fam rubber puppets - pretty much steal the movie.
11. So Pedro Pascal was for sure on set at least for the water fight sequence.
12. Amazing how Blade Runner's neon, rainy cityscape aesthetic so totally changed the way movies visualize the future.
13. Odd to have this whole 1950s-style noir boxing melodrama storyline. Someone actually says "The fix is in."
14. Like we said, there's way, way too many CGI alien monsters. Less is more.
15. Big fans of the Dave Filoni animated Star Wars shows will probably like it more than us. Like so many big-budget brand movies like this (see also: Marvel), it sometimes like it's more for the die hard nerd fans than mass audiences. At some point, Hollywood will learn that the safer odds lie in appealing to everyone and generating good word of mouth rather than inside baseball fan service.
16. What's the point of the iconic white stormtooper armor if laser blasters can still kill them with one shot?
17. There may may be a throwaway gag that calls back to the hologram chess game in the original Star Wars movie. If that's the case, that's really cheesy cringe.
18. We heard others complain that the movie is overall very dim. We agree. All of the action happening inside or at night needs the brightness knob turns way up.
19. We still very much love the first season of "The Mandalorian" and the way it leaned so hard into Star Wars' Western origins. Great stuff.
Updated Star Wars movie ratings
1. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
2. Rogue One (2016)
3. Star Wars (1977)
4. Return the Jedi (1983)
5. The Phantom Menace (1999)
6. Solo (2018)
7. The Force Awakens (2015)
8. Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
9. Revenge of the Sith (2005)
10. The Last Jedi (2017)
11. Attack of the Clones (2002)
12. The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
3.27.2026
Knee-jerk review: "Project Hail Mary"
1. It's really, really good. A sure-fire audience pleaser with lots of humor and suspense and sci-fi spacewalk action.
2. But is it a cinematic masterpiece? Eh. Some fans may be overstating things just a little.
3. On the other hand, some of the moviegoers criticizing the movie come across as weirdly bitter and sullen nitpickers.
4. The music is pleasantly quirky at times, lending a goofy charm to a fairly serious situation.
5. We knew we knew Carl from somewhere. Wasn't until later we realized he's the pastry chef on "The Bear."
6. Ryan Gosling really has it, doesn't he?
7. Honestly, it's probably hard for us to be completely objective since we read the book a couple of years ago. It was pretty amazing. The story has more than one pretty great plot twists. So for us, watching the movie in a way was a lot of waiting for the next narrative moment from the book to happen. (What must it have been like for Ms. Cheese Fry to experience all of that for the first time? For the record, she loved the movie.)
8. Rocky is great, of course, as you may have heard.
9. It's probably a little cringey for the savior of the world to be a rumpled middle school science teacher with a wiseass personality, but that's part of what makes the movie great. A nobody without faith in himself who rises to the occasion.
10. Any good writer just wants to put their characters in impossible situation where there is no good choice.
11. The flashback structure is cliche, but cliches are cliches because they work.
12. Incredible that they kept the ending.
13. Everyone's surely familiar with 2015's The Martian (which kind of is a masterpiece), another adaptation of a science-heavy Andy Weir novel. Weir also wrote a sci-fi suspense thriller set on a moon base called Artemis which is really good.
3.19.2026
Doctors from "The Pitt" Ranked in Order of Who We'd Prefer as Our Doctor
If you haven't already heard, HBO's "The Pitt" is peak television, a fantastic 2020s update of NBC's late, great "ER" but with more gore and an appropriate workplace sprinkling of four-letter words. This is the sort of perfectly polished show that's clicking on all cylinders - the writing, the directing, the acting, the production design. It's like alchemy the way everything comes together.
Our question: if you ended up in the emergency room, which doctor from "The Pitt" would you most like to see whip open that curtain with a laptop in hand?
1. Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) - The perfect mix of sincere empathy and seasoned "seen it all"
2. Dr. Michael Robinavich (Noah Wyle) - Always grumpy, but the guy cannot be stumped; he's the big boss for a reason
3. Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) - Full disclosure: Cheese Fry crush bias
4. Dr. Jack Abbott (Shawn Hatosy) - Medical rock star; bro spends his free time riding along with the SWAT team; additional points for being a grizzled war veteran
5. Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) - Yes, she came in season two hot and heavy, ruffling feathers with her patient passports and AI nonsense, but admit it: she's way underrated
6. Dr. Melissa King (Taylor Dearden) - Quirky, yes, but pretty sharp; she seems detail-oriented to a fault, which seems important in an ER
7. Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) - Solid, but falls in our rankings here due to the whole recovering addict stuff
8. Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) - Close second to Dr. McKay when it comes to caring and bedside manner, but he's still pretty green; he's going to make some big misses
9. Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) - Horrible attitude, chip on her shoulder, hard pass
Honorable mention goes to bad-ass charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), who's probably the most competent, unflappable person in the whole day ER shift at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
Not ranked, for obvious reasons: med students Victoria Javadi and James Ogilvie. They're a mess.
3.14.2026
12 Observations from a 14-Year-Old's Club Soccer Game
2. There's always the one parent who's way too aggressive with the cheering, whether it's arguing with the ref ("Call it both ways!"), criticizing his kid's play ("Come on, move to the ball!"), or demanding cut-throat intensity even if your team is blowing out the opponent ("Keep the pressure up!").
3. You really cannot tell how good a team will be just by looking at them warm up. Scrawny kids who look like pushovers can be crazy fast and agile, tall girls that look formidable can be clueless on offense.
4. Don't ask us to explain the offsides rule.
5. Soccer weather can be extreme. We've watched just as many games on freezing cold mornings wrapped in multiple layers as we have on broiling hot summer afternoons with our chairs strategically positioned in the slender shadow of a field light pole.
6. Right or wrong, if a parent can speak Spanish we will assume they know way more about soccer than we do.
7. Thankfully, youth soccer doesn't entertain that ridiculous "extra minutes" nonsense.
8. Good luck parking on tournament days. If it's not mud fields, it's mud fields with gravel. The trick is to show up during the "shift change" when the earlier block of games is ending thereby allowing you to stalk the folks shuffling out to their cars carrying armfuls of camp chairs or dragging those game-day wagons.
9. Surprisingly, many of these giant soccer complexes just didn't have enough money in their budgets to create signage. And so you're creeping along in your car squinting through binoculars like GI Joe on a secret mission trying to read the tiny, faded 8-1/2 x 11 sized metal signs that are cable-tied to the goals facing the wrong direction. "Is that a 3 or a 4?" "If that's a 6, where the hell is 7?"
10. Parents, stick to your side of the field. Look for your kids' bench and place your chairs opposite that bench. And leave a nice 10-yard buffer zone at midfield. It's not that hard. We don't want to hear your cheering for your kids or complaining about ours.
11. It's always a weird "Twilight Zone" moment when you realize there's a player on the other team with the same name as your kid.
12. Inevitably, you will believe with absolutely certainty that the refs are making more calls against you than the other team. Guess what? The parents on the other side feel exactly the same.
1.31.2026
Knee-jerk review: "Send Help"
2. We were surprised to realize Dylan O'Brien has pretty good actor chops.
3. This is a wild ride chock full of plot twists... and copious amounts of body fluids from both man and animal.
4. Half our fun was looking to see the frequent looks of abject repulsion and horror on the 13-year-old Fry's face.
5. Yes, there will be eye gouging.
6. The set up of Rachel McAdams' (swoon!) mousy and cluelessly awkward cubicle worker is perhaps a bit over the top, but we get it. She's the heroine of the movie, yet that fact is totally undercut by the fact that we've all worked with weirdos like this. It's not fun.
7. This is a tight script, but also one that wholly relies on the contrivance that a hardcore fan of the show "Survivor" (with bookshelves full of survivor texts) winds up stranded on an island with the skills needed to survive. But was it Hitchcock who said audiences will buy one - and only one - dramatic coincidence?
8. It's a good point: none of your coworkers want to smell whatever it is you're eating for lunch.
9. "No help is coming."
10. Now that's what we call a heel turn. Totally understandable based on what we know about the character, but still 100% monstrous.
11. "Planning and strategy" isn't the same thing as "accounting."
12. What's your go-to karaoke song?
13. For a second there, we thought she was actually, really going to do it. When you see the movie, you'll know what we're talking about.
14. Bonus points for the old school, grainy 20th Century (now Studios, not Fox) logo and fanfare.
15. Is it a thriller? Is it a black comedy? Yes.
Six months of books, Part II
Consider this a sequel post to last summer's rundown. Below are one-line reviews of books we read in the back half of 2025 (plus the first few weeks of 2026 - a couple of Christmas presents are in the mix).
Alright, Alright, Alright, Melissa Maerz - A gloriously exhaustive oral history of the making of one of the greatest coming-of-age movies of all time (and easily a top five movie for the Cheese Fry), Dazed and Confused.
The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt - Essential reading for any parent, curating a multitude of studies and cultural trends to create a focused, compelling argument about the urgent, addictive dangers of smartphones and social media on developing brains.
Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets, Chelsea Ichaso - A convoluted mess of a story that relies on irritating turns involving our high school student heroine again and again identifying the wrong culprit in her quest to find out who - wait for it - pushed her sister off a cliff.
Fire in the Hole, Elmore Leonoard - One of the Cheese Fry's favorite authors, this is a collection of Leonard's short stories, each one a hard-boiled gem of quirky characters, clever plot twists, and pitch-perfect dialogue.
A Flicker in the Dark, Stacey Willingham - A crazy Southern-fried Gothic family drama (girl's dad long ago confessed to killing teen girls but now that she's adult more teen girls are going missing, so What Exactly Is Going On?) is just soap-opera-loony enough to totally work.
Grunt, Mary Roach - Roach is a national treasure, whipping up amusing journalistic explorations in specific niche topics like - in this case - the intersection of science and soldiers (see also Stiff and Packing for Mars).
Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions, Ed Zwick - Perhaps not at the level of William Goldman's seminal Adventures in the Screen Trade, this show business memoir from one of Hollywood's more successful filmmakers (and TV showrunner) offers juicy behind-the-scenes angst and drama alongside practical advice for making TV shows and movies.
Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay - Long on the Cheese Fry's reading wish list, this book was ultimately a big disappointment, a bizarrely complicated and unpleasant meta story about the rebooting of an infamous underground horror movie and the ways the line between fiction and reality can blur. [This one and Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets are the only books on this list currently exiled to the "give away" box in our garage.]
Lock Every Door, Riley Sager - A sharp, entertaining thriller about a down-on-her-luck woman agreeing to a too-good-to-be-true job housesitting a posh Central Avenue high-rise condo only to realize too late that there are creepy, possibly deadly shenanigans afoot among her wealthy neighbors.
Running with the Devil, Noel Monk - A fascinating glimpse into the rise of rock band Van Halen, as told by their tour manager, chronicling not just the band's extreme interpersonal dysfunction, but also the staggering amount of substance abuse and sexual conquests they pursued on the road in the late 1970s.