Knee-jerk review: "Obsession"

1. Whoa. 
2. If you're looking for a violent horror movie that fully commits to its dark and disturbing premise, this is the one for you.
3. Don't trust gimmicky toys purchased at New Age crystal shops.  That's the lesson we learned.
4. There's really no other way for the story to end, is there?  Like we said... whoa.
5. Bear is one weak-willed, cowardly protagonist.  We liked him less and less as the movie went along.  We understand that's the whole point (he certainly grows to understand the error of his ways), but it didn't make for a fun experience.  He gets what's coming to him.
6. Best scene: the creepy customer service call.
7. Runner up: "I like watching you sleep."
8. After one particularly shocking moment that was bloody and horrifying in ways far worse than was needed to make the point, we sort of checked out.  Gleefully grisly violence isn't as appealing to us as it used to be.
9. Inde Navarrette certainly knocks it out of the park with her performance.
10. "Kiss the person to your left."
11. Everyone can appreciate how scary it is to consider telling a close friend you want to be more than friends.  The fear of rejection is vivid and real.  But Bear had a couple of perfect openings to make his move and he totally chickened out.
12. Michael Johnston gives Billy Crudup vibes.
13. Made for $750,000 and it's grossed $300 million so far.  That's serious word of mouth.  We saw it a month into its release and the theater was packed.
14. This movie is surely resonating with moviegoers because of the way it dissects the difficulties of navigating romantic relationships, putting a horror spin on secret workplace crushes and emotional manipulation and wondering if your partner loves you as much as you love them.  These are all universal worries and fears that writer-director Curry Baker expertly taps into.
15. Mix into that a layer of sexual predation themes with Nikki not exactly a consciously willing participant in any of this.
16. We don't understand why Bear didn't try to undo the wish sooner.

Tweet

"Ted Lasso" Characters, Ranked

The Cheese Fry is extremely late to the "Ted Lasso" party.  Only recently did we finally finish the third season.  No big deal, right?  It's only been about three years since that final episode first aired on Apple TV.   But season four is coming this summer - we'll watch that one a little sooner.

"Ted Lasso" is a national treasure.  Put simply, it's one of the best television shows, full stop.  You just don't see this kind of high quality sustained for that many seasons.  We haven't watched everything that's out there, but the only other show we've watched in its entirety that was this good for that long, so perfectly cast and written and directed, was FX's "The Americans." 

Beyond just admiring the show's elite level of execution, it's the upbeat, feel good vibe of "Ted Lasso."   This is a show with heart.  These characters are good, decent people working through everyday challenges.  Just think about how so rare that is in a television landscape chock full of cynical themes (criminals run amok, housewives run amok), missed opportunities (so many shows start strong only to fizzle), repetitive premises (we love post-apocalyptic stories, but it's enough already) and tiresome formats (reality TV, for the most part, is a cultural blight that does no one any good).  

There's echoes of NBC's "This Is Us" in the way "Ted Lasso" manipulates your emotions and skillfully surfs sad and happy moments alike, but "This Is Us" was deadly serious and self-important whereas "Ted Lasso" is chipper and frothy.  The best comparison we can come up with is NBC's "Friday Night Lights," a similar show where everyone was so dang likable and interesting and fully realized that the plots were almost beside the point.  You just wanted to hang out in that world for an hour.   Even better, "Ted Lasso" is in so many ways an old-fashioned workplace comedy like "The Office." "Friday Night Lights" never made us laugh out loud.  With "Ted Lasso" there's always a gag or a joke, but it's not following a cheesy, laugh track sitcom set up/punchline structure.  The jokes and humor here flow naturally from these screwball characters.  Nothing ever feels phony.  It's a polished gem of a show.

If you haven't seen it, give it a shot.  Full disclosure: this is one extremely profane show that loves the F-bomb.

And now, we present the main characters ranked in order, starting with the most layered, complicated, and funny one at the very top.

1. Roy Kent, obviously
2. Rebecca Welton
3. Jamie Tartt
3. Coach Beard
4. Leslie Higgins
5. Ted Lasso, how crazy is it that the supposed main character barely cracks the top five; that's how stacked this show is
6. Keeley Jones
7. Nate Shelley
8. Trent Crimm of The Independent
9. Sam Obisanya
10. Dani Rojas
11. Isaac McAdoo
12. Zava
13. Sassy Collins
14. Colin Hughes
15. Dr. Sharon Fieldstone
16. Rupert Mannion

Tweet

Knee-jerk review: "Backrooms"

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 our 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."

Tweet