tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125607512024-03-24T16:33:28.648-07:00The Cheese FryTastes good. Bad for you.MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.comBlogger622125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-84326421062652859692024-03-15T13:49:00.000-07:002024-03-16T07:26:09.504-07:00Musings on Jack Reacher<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">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 (<i>Jack Reacher</i>, 2012; <i>Never Go Back</i>, 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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">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.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">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 <i>One Shot</i> (Reacher clears the name of a man accused of killing five people - this is the one that Tom Cruise's <i>Jack Reacher</i> movie was based on), we read <i>61 Hours </i>(Reacher uncovers a drug smuggling plot with Mexican cartels), and we read <i>The Hard Way</i> (Reacher gets involved in a New York City kidnapping). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">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 <i>Killing Floor</i> and season two adapted <i>Bad Luck and Trouble</i>.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">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.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><b>1. Reacher will be dragged into the story. </b>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 <i>61 Hours</i>, Reacher uncovers a conspiracy after his Greyhound bus crashes on a snowy highway and leaves him stranded in a very corrupt town. In <i>The Hard Way</i>, 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">A corollary to this is what is perhaps most notable about the character: <b>(1a.) Reacher is a drifter</b>. 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 - </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">one website, for example, suggested that <i>Forrest Gump</i> is a variation on picaresque</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">. (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 <i>Shane</i>-style<i> </i>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.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><b>2. The mystery will be convoluted. </b> 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.)<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><b>3. Reacher will showcase Sherlock Holmes-style deductive reasoning. </b> 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.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><b>4. Reacher will have sex with a female sidekick. </b> 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.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><b>5. Reacher will show repeatedly that nothing fazes him. </b> There are two sides to this coin.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">* 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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">* 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.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">In other words, these stories are engaging and successful because readers aren't wondering IF Reacher will survive, but HOW he will survive.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>6. Reacher will kill a lot of people. </b> 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.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">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?<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If and when we read a fourth <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Child-Books/s?k=Lee+Child&rh=n%3A283155" target="_blank">Jack Reacher novel</a>, we fully expect these six characteristic to be present. </span><br /></span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-75608507566928004852024-01-15T10:56:00.000-08:002024-01-15T10:56:14.854-08:00The 1990s Songs We Still Tolerate<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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?<br /><br />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 <a href="https://pulsemusic.proboards.com/thread/96294/billboard-top-100-songs-90s" target="_blank">the free list we found</a> 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The Bangers </b>- popular 1990s songs we'd listen to again right now<br />* The Sign (ranked #11 on the all-time 1990s list), Ace of Base<br />* Waterfalls (#19), TLC<br />* Take a Bow (#24), Madonna<br />* Believe (#31), Cher<br />* No Scrubs (#33), TLC<br />* Livin La Vida Loca (#38), Ricky Martin<br />* Smooth (#41), Santana and Rob Thomas<br />* Stay (#94), Lisa Loeb<br />* Save the Best for Last (#47), Vanessa Williams<br />* Another Night (#51), Real McCoy<br />* Nobody Knows (#61), Tony Rich Project<br />* I Love You Always Forever (#71), Donna Lewis<br />* Unpretty (#76), TLC<br />* Baby One More Time (#78), Britney Spears<br />* Nothing Compares 2 U (#82), Sinead O'Connor<br />* Quit Playing Games (with My Heart) (#86), Backstreet Boys<br />* Hypnotize (#88), Notorious B.I.G.<br />* California Love (#97), 2Pac<br />* Return of the Mack (#100), Mark Morrison<br /><br />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.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The Outcasts </b>- popular 1990s song we never, ever want to hear again<br />* Macarena (#2), Los Del Rio<br />* I Will Always Love You (#7), Whitney Houston<br />* I Swear (#9), All 4 One<br />* Because You Loved Me (#18), Celine Dion<br />* Can't Help Falling in Love (#22), UB40<br />* (Everything I Do) I Do It for You (#37), Bryan Adams<br />* Black or White (#39), Michael Jackson<br />* Whoomp! There It Is (#44), Tag Team<br />* Here Comes the Hotstepper (#65), Ini Kamoze<br />* I'm Too Sexy (#79), Right Said Fred<br /><br />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."</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-64242724762284369382023-12-25T16:17:00.000-08:002023-12-26T09:38:52.307-08:00Holiday knee-jerk review: "Home Alone"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. We'd long assumed we'd seen <i>Home Alone</i> before. But watching it in its entirety last week, we realized that we have not seen <i>Home Alone</i> before. Not all the way through anyway. More than one scene we had zero recollection of ever seeing before.<br />2. People, Joe Pesci's burglar character is also a Chicago police officer. The whole movie is an inside job, crooked cop story. Spoiler alert.<br />3. The McCallister family really treats little Kevin horribly. He's banished to the third floor attic like a hostage for a chain reaction series of accidents sparked by his obnoxious bully brother who's in dire need of an ass kicking. Note that this bully brother is not sent to the attic.<br />4. The whole thing is sort of charming in a goofy 1980s sort of way, we suppose, ladling on plenty of feel-good sentiment and emotion to hide the utter implausibility of it all.<br />5. Why doesn't Kevin call the police? We didn't notice this plot hole until another critic recently made the joking suggestion that the McCallister dad must be a mob lawyer who's told his family to never engage with law enforcement.<br />6. We all know why the movie was a hit: those last 15 minutes when the movie turns into a Looney Tunes cartoon and delivers hilariously satisfying booby-trap cartoon violence on these two despicable criminals. All these years later - this is the part we've definitely seen again and again - it's still a fantastic showstopper ending.<br />7. Remember that the Daniel Stern burglar purposely leaves the sink faucet turned on in the houses he burglarizes, which is incredibly mean. He deserves that iron (and paint can) to the face.<br />8. The most interesting thing about the movie to us is the fact that the old 1940s noir that plays a pivotal role in the plot - something called <i>Angels with Filthy Souls</i> - is <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/12/home-alone-gangster-movie" target="_blank">completely made up</a>. The single scene you see in the movie ("Keep the change, ya filthy animal.") was created by the <i>Home Alone</i> filmmakers. Genius.<br />9. Is it sacrilege to admit we never really got the appeal of John Candy? Probably.<br />10. Catherine O'Hara's character wonders in the movie if she's a bad mom for leaving one of her kids behind when the family flies to Europe. The answer, of course, is 100% "yes, you are."<br />11. One of the lingering images of the movie is Macaulay Culkin slapping aftershave on his face, then screaming in pain. Hardee har har. But it's the scraping of a razor that makes one's face vulnerable to the sting of aftershave. Kevin didn't shave, so why is the Brut burning his face? It's kind of symbolic of the whole movie - go for the joke or the gag whether it makes sense or not.<br />12. Remember the 20th century when people could only connect over long distances via voice over the telephone? No e-mail, no texting, no Facetime. If someone didn't answer your call or if you didn't have a phone handy, you were out of luck. The plot of this movie couldn't work in 2023.<br />13. When it comes to holiday movies, we prefer <i><a href="https://cheesefry.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-best-ten-lines-from-elf.html" target="_blank">Elf</a></i>, <i>A Christmas Story</i>, <i>National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation</i>, <i><a href="https://cheesefry.blogspot.com/2009/12/holiday-knee-jerk-review-charlie-brown.html" target="_blank">A Charlie Brown Christmas</a></i>, and <i>White Christmas</i>. (FYI we recently rewatched <i>Love Actually</i> - it hasn't aged great.)</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-79727131465529852952023-12-19T09:14:00.000-08:002023-12-19T09:14:48.867-08:00Knee-jerk review: "Wonka"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. We weren't necessarily interested. This was a Cheese Fry family decision.<br />2. And yet... we're happy to report that it's a whimsical delight on every level. Top notch.<br />3. Family lore has it that Roald Dahl's <i>Charlie and Chocolate Factory</i> was the first book of fiction we read, circa 4th grade in 1982. The 1971 movie with Gene Wilder is certainly memorable and embraces Dahl's crueler instincts ("You're turning violet, Violet!"), while the 2005 Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie is the sort of oddball visual spectacle - fun, yes, but also kind of cold and remote - you'd expect from those two.<br />4. Bonus points for avoiding the obvious angle of forcing Willy Wonka to have some kind of love interest. If there's another popular literary character who's this asexual, we don't know who it might be.<br />5. The Victorian-era, Dickensian look and feel of the movie is fully developed and wholly immersive. This is a fairy tale world of dirty street orphans (and the rich snobs who hate them), rundown boarding houses, and secret getaways using giant city sewer pipes. <br />6. That is to say, don't go here looking for gritty realism.<br />7. We're not much of a Timothee Chalamet fan (the same can most definitely not be said for the older Cheese Fry daughter, who muttered "he's so fine" on the car ride home), but he's pitch perfect here. Is Wonka a genius in on the joke of it all or a weirdo who's completely clueless?<br />8. We didn't love the business with the giraffe, but we acknowledge it provided a moment for Wonka and his teenaged sidekick Noodle to bond.<br />9. The quirky plot turns and magic realism details were more than enough to make this movie work, but we appreciate the filmmakers' effort in digging a little deeper into the backstories of Wonka and Noodle, both lonely orphans dreaming of seeing their mother again. The ending provided an unexpected emotional catharsis.<br />10. We will never forget the phrase "Yeti sweat."<br />11. Hugh Grant's Oompa Loompa is, of course, awesome. Plus for the hardcore fans we get a cute call back to the </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oompa Loompa-related </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5lHx90qtIw" target="_blank">flute riff </a>from the Gene Wilder movie.<br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">12. We were a little disappointed the Everlasting Gobstopper didn't make an appearance. Maybe that's something for the next movie, which we're very much interested in seeing.<br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">13. We didn't immediately recognize the name of writer-director Paul King and for that, we are embarrassed. He's also responsible for the two <i>Paddington</i> movies (20014 and 2017), which are similarly polished and winning. He's got the goods.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-21726727703493280022023-12-09T12:50:00.000-08:002023-12-09T12:55:57.634-08:00Knee-jerk review: "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Full disclosure: We saw this movie more than a couple of weeks ago but only]now found the time to submit for your approval a "Knee-jerk review."<br /><br />1. We found the book sort of "meh." And so guess what? The movie's also sort of "meh."<br />2. Panem is certainly an interesting dystopian world, but the more you think about it, the more illogical and ridiculous it all is. Don't look too closely, in other words.<br />3. Rachel Zegler completely steals the movie as the charismatic tribute Lucy Gray. Probably not as impressive a feat as you might imagine given the wet blanket performance by Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, the film's supposed protagonist.<br />4. Were audiences really curious to know how and why the evil President Snow from the original <i>Hunger Games</i> trilogy (tetralogy since the last book spanned two movies - remember when that was a thing?) turned bad? We get that the "how'd it happen?" exercise likely excited author Suzanne Collins, but the whole thing works very hard to answer a question no one was asking.<br />5. There are some interesting political and classism issues bubbling under the surface, like Snow's desperate attempt to hide his poverty from his snobby affluent friends. His determination to rise above his station in life is probably the movie's most relatable element.<br />6. The story behind the actual invention of the Hunger Games - which we get here only through dialogue about things that happened long before the events of the movie - might have been more compelling.<br />7. No doubt Viola Davis is having a great time. She's in full diva mode here, chewing up the scenery and sporting that actor's prop delight - crazy contact lenses.<br />8. The snakes-that-recognize-scents thing is pretty cool.<br />9. The real kicker is that after you sit through a whole lot of plot and action and conflict and characters to see this movie's edition of the Hunger Games play out, which was more or less satisfying, the story shifts gears into a new setting and keeps going for another 45 minutes. Most troubling, the big heel turn for Snow is crammed into the last 20 minutes. That dark chain of events felt so rushed and unmotivated, in fact, that we had to conduct a family debriefing on the car ride home to work out just what exactly happened. It took all of us to piece it together.<br />10. Of course the movie has to find a way to namecheck Katniss Everdeen, a character who won't be born for another 30 years or so. Eye roll.<br />11. It's well done, goes through the paces, yadda yadda. It's fine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the archives, here's our original review of <i><a href="https://cheesefry.blogspot.com/2012/04/knee-jerk-review-hunger-games.html" target="_blank">The Hunger Games</a> </i>from 2012.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-60305896226985317072023-11-13T19:51:00.000-08:002023-12-24T06:56:20.920-08:00Knee-jerk review: "The Marvels"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. By now we should know that negative online chatter about a movie before it even comes out often times has little -- if anything -- to do with the actual quality of the movie. Too many "critics" have axes to grind. Did the chatter predict the underwhelming box office performance or did the chatter sort of cause the underwhelming box office performance?<br />2. The real problem, of course, is overall Marvel fatigue - a mix of market oversaturation and increasingly overlapping and complicated plots. Right or wrong, it looks like <i>The Marvels</i> is going to be the poster child of that growing disinterest. It had to happen eventually. Did Disney and Marvel really think the gravy train would never end?<br />3. The movie is very much... okay. Fun at times. But it certainly could have been much, much better and more satisfying with a sharper execution.<br />4. For example, there's a lot of good conflict and drama to be mined from Kamala meeting her idol Captain Marvel. Kamala's room is covered in Captain Marvel stuff; it borders on creepy stalker obsession and it's a fun moment when Captain Marvel sees it. But aside from a couple of quick lines along the way here and there, the movie just sort of glosses over the whole thing. Why?<br />5. The whole movie, in fact, feels glossed over and rushed. If you're going to tell this story... take a moment and, like, tell it right.<br />6. The opening is rocky as the movie wades through a lot of backstory exposition to bring everyone up to speed. We had a sinking "uh oh" moment about ten minutes in. (As you may have heard, two of the three leads were introduced in Disney+ TV shows which presumably limits how much wide audiences might know about them. The opening almost plays like a lengthy "previously on" intro to a complicated TV drama.)<br />7. But once the three Marvels team up, things perk up considerably.<br />8. Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan steals the whole movie. Her starstruck teenager energy shines. The "Ms. Marvel" TV show worked because of her wide-eyed charisma.<br />9. In fact, we sort of wished the movie had just pushed everything further and fully embraced the comedy and farce of the body-switching premise. Aside from one inspired montage where the women learn to control the switching, the movie doesn't really take advantage of its own fun gimmick. (Worse, the rules of the switching aren't clearly explained.)<br />10. Another example of missed opportunities: there a planet where everyone wears flashy, bright colors and sings instead of speaks. We suspected we were about to see a full-on Bollywood style dance sequence. Alas, it didn't happen.<br />11. Apparently, the Flerken alien cats are polarizing. Some people actually don't like them? But we found the cats pretty funny and provided some unexpected plot turns.<br />12. We've had enough of the Skrulls and the Kree, thank you very much.<br />13. Ditto climactic duels of CGI laser beams. Ugh.<br />14. The villain's plot is unusual, but she's just not very memorable. Don't these kind of things need brash, scenery-chewing bad guys?<br />15. The credits tag is as delightful as it is completely inevitable.<br />16. Our Brie Larson crush persists.<br />17. At some point, Sam Jackson needs to write a tell-all book about the years and years he's spent across TV and film playing the same Nick Fury character.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-55461823292658337132023-08-12T07:27:00.011-07:002023-08-12T19:03:53.528-07:00Why We Hate This Cinemark Spot<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Cheese Fry's local movie theater is a Cinemark. It's ten minutes away, so we go to the same one every time. (We prefer row C, the last row in the front section so there's no chance a noisy talker sits behind us.)<br /><br />Cinemark's trailer packet before the movie always, <i>always</i> features this ridiculous spot pushing the theater's concessions app. We hate it. It's not just because we have to sit through those 30 seconds of hell every time we see a Cinemark movie, although that can't help. We hated this spot the very first time we saw it. Let us explain why.</span></p>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3qpBW1v-xk8" title="YouTube video player" width="350"></iframe></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">* Why is this idiot going to get snacks towards what seems to be the movie's big ending? We can understand an unexpected bathroom break, but this guy walks in with a huge tub of popcorn like he just arrived at the theater. Note also that he enters with that obnoxious empty-cup straw noise. So he's somehow slurped down the entire drink on his way from the soda fountain to the theater? Don't insult our intelligence by trying to make a point with a completely unrealistic scenario.<br /><br />* Look at these people's absurd reactions - in slow motion no less, an accompanied by some kind of aria to further heighten the psuedo-drama of it all - to whatever they're seeing. Wide eyes. Slack jaws. Bouncing and pointing. Hands over mouths. Laughter. Also tears. The dude who throws up his arms signaling a touchdown. What a douche. Can you imagine him sitting next to you? We don't think audiences from the 1910s who saw a movie for the very time in their entire lives had these sorts of over the top, bug-eyed, cartoon responses. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">This got us to thinking if there was ever a twist or an ending to a movie we saw in theaters that might come close to inspiring this sort of wild reaction from us. Spoilers below. Off the top of our heads...</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. The penis reveal in <i>The Crying Game</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">2. The hair gel gag in <i>There's Something About Mary</i><br />3. DiCaprio's shocking murder in <i>The Departed</i><br />4. The big ghost twist at the end of <i>The Sixth Sense<br /></i>Huge, unexpected moments, but none of these inspired us to throw our popcorn bucket in the air.</span></div>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-1170014972390486132023-08-12T07:20:00.004-07:002023-08-12T19:13:42.208-07:00Knee-jerk review: "Barbie"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. In portraying the world where Barbies all live, the film displays a wildly whimsical, surreal streak that's pretty striking. It's like nothing really that we've ever seen. The cinematography and production sign are beautiful, somehow conveying "plastic toy" at every turn. It's a technical master class.<br />2. The storyline got a little messy towards the end as the Barbies and Kens try to find a way to live in harmony.<br />3. But there is no denying that <i>Barbie</i> delivers sharp - at times vicious - satire on gender roles and gender inequity.<br />4. It's the kind of meticulously layered, smart, purposeful movie that reminds us film can be art. Nothing on screen feels haphazard or throwaway.<br />5. Plenty of what seem to be Barbie toy inside jokes went way over our head. It's pretty impressive that Mattel was okay with making fun of some of the doll's embarrassing misfires over the years. Usually corporations are fairly humorless about themselves.<br />6. Margot Robbie, as always, is fantastic. What other A-list actress could credibly play Barbie? As they say, casting is often half the battle.<br />7. That said, it's Ryan Gosling's Ken that has more of a complicated, dynamic role to play and he eats it up.<br />8. It makes narrative sense to go to Mattel headquarters, sure, but beyond that the movie didn't really know what to do with Will Farrell and the Mattel board of directors.<br />9. We would have preferred spending more time in the real world. Seeing Barbie and Ken walking the streets of Santa Monica and Venice is pretty hilarious.<br />10. Disappointing that the mother-daughter relationship felt so undercooked.<br />11. The movie's last line is a home run. Fantastic.<br />12. We don't understand the visceral reaction from some critics who've called the movie anti-men. The movie sort of goes out of its way to suggest that both genders are just as willing to oppress the other if given the chance. A society that makes men subservient is just as wrong as one that makes women subservient. It take selfless work to level the playing field.<br />13. In other words, yes, it's a pro-feminist movie, but so what?<br />14. And if you think "patriarchal" is some phony, make-believe, liberal arts concept, you're not seeing our world as it is.<br />15. America Ferrara delivers a passionate monologue towards the end that felt a little preachy to us, but it resonated with Ms. Fry so clearly the movie is onto something.<br />16. A movie that feels fresh and clever and important at a time when so many summer movies feel like pointless, underwhelming retreads.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-74570763483408024412023-07-30T13:27:00.009-07:002023-07-30T13:48:36.257-07:00Knee-jerk review: "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. That title is a mouthful, huh?<br />2. The finale with the train, as you may have heard, is a total knockout. What an ending.<br />3. All of the more recent <i>Mission: Impossible</i> movies - that is, everything that came after the J.J. Abrams' very decent <i>Mission: Impossible III</i> - are fantastic and thrilling, but also mostly interchangeable. Don't ask us to explain the plots (or even the nonsensical titles that sound cool but rarely describe the movies) because most of us know by now that the storylines exist solely to connect the big action set pieces.<br />4. We must deduct points for the fact that these movies eventually fall back on the "agents gone rogue" premise so that our heroes have to execute their impossible mission while evading both the bad guys and also the good guys who Don't Understand What's Really Going On.<br />5. We love that the <i>Mission: Impossible</i> films always include a TV-show-style credit sequence with the theme song blasting and lots of quick action cuts of the movie we're about to see, as if it's something we just tuned into on ABC in 1974. It always gives us goosebumps.<br />6. We honestly could not follow the plot here. Eventually, we gave up trying to work out who was doing what to who and why. Spy movies can be complicated, sure, but it's not good when they're totally obtuse.<br />7. The cruciform key gimmick was clever, though.<br />8. Strange that someone so familiar with Impossible Mission Force shenanigans would fall for the mask gimmick, which is surely the IMF's most renowned trick.<br />9. As smart as these movies can be, we still have a hard time watching Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg hack any system anywhere in the world at will with just a few keystrokes.<br />10. No spoilers, but the way the movie callously disposes of a heretofore key member of the team felt to us not only completely pointless but disrespectful to the character. We're hoping the next movie somehow rectifies that.<br />11. New movie star crush: Hayley Atwell.<br />12. A lot was made in the marketing about this supposed death-defying motorcycle/parachute stunt that Tom Cruise performs for the movie. We don't doubt the danger or the skill required, but viewed in the scope of everything we've seen in this franchise and considered from a purely visual perspective, that jump might not even crack the top ten <i>Mission: Impossible</i> stunt moments. It's impressive, but we didn't get a sense it was somehow unprecedented or historical when we saw it.<br />13. Cruise is 61 now and getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing, but there's no reason he can't start to take a more passive mentor role in the franchise, recruiting and teaching a new generation of heroes.<br />14. The filmmakers did Rebecca Ferguson's character wrong. Not cool.<br />15. It's pretty good, but not great. It's the first <i>Mission: Impossible movie </i>from writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (this is his third) that doesn't feel like a slam dunk.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Our current rankings:<br />1. <i>Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol </i>(2011) - the one where Tom Cruise climbed the skyscraper<br />2. <i>Mission: Impossible - Fallout </i>(2018) - the one with the dueling helicopters<br />3. <i>Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation</i> (2015) - the one with the opera assassination attempt<br />4. (tie) <i>Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One</i> (2023) - the one with the train ending<br />4. (tie) <i>Mission: Impossible III </i>(2006) - the one with the Rabbit's Foot MacGuffin<br />6. <i>Mission: Impossible</i> (1996) - the one with Tom Cruise suspended over the floor<br />7. <i>Mission: Impossible 2 </i>(2000) - the one that John Woo directed</span><br /></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-58068925338337224852023-07-03T07:35:00.006-07:002023-07-04T14:03:20.634-07:00Knee-jerk review: "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. It's pretty good. Definitely an upgrade from 2008's <i>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,</i> which was a complete mess. This one should have been the fourth one.<br />2. We really don't understand the bad reviews. Were expectations too high? <br />3. The biggest criticism we could maybe offer is the whole question of why it was made. But should that sort of thing factor into a review of the quality of the finished film? Should critics focus only on the art or should they take into account the narrative surrounding how and why the art was created?<br />4. The movie certainly embraces Harrison Ford's age (he's 80). We noticed several shots of Indy walking away from the camera linger on his old man shuffle-limp and there's more than one scuffle that a younger <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>-era Indy would have been handled no problem, but here he's surprisingly weak and clumsy.<br />5. We're not sure about including another underage, Short Round-style, street kid sidekick.<br />6. We heard the ending was wild, but it's... really wild. We figured we had an idea what to expect, but we were totally wrong. It's fun to be surprised.<br />7. The train prologue may go on a little too long, but it's a slam-bang action sequence very much in line with what you'd see in the earlier movies.<br />8. The last scene got to us. We didn't have to wipe a tear, but we sure came close. You'll know it when you see it.<br />9. Another great "Indy's getting old" moment comes when he's giving a lecture to a classroom full of bored students, a stark contrast to the students (especially the female students making goo-goo eyes) in the earlier movies who were paying rapt attention.<br />10. Then again, as a friend pointed out, hitting the "Indy's getting old" angle so hard may be a turnoff for some. Who wants to spend two hours contemplating the looming mortality of one of Hollywood's greatest hero characters?<br />11. There's also the issue of whether younger moviegoers even know who Indiana Jones is. We took the Little Fries to see it, but would they have gone on their own if given a choice? We've dutifully showed them the first three movies, which they liked, but it's not really in their bones like it is might be for Generation X who came of age with Indiana Jones.<br />12. They cast Antonio Banderas for that role? <br />13. It's good that they also gave a strong arc to Phoebe Waller-Bridger's character, who starts the movie undertaking these adventures solely as a way to get rich and get out of debt. Shades of Han Solo, in fact.<br />14. The "de-aging" CGI magic that creates new flashback footage of Harrison Ford as he looked thirty years ago is pretty good, but it still has a bit of that "uncanny valley" quality at times. That said, you get used to it pretty quickly. It does the trick.<br />15. It's not an Indiana Jones movie without him riding on a horse, deciphering some crazy clues in an ancient language, or crawling through a booby-trapped underground catacomb. Check, check, and... check.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Updated Indiana Jones movie rankings -<br />1. <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> (1981), obviously<br />2. <i>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade </i>(1989), obviously<br />3. <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom </i>(1984), by a hair and if you argued <i>Dial of Destiny</i> is better we wouldn't argue<br />4. <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny </i>(2023)<br />and then...<br />5. <i>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull </i>(2008) - we still can't believe that stupid title</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Our (current) favorite Indiana Jones quotes - if you know, you know<br />* "He chose... poorly."<br />* "It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage."<br />* "It belongs in a museum!"<br />* "Give me the whip!"<br />* "Nothing to fear here." "That's what scares me."<br />* "Indiana, let it go."<br />* "You lost today, kid, but that doesn't mean you have to like it."<br />* "Bad dates."<br />* "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."<br />* "Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?"</span><br /></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-66983365497062384942023-06-24T15:56:00.006-07:002023-06-24T15:56:57.842-07:00Knee-jerk review: "The Flash"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. There's a really good movie buried away somewhere in here. But you can tell it's been in development for a long time, going through way too many writers and directors. It's got an undercooked, patchwork feel.<br />2. Michael Keaton is great, of course.<br />3. The first act baby sequence is clearly meant to be a "wow!" set piece, but just seemed weird to us. Although we love the idea that the Flash needs to consume a ridiculous amount of calories to do what he does.<br />4. Yes, the Superman <i>Man of Steel</i> movie from 2013 was a huge hit, but it's not exactly a beloved classic outside of inexplicably rabid Zack Snyder fandom. Which means we weren't on board with connecting this movie to the <i>Man of Steel plot. </i>We didn't love sitting through a big superhero fight with General Zod in 2013, so we weren't thrilled to have to now watch another one in 2023.<br />5. Ezra Miller holds his own. He's got an appropriately quirky nerd vibe that works fine. We weren't distracted by his off-camera legal and health issues.<br />6. The idea of interacting with another version of yourself is fascinating. The movie has some fun with that notion, especially in the way that loss can totally change your outlook and personality, but it doesn't really go far enough.<br />7. The humor works. We wanted more.<br />8. The problem is the ending. What a mess. We suspect this is what's totally killed the movie's word of mouth box office prospects. We can't imagine anyone loving it. It's the usual CGI nonsense, of course, all lasers and energy bolts and "other dimension" monsters, but it was way more confusing to us than most confusing superhero endings. We didn't know what was going on. Watching it was totally exhausting.<br />9. There's a left-field Nicolas Cage element that is so inside baseball we can't believe the filmmakers included it. They spent 2 to 3 minutes on a gag that 10% of the audience probably got. Misplaced priorities.<br />10. All that said, there was something unusually dark about the <i>Kobayashi Maru </i>notion that some timelines can't be saved no matter how many different ways you play it. We liked that. Sometimes you can't win.<br />11. We didn't know the Flash could "phase" through a wall.<br />12. Sasha Calle's Supergirl is fantastic, a brooding and surly Wolverine-style reluctant hero, but she's utterly wasted. How the movie deals with her and Keaton at the end was extremely frustrating. Almost cast aside like afterthoughts. Why introduce them if they're really not going to add anything? <br />13. It's really too bad we'll never see Calle as Supergirl again.<br />14. Once you get past the ridiculous sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing CGI ending, there's a very poignant coda moment with the Flash and his mom. That's the angle the movie probably should have mined more. Sometimes the stakes don't have to involve putting the entire planet in comic book jeopardy.<br />15. Ben Affleck looked so bored. To us, he'll always be the director of the slam-bang thrilled <i>Argo</i>.<br />16. Very cool explanation of multiverses and time travel courtesy Bruce Wayne's bowl of pasta. <br />17. The post-credits tag scene - one that we waited through endless crew names to watch - was a complete letdown, like one final sour cherry on the last 45 minutes of the movie. For some reason we get five minutes of the Flash dragging a drunk Aquaman out of a bar. Aquaman then falls facefirst into a puddle, which we guess was supposed to be funny? <br />18. As smart and winning as so much of the movie was, some of the filmmakers' choices seemed just so completely wrongheaded.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-8448294670674703492023-06-18T07:24:00.008-07:002023-06-18T07:27:32.590-07:00Knee-jerk review: "Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. Wow.<br />2. As you may have heard, the movie's visuals - its entire form and style, in fact - are bombastic and energetic in unexpected ways. It's truly art. It takes the look and feel of 2018's <i>Into the Spiderverse</i> and cranks it up to 11.<br />3. We can't say with authority that it's as groundbreaking as some critics have suggested. One person even suggested it's reinventing cinematic language. That's a bold statement. We suspect there's more anime and gaming (and comic book/graphic novel) influences at work here than our middle-aged brain might comprehend. That is, maybe it's mostly groundbreaking by introducing a niche, fringe visual style to the mainstream moviegoer masses.<br />4. We're also on the record saying the pedal-to-the-metal vibe that we loved so much here is surely a close cousin to the narrative style of <i>Everything Everywhere All at Once</i> which we... "hate" is a strong word... let's say that movie was very frustrating for us. We didn't get it. <br />5. <i>Across the Spiderverse</i> is way too long and the plot maybe a little more complicated than it needed to be. But this is minor quibbling.<br />6. To us, this sort of razzle-dazzle animation - the clash of colors and styles that all somehow fit, the amazing and emotional "performances" by these cartoon characters - is like magic. It's alchemy. How can hundreds of artists collaborate so brilliantly like this?<br />7. "Canon event." So clever.<br />8. The big third act twist surprised us and we're rarely surprised. We didn't see it coming, but of course looking back it all made perfect sense. Fantastic.<br />9. Movie music often blends in the background for us. Which is usually the point. Music is there to seamlessly guide the experience and embellish emotion. But there's no way to miss the score here. In more than one place, the music is awesome, especially in the climax. Like, it's "should we should buy the soundtrack?" good.<br />10. Jake Johnson is the best.<br />11. As supervillain super powers go, the Spot may be in the top five. He seems impossible to stop.<br />12. We will definitely be there for <i>Beyond the Spiderverse</i> in March 2024.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-12489467856896406722023-06-17T19:24:00.008-07:002023-06-17T19:24:58.243-07:00An Ode to Sound Warehouse<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's a shame Cheese Fry offspring won't ever experience aimless strolls along the aisles of a music store. Those stores - Sound Warehouse, Hit Records on Forest Lane, Musicland (or was it Sam Goody?) in the local malls - played a big part of our coming of age, usually experienced with friends apart from parents. We always felt older and more sophisticated somehow going in those stores. Well into our 20s, in fact, we were still taking frequent spins through the Wherehouse at the Beverly Connection to check out the sales bins or the Virgin Megastore on Sunset that had this amazing innovation of providing samples of tracks from the week's top ten albums by just putting on one of the headphones lined along the back wall. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As we all know, the digitization and iTunes-ification of the music industry slowly but surely drove those stores out of business. There are music sections in stores like Target or Barnes and Noble, sure, but those are sanitized facsimiles of the brash, sprawling, neon stores of the past. Young people now don't even own physical media. Their songs are bits and bytes in a Spotify playlist, a trend we admit that's completely infected us as well. Our background music now mostly comes courtesy of Sirius XM with an embarrassing lean towards 80s and 90s. We can't even remember the last time we bought a CD and that's coming from someone who - much like you, we guess - were once the proud owners of a CD tower packed with the coolest artists only. (Side note: to whoever stole our Toad the Wet Sprocket CD during one of our 1993 apartment parties, a pox on your house. Of all the CDs to choose from, that's the one you picked?)<br /><br />The Sound Warehouse by Bachman Lake - and later, when we didn't dare run the risk of being seen by friends with our father, the Sound Warehouse out by the late, great Valley View Mall - was to our teenaged brain an oasis of coolness. We couldn't shake a feeling of being an outsider walking through those doors, as if the other customers knew weren't trendy enough to enter their world. It was always exciting, like walking into a real-world version of MTV. The music blasting, playing the latest release by some popular artist - or even better, some obscure artist who hadn't yet "sold out." The grungy employees who seemed so impossibly hip and bored we didn't dare ask a question for fear of a painfully dismissive eye roll. The band posters and flyers covering every wall. But most of all, there were the endless options. Rows and rows of LPs to flip through like alphabetized card catalogs, all of it organized by genre. Rock here, country there, soundtracks back over here. It was organized and yet also somehow sloppy and overwhelming. You didn't have to buy anything. Part of the fun was just looking at the album covers and reading the song lists, debating which item was worth your gas mowing money. It was a whole process. And get this, Zoomers, you could only buy whatever was in stock. (In theory, yes, you could have the store order something for you but we never did that.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">During our early middle school and high school years, our focus was cassette tapes because they played in our bedroom (dual) cassette deck and our 1979 Ford Granada. The music stores of the 1980s had endless shelves full of cassette tapes stacked like gold bars in Fort Knox, all of them in that distinctive crinkly shrink wrap. The less we say about our brief foray into the Columbia Music House record club </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">- ten cassettes for only $1! -</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">the better. And then somewhere along the way we discovered the 45 single. Friends liked to make fun of our fixation with top 40 pop radio hits. So instead of spending $9 for a cassette to get one radio song, why not spend $2 for a little 45 record with just that one song? That there is smart economics. We ultimately ended up with the equivalent of about three shoe boxes worth of 45s and recently converted a good chunk into MP3s. For the record, about 10% were too scratched to transfer and another 10% or so deemed by us to fall into the "what were we thinking?" category and unworthy of preserving. Our collection offered an unexpected cross-section of the rise and fall of 45s: lots and lots of 80s hits and a few early 90s ones through about 1992 or so which coincided with the industry's shift to cassingles. That was actually the name of them. We bought a few of those, sure, but soon the record companies realized they'd make more money making us buy the whole CD.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For the record, our first cassette purchase was a three-fer: The Police's <i>Synchronicity</i>, The Cars' <i>Heartbeat City</i>, and Huey Lewis and the News' <i>Sports</i>. Pretty sure the first CDs we bought alongside the sleek badass CD player we got for Christmas one year were Janet Jackson's <i>Rhythm Nation 1814</i> and Milli Vanilli's <i>Girl You Know It's True</i> (they were fakes, but those are solid songs, people).</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-15356237885299174852023-06-04T06:29:00.006-07:002023-06-06T05:47:28.898-07:00Knee-jerk review: "Fast X"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. These movies are completely nuts and illogical. That doesn't mean they're not stupid fun, but each sequence is more ridiculous and impossible than the next.<br />2. The big joke, of course, is that these small-time street racing thieves are now international spies. This movie opens with some very nonchalant discussion about the team undertaking a mission to Rome to thwart a... something involving computer chips. <br />3. Jason Momoa steals the movie, no question. It's also interesting that he shades his villain with some rather effeminate flourishes.<br />4. There's a mournful vibe when it comes to the characters talking about the late Paul Walker's character Brian - but in the movie, he's still alive somewhere safe and sound. Weird.<br />5. We love that Ludarcis' Tej immediately can identify that a giant steel ball is a neutron bomb.<br />6. Honestly, if you took out all of the cars and explosions and just looked at the complicated tapestry of these characters and their convoluted, overlapping backstories, you'd have a soap opera. More than once in the movie two characters meet and start immediately fist fighting because of a grudge from two movies ago. Lil Fry had to keep nudging us in the theater with a whispered "Who's she?" The answer was rarely a quick one.<br />7. The black site prison sequence would probably be too over the top for a Roger Moore-era James Bond movie. It's that wild. Laser robots and knock-out gas.<br />8. The morose, low-key performance by Sang Kim's Han is weirdly out of place. Does he not know what kind of movie he's in?<br />9. We'd love a tally of how many times the filmmakers cut to a quick close-up insert shot of either a foot working the clutch and/or gas pedal or a hand shifting gears. They are legion.<br />10. To us, peak <i>Fast and Furious</i> is <i>Fast Five</i> (2011), a.k.a. the one with the bank vault theft, so it's interesting that this movie is connected to that one.<br />11. Brie Larson crush.<br />12. The unending stream of mercenaries and henchman, all with cars and SUVs and helicopters, all swooping in at just the right time to save the hero or rescue the villain to prolong the plot, is impressive. It's one of those movies where you can't really question how these last-minute arrivals were coordinated.<br />13. We must deduct points for putting the insufferable Pete Davidson in the movie. Did someone in the casting office lose a bet?<br />14. Love that no matter what happens, the team always has handy those walkie talkies tuned into the right frequency to talk to each other.<br />15. The many family photos the characters look at so wistfully in the movie are clearly production publicity stills. This is a movie with a nine-figure budget, people.<br />16. These heavily armored - and presumably well-trained - soldiers and law enforcement agents are never a match for our civilian heroes dressed in street clothes.<br />17. Despite all our nitpicking and eye-rolling, there's a certain insane charm to these <i>Fast and Furious</i> movies that clearly work so very hard to provide ridiculous spectacles (everything eventually explodes) and to continually underscore the value of family (when Dom makes a speech, drink).<br />18. It is what it is. We happily paid the admission price.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-37863276291233899572023-05-31T16:43:00.004-07:002023-05-31T16:43:32.329-07:00The Ghosts in CBS' "Ghosts" Ranked<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. Pete<br />2. Thorfinn<br />3. Hetty<br />4. Isaac<br />5. Sassapis<br />6. Trevor<br />7. Alberta<br />8. Flower<br />9. Nigel</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-34447841252412969542023-05-29T08:34:00.002-07:002023-05-29T08:34:38.983-07:00Knee-jerk review: "Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. We still cannot wrap our heads around the fact that Bradley Cooper is the voice of Rocket Raccoon. We can't hear anything of Cooper's usual voice in that character.<br />2. These <i>Guardian</i> movies are chock full of humor (like the lengthy confusion over which button opens which communication channel among the Guardian's spacesuits), so we're very curious to see what writer-director James Gunn does with the DC franchise now that he's in charge and developing a new Superman project. At this point, worn down by the unrelenting grimness of the Chris Nolan Batman movies and Zach Snyder Superman movies, we cannot imagine those characters with any sort of light touch.<br />3. Pleasant surprises to get both Spacehog's "In the Meantime" and Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days Are Over" on the soundtrack. Great songs.<br />4. Seems logical that being called a "bad dog" truly is the ultimate canine insult.<br />5. How the movie resolves the Peter-Gamora relationship (remember that this is the Gamora who has no memory of her romance with Peter because of the events of <i>Avengers: Endgame </i>all the way back in 2019) was a surprise, but completely plausible.<br />6. It gets pretty dark.<br />7. All of those recent think pieces about the death of the superhero movie may have been premature given <i>Volume 3'</i>s $700 worldwide million gross to date. Then again, this cast of oddball characters are uniquely endearing compared to the usual slam-bang CGI superhero epic.<br />8. The production design of the deeply weird, half organic Orgocorp headquarters - including the wild costumes of Orgocorp's employees - is fantastic. Critics like to say "you've never seen anything like it" but in this case it's true.<br />9. "Kill one stupid guy that no one loves."<br />10. You may have heard there's some unexpected pathos from a subplot involving Rocket-like test animals. Plenty of films with all-human, live-action casts wish they could create that kind of emotion. We're not crying, you're crying.<br />11. It may not be as good as the first one from 2014 simply because that movie was such an unexpected joy, but it's definitely stronger than <i>Volume 2 </i>in 2017.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-5716599057829997112023-05-21T12:55:00.003-07:002023-06-06T05:47:44.624-07:00A Few Words About Season Three of Paramount+'s "Picard"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> * It's of course 100% fantastic to see the "Next Generation" cast back in action, spouting technobabble, working together, debating big ideas around a conference table.<br />* But boy do they all look old. Have we gotten that old, too? Yikes. Gray hair and wrinkles galore or, in some cases, startling cosmetic surgery.<br />* Without question, the best character in this go-round is Worf. Genius.<br />* The writers always seemed far more interested than us in Data's complicated backstory (ugh, again we have to endure a subplot with Lore), the unending kill-him-no-wait-bring-him-back cycle, and making Brent Spiner play either his creator or one of his creator's relatives. But while it's good to have Data back doing his Data thing, it's little hilarious to see an android with the puffy features of a 60-something.<br />* Sorry, we know everyone is very invested in helping Jack Crusher and saving him, but we had a hard time caring about his grating, whiny character. <br />* We won't spoil the show's many twists, but suffice to say that some worked better than others. Indeed, some are quite inspired. In so many ways, the show plays like a "Next Generation" greatest hits package.<br />* Amanda Plummer will always be Honey Bunny to us.<br />* We get the need to tell one long serialized story to create high enough stakes to justify getting the band back together, but after we got a delicious taste of one-off, mostly self-contained episodes of "Strange New Worlds" we're definitely getting tired of stories stretched across multiple episodes no matter if it makes story sense or not.<br />* Big 1990s crush on Michelle Forbes' Ensign Ro.<br />* Todd Stashwick steals every scene as the <i>Titan</i>'s ascerbic Captain Shaw. So it got a little annoying when our "Next Generation" heroes started having big meetings on Shaw's ship with him nowhere in sight. Shouldn't Shaw at least be invited?<br />* A fellow hardcore <i>Star Trek</i> fan watched all of the seasons during the COVID lockdown and declared that "Deep Space Nine" was the best one. We really should go back and watch it. We gave up midway through the first season way back when. There's a fairly significant "Deep Space Nine" tie-in here.<br />* Guess they couldn't find a way to fit in Chief O'Brien and Keiko.<br />* We never liked <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/b/b7/Elizabeth_Shelby%2C_2367.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width/360?cb=20130424025102&path-prefix=en">Lieutenant Shelby</a>. What a tool.<br />* Weirdly, the climax had some big <i>Return of the Jedi</i> vibes. We're not sure if that's a good thing or not.<br />* Who wouldn't want to visit the Starfleet Museum?<br />* "Make it so."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here are our <a href="https://cheesefry.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-few-words-about-cbs-all-access-star.html">thoughts from 2020</a> about the first season of "Picard." We missed season two, but may circle back and take a look. We'll keep you posted.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-5549978231081417892023-04-07T13:35:00.010-07:002023-04-08T16:56:32.484-07:00Knee-jerk review: "John Wick: Chapter 4"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. This was the first <i>John Wick </i>movie we paid money to see in a theater. Weird.<br />2. Keanu Reeves may not have a lot of range as an actor, but he sure knows how to use what he's got.<br />3. For us, the graphic gun violence (muzzle flashes and blood spray are all CGI'd, by the way) and kinetic wide-angle fights of <i>John Wick</i> (2014) completely revolutionized big-budget action the same way the breathless, gritty hand-to-hand combat of <i>The Bourne Identity</i> did in 2002. A complete sea change.<br />4. Of course, what elevates the whole <i>John Wick</i> franchise is the insane world-building of this hidden community of global assassins with complicated rules and customs (hotels that serve as safe harbors, tattooed women managing the bounties and hits with chalkboards and typewriters, an assassin governing body called "the High Table"). It gets crazier and crazier with each movie and it's all completely fantastic.<br />5. That said, if there is a fifth movie, we'd prefer a "reset" that scales everything back and just tells the story of a single assassin paid to do a job, rather than another convoluted Wick-on-the-run thriller.<br />6. The last hour or so are top-notch, including a nightclub showdown (there's always one) with a character named Killa, a crazy Arc de Triomphe car chase shootout, and some wild action on a big set of concrete steps.<br />7. But other parts of the movie do lag. In particular, an early fight among stained glass seems to go on forever. It grew very tedious, something we never thought we'd say about a <i>John Wick</i> movie.<br />8. As cool as the Osaka sequence is - and please note that we're always a sucker for neon-lit city streets in Japan - we found ourselves growing annoyed with Wick, whose decision to show up at a friend's doorstep for help put that friend in danger and ended in needless bloodshed. If Wick just worked things out on his own, the movie is 30 minutes shorter.<br />9. Big John Woo vibes from the melancholic blind assassin pulled out of retirement for one last job.<br />10. The cinematography is luminous. Oscar-worthy.<br />11. Also noteoworthy is the long video-game-style sequence with Wick walking through a building room by room blasting bad guys, all of it shot from above in a single take. It's the sort of thing where you can't believe you're seeing what you're seeing. The filmmakers are working at an incredibly high level.<br />12. RIP Lance Reddick, who always delivered instant gravitas with his piercing gaze and distinctive voice.<br />13. It's oh so very hard to convincingly pull off the bit where the hero fights two people at once. There's just no way to plausibly stage it. The two henchmen should attack at the same time, but they never do... they always take turns staggering backward or picking themselves up off the floor, thereby ensuring the hero fights them one at a time.<br />14. Bill Skarsgaard is an appropriately hateful villain who projects power but is secretly a coward without integrity. The movie is ruthless in putting him in dandy, effeminate suits.<br />15. John Wick displays superhuman levels of stamina in fighting through waves and waves of NPCs. How he doesn't ever take a moment throw up from the exertion of it all is beyond us.<br />16. This is the first <i>John Wick</i> movie where it felt to us like Wick was often surviving because - like the stormtroopers in <i>Star Wars</i> - the bad guys have terrible aim. <br />17. This really could turn into a franchise following multiple characters. This world is that rich and layers.<br />18. Not a home run perhaps, but a solid triple.<br />19. Useless aside: we went to school with a guy named John Wick. He wasn't an assassin. He interned at a TV network.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-89128983783989197962023-01-16T14:36:00.003-08:002023-01-16T14:36:31.678-08:00Knee-jerk review: "M3GAN"<span style="font-family: georgia;">1. The styling of that title... it's a little too cute, right? Can't we just call it <i>Megan</i>?<br />2. The movie is way better than the B-movie vibe suggested by the trailer. There are jump scares, but this is more of a creepy techno-thriller than a traditional horror movie.</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">3. In fact, it's a pretty sharp allegory on the dangers of letting technology babysit childern and the guilt parents feel for letting technology babysit children.<br />4. Seems like the murders have been toned down considerably to get that PG-13 rating. Which certainly accounts for the rowdy teenagers in the theater where we saw it.<br />5. Filmmakers go out of their way to make sure the victims of Megan's murder spree - at least the first few victims - are more than deserving of their fate so as to extend audience sympathy for the robot doll as long as possible. That's our theory anyway. Even so, what happens to the neighbor seemed particularly cruel.<br />6. It will come as no shock that the door was left over to a sequel. In fact, we counted two possible avenues for a second Megan (M3GAN) movie.<br />7. It's perhaps nitpicking, but the movie asks us to believe the primary coder of a successful line of robotic smart toys lives in a modest Seattle suburb. Also that the coder looks like Allison Williams.<br />8. "Megan, turn off."<br />9. Some pretty deep themes about death and loss and the dangers of avoiding dealing with personal trauma.<br />10. Then again, we see someone get their ear ripped off. <br />11. It's a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">12. The effects used to create robot doll Megan are pretty amazing. It looks like a real girl, but not quite real enough. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-01-07/m3gan-movie-horror-puppet-animatronics-dance-amie-donald" target="_blank">The <i>Los Angeles Times </i>has more on the effects</a>.<br />13. We have to agree that when it comes to toy collectibles, you don't play with them. That's just common sense.<br />14. When a psycbo robot doll says "This is the part where you run," you should run.</span></div>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-35001734565892007042023-01-01T17:08:00.005-08:002023-01-01T17:10:02.395-08:00Knee-jerk review: "Babylon"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. <i>La La Land</i> is <a href="https://cheesefry.blogspot.com/2017/02/knee-jerk-review-la-la-land.html" target="_blank">one of our favorite movies</a>, so we're interested in anything from writer-director Damien Chazelle.<br />2. This movie... is <i>wild</i>. Some sequences (we count four or five) are brilliant gems of editing and pacing, others are shaggy go-nowhere tangents that probably should have been cut.<br />3. It's all way, way over the top and excessive. That's not necessarily a criticism. In a movie about the lawless, bacchanal vibe of early Hollywood, it makes sense to be extreme.<br />4. When the opening scene(!) involves an elephant's sloppy defecation on a minor character, you know you're in for a ride.<br />5. The most enduring impact of this movie perhaps is our interest in figuring out just how much dramatic license has been taken. How much of this craziness really happened in 1920s Los Angeles? What real-life Hollywood figures are these characters based on?<br />6. Naturally, it's the brash extrovert who gets the job, not the introverted guy who's actually doing all the work.<br />7. Brad Pitt is fun to watch, as usual. He's a lot like Harrison Ford to us. Not a lot of range. He's just sort of always does Brad Pitt. But it works.<br />8. Lot of Big Ideas here about art, especially the way popular entertainment (pop music, television, movies) is looked down upon by the "intellectuals" who prefer higher brow art.<br />9. There's also universally poignant moments for our characters sadly realizing they've been left behind in a changing world. They naturally mourn for the good old days.<br />10. For us, it would have been stronger if it ended 15 minutes sooner. There's a needless tag that just goes on and on, hitting the audience over the head to make a point the movie had already made in much more subtle ways. It left a bad taste in our mouth. Quit while you're ahead.<br />11. Margot Robbie is good, yes. It's a perfect role for her. She excels doing unhinged sexy.<br />12. But she's playing the most annoying movie character we've seen in a long time, a self-destructive crybaby who isn't content to just crash and burn on her own. She makes awful choices that drag everyone else down with her. We had a hard time with her.<br />13. The business with Tobey Maquire, the suitcase of cash, and a trip to that underground... whatever it was... a dungeon?... felt like it belonged in a whole other movie. We get the need to dramatize one final scary descent into Hollywood sin, but that was a lot.<br />14. We've long understood that some silent movie stars couldn't make the transition to talking movies, but we never thought about the technical challenges of having to work out how capture audio. That's the subject of one of the movie's more engaging sequences as the crew tries again and again to get through a single scene.<br />15. It is indeed a miraculous skill to be able to cry on cue over and over in front of dozens of bored film crew stagehands.<br />16. We didn't expect to see a rattlesnake.<br />17. It's definitely memorable.</span><br /></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-38751174684614944082022-12-30T21:20:00.005-08:002022-12-30T21:22:40.426-08:00Knee-jerk review: "Smile"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. If you saw <i>Top Gun Maverick</i> in theaters, you likely remember well seeing the creepy "what the heck was <i>that</i>?" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vokLps7SYnw" target="_blank">teaser trailer</a>.<br />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.<br />3. Though there are, of course, a number of music-screeching jump scares. There's no way around that.<br />4. Scary movies like this always seem to work better with a cast of mostly unknowns. Somehow feels more real.<br />5. Yes, the monster-as-virus premise calls to mind <i>The Ring</i>. But a closer cousin may be the underrated <i>It Follows</i>.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />9. The most "no way!" moment comes at a child's birthday party. Yikes.<br />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. <br />11. Little moments like that add welcome nuance and depth. There are actual story themes here. It's not just about scares.<br />12. Kal Penn does what Kal Penn always does, look thoughtfully concerned and/or concernedly thoughtful.<br />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.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-15792520571256054602022-12-27T09:26:00.008-08:002022-12-27T09:28:50.014-08:00Knee-jerk reviews: "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. We liked it a lot.<br />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.<br />3. But no, it's fun and entertaining.<br />4. Probably not as good as <i>Knives Out </i>(see our <a href="https://cheesefry.blogspot.com/2019/12/knee-jerk-review-knives-out.html" target="_blank">2019 "knee-jerk"</a>), 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.)<br />5. Daniel Craig continues to have a great time as Benoit Blanc. We wish we were half as unflappable and quick on our feet.<br />6. We don't see any reason why this can't become a long-running franchise. We certainly want more.<br />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. <br />8. We make it sound so easy, right?<br />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.<br />10. Plus, the world of these <i>Knives Out</i> movies isn't tethered to our reality. In the first movie, remember, the main character vomited whenever she told a lie. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Benoit Blanc's cases are </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">not the real world. There are, in fact, some elements that border on fantasy like the impossible-seeming invitation box puzzles.<br />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.<br />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.)<br />13. We love David Bautista.<br />14. We're glad writer-director Rian Johnson got paid (Netflix spent close to $500 million for the rights to the two <i>Knives Out</i> sequels), but we hate the ongoing marginalization of the theatrical release. Movies need to be seen in theaters with others. <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">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.<br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">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?</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-30694621146963913642022-12-27T07:13:00.008-08:002022-12-27T07:16:53.621-08:00Knee-jerk review: "Avatar - The Way of Water"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.)<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />10. Right or wrong, the ending has very strong <i>Titanic</i> vibes. That's not to say it didn't work.<br />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.<br />12. The suggestion of an immaculate conception may be a corny, self-serious myth-making bridge too far for us.<br />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.<br />14. It's hard to miss the guerrilla themes of "never fight a war on your enemy's turf."<br />15. Movies that earn billions at the box office, like <i>Titanic</i> or the <i>Star Wars </i>and <i>Avengers</i> 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.</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-55668587754406034552022-12-26T16:21:00.008-08:002022-12-26T16:21:47.605-08:00Sight and Sound's Top 100 Films<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The British Film Institute recently unveiled its <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time" target="_blank">updated "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time"</a> from <i>Sight and Sound</i> 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 - <i>Jeanne Dielman</i>, an obscure 1970s social realism drama from Belgium written and directed by a woman - replaced the usual "best of" movies like <i>Vertigo</i> and <i>Citizen Kane</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anyway... we took a look at the list to see how our own moviegoing has stacked up with the fancy critics of <i>Sight and Sound</i>. <br /><br />How many of these "greatest movies ever" have you seen?<br /><br />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 <i>Parasite</i> and <i>Get Out</i> really be regarded as the best ever ten years from now?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Category 1: We saw it and we love it.</b> We'd have no issue watching any of these again and again.<br />Ranked #6. <i>2001: A Space Odyssey </i>(Stanley Kubrick, 1968)<br />12 on the list. “The Godfather” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)<br />19. <i>Apocalypse Now</i> (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)<br />24. <i>Do the Right Thing</i> (Spike Lee, 1989)<br />36. (tie) <i>City Lights</i> (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)<br />38. (tie) <i>Some Like It Hot </i>(Billy Wilder, 1959)<br />38. (tie) <i>Rear Window</i> (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)<br />54. (tie) <i>Blade Runner </i>(Ridley Scott 1982)<br />63. (tie) <i>Casablanca</i> (Michael Curtiz 1942)<br />63. (tie) <i>GoodFellas</i> (Martin Scorsese 1990)<br />78. (tie) <i>Sunset Blvd. </i>(Billy Wilder 1950)<br />88. (tie) <i>The Shining</i> (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)<br />95. (tie) <i>The General </i>(Buster Keaton, 1926)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Category 2: We saw it and we like it. </b> Solid, top tier movies everyone should see, but not necessarily ones we're eager to sit down and watch again.<br />2. <i>Vertigo</i> (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)<br />3. <i>Citizen Kane</i> (Orson Welles, 1941)<br />8. <i>Mulholland Dr. </i>(David Lynch, 2001)<br />10. <i>Singin’ in the Rain</i> (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1951)<br />15. <i>The Searchers </i>(John Ford, 1956)<br />29. <i>Taxi Driver </i>(Martin Scorsese, 1976)<br />31. (tie) <i>Psycho</i> (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)<br />41. (tie) <i>Bicycle Thieves</i> (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)<br />45. (tie) <i>North by Northwest </i>(Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)<br />50. (tie) <i>The Piano</i> (Jane Campion, 1992)<br />54. (tie) <i>The Apartment</i> (Billy Wilder, 1960)<br />63. (tie) <i>The Third Man</i> (Carol Reed 1949)<br />67. (tie) <i>Metropolis</i> (Fritz Lang 1927)<br />67. (tie) <i>La Jetée</i> (Chris Marker 1962)<br />78. (tie) <i>Modern Times</i> (Charlie Chaplin 1936)<br />95. (tie) <i>Once Upon a Time in the West</i> (Sergio Leone, 1968)<br />95. (tie) <i>Get Out</i> (Jordan Peele, 2017)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Category 3: We saw it and once was enough. </b> 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.<br />13. <i>La Règle du Jeu </i>aka <i>Rules of the Game</i> (Jean Renoir, 1939)<br />21. (tie) <i>The Passion of Joan of Arc</i> (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)<br />23. <i>Playtime</i> (Jacques Tati, 1967)<br />38. (tie) <i>À bout de souffle </i>aka <i>Breathless</i> (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)<br />43. (tie) <i>Stalker</i> (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)<br />50. (tie) <i>The 400 Blows</i> (François Truffaut, 1959)<br />54. (tie) <i>Battleship Potemkin</i> (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)<br />84. (tie) <i>Blue Velvet</i> (David Lynch 1986)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Category 4: We haven't seen it, but we'd certainly like to.</b> These remain on our "to do" list.<br />4. <i>Tokyo Story</i> (Ozu Yasujiro, 1953)<br />5. <i>In the Mood for Love </i>(Wong Kar-wai, 2001)<br />20. <i>Seven Samurai</i> (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)<br />25. (tie) <i>The Night of the Hunter</i> (Charles Laughton, 1955)<br />30. <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</i> (Céline Sciamma, 2019)<br />36. (tie) <i>M </i>(Fritz Lang, 1931)<br />41. (tie) <i>Rashomon</i> (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)<br />45. (tie) <i>Barry Lyndon </i>(Stanley Kubrick, 1975)<br />45. (tie) <i>The Battle of Algiers</i> (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)<br />54. (tie) <i>Sherlock Jr.</i> (Buster Keaton, 1924)<br />60. (tie) <i>La dolce vita</i> (Federico Fellini 1960)<br />60. (tie) <i>Moonlight</i> (Barry Jenkins 2016)<br />72. (tie) <i>My Neighbor Totoro</i> (Miyazaki Hayao 1988)<br />75. (tie) <i>Spirited Away</i> (Miyazaki Hayao 2001)<br />88. (tie) <i>Chungking Express </i>(Wong Kar Wai, 1994)<br />90. (tie) <i>Parasite</i> (Bong Joon Ho, 2019)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Category 5: We haven't seen it, and, honestly, probably won’t.</b> Maybe this makes us film heathens, but file these under "life is too short."<br />7. Beau travail” (Claire Denis, 1998)<br />9. <i>Man with a Movie Camera </i>(Dziga Vertov, 1929)<br />11. <i>Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans </i>(F.W. Murnau, 1927)<br />18. <i>Persona</i> (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)<br />31. (tie) <i>8½</i> (Federico Fellini, 1963)<br />43. (tie) <i>Killer of Sheep </i>(Charles Burnett, 1977)<br />60. (tie) <i>Daughters of the Dust</i> (Julie Dash 1991)<br />67. (tie) <i>The Red Shoes</i> (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1948)<br />72. (tie) <i>L’avventura</i> (Michelangelo Antonioni 1960)<br />75. (tie) <i>Imitation of Life</i> (Douglas Sirk 1959)<br />90. (tie) <i>Ugetsu</i> (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953)<br />90. (tie) <i>Yi Yi </i>(Edward Yang, 1999)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Category 6: We never heard of it. </b>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.<br />1. <i>Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles</i> (Chantal Akerman, 1975)<br />14. <i>Cléo from 5 to 7</i> (Agnès Varda, 1962)<br />16. <i>Meshes of the Afternoon</i> (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943)<br />17. <i>Close-Up </i>(Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)<br />21. (tie) <i>Late Spring</i> (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)<br />25. (tie) <i>Au Hasard Balthazar</i> (Robert Bresson, 1966)<br />27. <i>Shoah</i> (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)<br />28. <i>Daisies</i> (Věra Chytilová, 1966)<br />31. (tie) <i>Mirror</i> (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)<br />34. <i>L’Atalante </i>(Jean Vigo, 1934)<br />35. <i>Pather Panchali </i>(Satyajit Ray, 1955)<br />48. (tie) <i>Wanda</i> (Barbara Loden, 1970)<br />48. (tie) <i>Ordet</i> (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)<br />52. (tie) <i>News from Home</i> (Chantal Akerman, 1976)<br />52. (tie) <i>Fear Eats the Soul </i>(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)<br />54. (tie) <i>Le Mépris</i> (Jean-Luc Godard 1963)<br />59. <i>Sans soleil </i>(Chris Marker 1982)<br />66. <i>Touki Bouki </i>(Djibril Diop Mambéty 1973)<br />67. (tie) <i>The Gleaners and I </i>(Agnès Varda 2000)<br />67. (tie) <i>Andrei Rublev</i> (Andrei Tarkovsky 1966)<br />72. (tie) <i>Journey to Italy</i> (Roberto Rossellini 1954)<br />75. (tie) <i>Sansho the Bailiff </i>(Mizoguchi Kenji 1954)<br />78. (tie) <i>A Brighter Summer Day</i> (Edward Yang 1991)<br />78. (tie) <i>Sátántangó</i> (Béla Tarr 1994)<br />78. (tie) <i>Céline and Julie Go Boating</i> (Jacques Rivette 1974)<br />78. (tie) <i>A Matter of Life and Death</i> (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1946)<br />84. (tie) <i>Pierrot le fou</i> (Jean-Luc Godard 1965)<br />84. (tie) <i>Histoire(s) du cinéma</i> (Jean-Luc Godard 1988-1998)<br />84. (tie) <i>The Spirit of the Beehive</i> (Victor Erice, 1973)<br />90. (tie) <i>Madame de…</i> (Max Ophüls, 1953)<br />90. (tie) <i>The Leopard</i> (Luchino Visconti, 1962)<br />95. (tie) <i>A Man Escaped </i>(Robert Bresson, 1956)<br />95. (tie) <i>Black Girl </i>(Ousmane Sembène, 1965)<br />95. (tie) <i>Tropical Malady</i> (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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 <i>Dazed and Confused</i> (Richard Linklater, 1993), <i>Lost in Translation </i>(Sofia Coppola, 2003), <i>Jaws</i> (Steven Spielberg, 1975), <i>Out of Sight</i> (Steven Soderberg, 1998), <i>The Parallax View</i> (Alan J. Pakula, 1974), and <i>Thelma and Louise </i>(Ridley Scott, 1990).</span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12560751.post-85639440933866429222022-12-22T08:08:00.001-08:002022-12-22T08:08:31.020-08:00The Best Ten Lines from "Elf"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Cheese Fry hadn't set out to make <i>Elf</i> a holiday tradition, but at this point it sort of has. For at least the last four years, <i>Elf</i> 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" <i>A Christmas Story</i>. (Runner-up: <i>National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation</i>. We love <i>It's a Wonderful Life</i>, of course, but that movie is a four-course meal rather than a fun bite-sized snack, you know what we mean?) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Both </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Elf</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> and </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">A Christmas Story</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> deliver sharp jokes and - essential for any enduring classic - several memorable set pieces that have aged well. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here are our favorite lies from <i>Elf</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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? <a href="https://onlocationtours.com/locations/elf-movie-locations/">Fun fact about Gimbels here</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">4. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">"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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">“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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">6. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">“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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">7. "</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Son of a nutcracker!" - We really should add this one to our cuss list.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">8. "</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!”</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> - 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">9. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">“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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Today we learned we're the same age now as Mary Steenburgen was when she played Emily Hobbs. </span></p>MDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305164541173903951noreply@blogger.com0