1. There's some old-fashioned jump scares, yes. But mostly this thing is powered by a sense of growing dread and surreal weirdness.
2. Mark Duplass alert.
3. There are certainly familiar horror movie elements, like the fear of being stalked by some unseen bad guy -- there's also a fun but kind of stale "Stranger Things"-style twist at the end -- but for the most part this felt wholly original and inventive. Some really crazy "what in the world am I watching?" moments.
4. Renate Reinsve is a little stiff.
5. Opening sequence is dynamite.
6. The movie's set in 1990, but the set design is 100% late 1980s and chock full of ugly decor ripped right out of our teenaged memories.
7. So who did install those creepy off-kilter breakers switches?
8. What helps makes the movie so memorable is that so much of it's ambiguous. While we get the overall gist of what's happening, there's a whole host of strange, smaller details that just aren't fully spelled out. You really have to read between the lines to piece everything together. The family Cheese Fry have had many "did you notice..?" discussions sharing pet theories about What It All Means.
9. There's no way we'd be able to find our way back out of that maze.
10. We went into this with only the most basic understanding of the "backrooms" premise, which is probably the way to do it. We, of course, conducted extensive, obligatory internet sleuthing after the fact to learn more. Some of what we saw in the movie comes right from the internet series.
11. It's true: the buzz of harsh fluorescents can be pretty oppressive.
12. Bonus points to the Little Fry for figuring out what that little radio was broadcasting.
13. So is Clark a good person or not? Discuss.
14. Palm sweating moment: the stairs up to the ceiling. You'll know it when you see it.
15. "It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen a dog."
6.01.2026
Knee-jerk review: "Backrooms"
5.25.2026
Knee-jerk review: "The Mandalorian and Grogu"
1. No, it's not terrible, but it's definitely disappointing.
2. The movie probably spends 20 minutes of its total runtime on our heroes fighting CGI monsters. That gets really tedious.
3. You can't tell us that this movie's development didn't start from a stack of 40-minute TV scripts. An episodic "here, then there" is structure okay for a quest story, but this all feels very stitched together.
4. The big climax should be rousing and cathartic. We were bored.
5. Also a weird downbeat subplot detour towards the end right as the action should be ramping up.
6. We're guessing it's an intentional retro choice to make Grogo seem like a foam rubber puppet? His hands don't move.
7. Bonus points, however, for letting Grogu actually do something other than just look cute from the sidelines and use the Force every once in a while.
8. We really didn't need to see more Hutts. That whole species is just a little ridiculous.
9. Also a problem: no central antagonist. Who are we rooting against? Who's the hero fight ing against? Instead, it's just a series of thugs and bounty hunters. That's not ideal when you're trying to build momentum and tension.
10. The four little mechanics - also fam rubber puppets - pretty much steal the movie.
11. So Pedro Pascal was for sure on set at least for the water fight sequence.
12. Amazing how Blade Runner's neon, rainy cityscape aesthetic so totally changed the way movies visualize the future.
13. Odd to have this whole 1950s-style noir boxing melodrama storyline. Someone actually says "The fix is in."
14. Like we said, there's way, way too many CGI alien monsters. Less is more.
15. Big fans of the Dave Filoni animated Star Wars shows will probably like it more than us. Like so many big-budget brand movies like this (see also: Marvel), it sometimes like it's more for the die hard nerd fans than mass audiences. At some point, Hollywood will learn that the safer odds lie in appealing to everyone and generating good word of mouth rather than inside baseball fan service.
16. What's the point of the iconic white stormtooper armor if laser blasters can still kill them with one shot?
17. There may may be a throwaway gag that calls back to the hologram chess game in the original Star Wars movie. If that's the case, that's really cheesy cringe.
18. We heard others complain that the movie is overall very dim. We agree. All of the action happening inside or at night needs the brightness knob turns way up.
19. We still very much love the first season of "The Mandalorian" and the way it leaned so hard into Star Wars' Western origins. Great stuff.
Updated Star Wars movie ratings
1. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
2. Rogue One (2016)
3. Star Wars (1977)
4. Return the Jedi (1983)
5. The Phantom Menace (1999)
6. Solo (2018)
7. The Force Awakens (2015)
8. Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
9. Revenge of the Sith (2005)
10. The Last Jedi (2017)
11. Attack of the Clones (2002)
12. The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
3.27.2026
Knee-jerk review: "Project Hail Mary"
1. It's really, really good. A sure-fire audience pleaser with lots of humor and suspense and sci-fi spacewalk action.
2. But is it a cinematic masterpiece? Eh. Some fans may be overstating things just a little.
3. On the other hand, some of the moviegoers criticizing the movie come across as weirdly bitter and sullen nitpickers.
4. The music is pleasantly quirky at times, lending a goofy charm to a fairly serious situation.
5. We knew we knew Carl from somewhere. Wasn't until later we realized he's the pastry chef on "The Bear."
6. Ryan Gosling really has it, doesn't he?
7. Honestly, it's probably hard for us to be completely objective since we read the book a couple of years ago. It was pretty amazing. The story has more than one pretty great plot twists. So for us, watching the movie in a way was a lot of waiting for the next narrative moment from the book to happen. (What must it have been like for Ms. Cheese Fry to experience all of that for the first time? For the record, she loved the movie.)
8. Rocky is great, of course, as you may have heard.
9. It's probably a little cringey for the savior of the world to be a rumpled middle school science teacher with a wiseass personality, but that's part of what makes the movie great. A nobody without faith in himself who rises to the occasion.
10. Any good writer just wants to put their characters in impossible situation where there is no good choice.
11. The flashback structure is cliche, but cliches are cliches because they work.
12. Incredible that they kept the ending.
13. Everyone's surely familiar with 2015's The Martian (which kind of is a masterpiece), another adaptation of a science-heavy Andy Weir novel. Weir also wrote a sci-fi suspense thriller set on a moon base called Artemis which is really good.
3.19.2026
Doctors from "The Pitt" Ranked in Order of Who We'd Prefer as Our Doctor
If you haven't already heard, HBO's "The Pitt" is peak television, a fantastic 2020s update of NBC's late, great "ER" but with more gore and an appropriate workplace sprinkling of four-letter words. This is the sort of perfectly polished show that's clicking on all cylinders - the writing, the directing, the acting, the production design. It's like alchemy the way everything comes together.
Our question: if you ended up in the emergency room, which doctor from "The Pitt" would you most like to see whip open that curtain with a laptop in hand?
1. Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) - The perfect mix of sincere empathy and seasoned "seen it all"
2. Dr. Michael Robinavich (Noah Wyle) - Always grumpy, but the guy cannot be stumped; he's the big boss for a reason
3. Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) - Full disclosure: Cheese Fry crush bias
4. Dr. Jack Abbott (Shawn Hatosy) - Medical rock star; bro spends his free time riding along with the SWAT team; additional points for being a grizzled war veteran
5. Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) - Yes, she came in season two hot and heavy, ruffling feathers with her patient passports and AI nonsense, but admit it: she's way underrated
6. Dr. Melissa King (Taylor Dearden) - Quirky, yes, but pretty sharp; she seems detail-oriented to a fault, which seems important in an ER
7. Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) - Solid, but falls in our rankings here due to the whole recovering addict stuff
8. Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) - Close second to Dr. McKay when it comes to caring and bedside manner, but he's still pretty green; he's going to make some big misses
9. Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) - Horrible attitude, chip on her shoulder, hard pass
Honorable mention goes to bad-ass charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), who's probably the most competent, unflappable person in the whole day ER shift at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
Not ranked, for obvious reasons: med students Victoria Javadi and James Ogilvie. They're a mess.
3.14.2026
12 Observations from a 14-Year-Old's Club Soccer Game
2. There's always the one parent who's way too aggressive with the cheering, whether it's arguing with the ref ("Call it both ways!"), criticizing his kid's play ("Come on, move to the ball!"), or demanding cut-throat intensity even if your team is blowing out the opponent ("Keep the pressure up!").
3. You really cannot tell how good a team will be just by looking at them warm up. Scrawny kids who look like pushovers can be crazy fast and agile, tall girls that look formidable can be clueless on offense.
4. Don't ask us to explain the offsides rule.
5. Soccer weather can be extreme. We've watched just as many games on freezing cold mornings wrapped in multiple layers as we have on broiling hot summer afternoons with our chairs strategically positioned in the slender shadow of a field light pole.
6. Right or wrong, if a parent can speak Spanish we will assume they know way more about soccer than we do.
7. Thankfully, youth soccer doesn't entertain that ridiculous "extra minutes" nonsense.
8. Good luck parking on tournament days. If it's not mud fields, it's mud fields with gravel. The trick is to show up during the "shift change" when the earlier block of games is ending thereby allowing you to stalk the folks shuffling out to their cars carrying armfuls of camp chairs or dragging those game-day wagons.
9. Surprisingly, many of these giant soccer complexes just didn't have enough money in their budgets to create signage. And so you're creeping along in your car squinting through binoculars like GI Joe on a secret mission trying to read the tiny, faded 8-1/2 x 11 sized metal signs that are cable-tied to the goals facing the wrong direction. "Is that a 3 or a 4?" "If that's a 6, where the hell is 7?"
10. Parents, stick to your side of the field. Look for your kids' bench and place your chairs opposite that bench. And leave a nice 10-yard buffer zone at midfield. It's not that hard. We don't want to hear your cheering for your kids or complaining about ours.
11. It's always a weird "Twilight Zone" moment when you realize there's a player on the other team with the same name as your kid.
12. Inevitably, you will believe with absolutely certainty that the refs are making more calls against you than the other team. Guess what? The parents on the other side feel exactly the same.
1.31.2026
Knee-jerk review: "Send Help"
2. We were surprised to realize Dylan O'Brien has pretty good actor chops.
3. This is a wild ride chock full of plot twists... and copious amounts of body fluids from both man and animal.
4. Half our fun was looking to see the frequent looks of abject repulsion and horror on the 13-year-old Fry's face.
5. Yes, there will be eye gouging.
6. The set up of Rachel McAdams' (swoon!) mousy and cluelessly awkward cubicle worker is perhaps a bit over the top, but we get it. She's the heroine of the movie, yet that fact is totally undercut by the fact that we've all worked with weirdos like this. It's not fun.
7. This is a tight script, but also one that wholly relies on the contrivance that a hardcore fan of the show "Survivor" (with bookshelves full of survivor texts) winds up stranded on an island with the skills needed to survive. But was it Hitchcock who said audiences will buy one - and only one - dramatic coincidence?
8. It's a good point: none of your coworkers want to smell whatever it is you're eating for lunch.
9. "No help is coming."
10. Now that's what we call a heel turn. Totally understandable based on what we know about the character, but still 100% monstrous.
11. "Planning and strategy" isn't the same thing as "accounting."
12. What's your go-to karaoke song?
13. For a second there, we thought she was actually, really going to do it. When you see the movie, you'll know what we're talking about.
14. Bonus points for the old school, grainy 20th Century (now Studios, not Fox) logo and fanfare.
15. Is it a thriller? Is it a black comedy? Yes.
Six months of books, Part II
Consider this a sequel post to last summer's rundown. Below are one-line reviews of books we read in the back half of 2025 (plus the first few weeks of 2026 - a couple of Christmas presents are in the mix).
Alright, Alright, Alright, Melissa Maerz - A gloriously exhaustive oral history of the making of one of the greatest coming-of-age movies of all time (and easily a top five movie for the Cheese Fry), Dazed and Confused.
The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt - Essential reading for any parent, curating a multitude of studies and cultural trends to create a focused, compelling argument about the urgent, addictive dangers of smartphones and social media on developing brains.
Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets, Chelsea Ichaso - A convoluted mess of a story that relies on irritating turns involving our high school student heroine again and again identifying the wrong culprit in her quest to find out who - wait for it - pushed her sister off a cliff.
Fire in the Hole, Elmore Leonoard - One of the Cheese Fry's favorite authors, this is a collection of Leonard's short stories, each one a hard-boiled gem of quirky characters, clever plot twists, and pitch-perfect dialogue.
A Flicker in the Dark, Stacey Willingham - A crazy Southern-fried Gothic family drama (girl's dad long ago confessed to killing teen girls but now that she's adult more teen girls are going missing, so What Exactly Is Going On?) is just soap-opera-loony enough to totally work.
Grunt, Mary Roach - Roach is a national treasure, whipping up amusing journalistic explorations in specific niche topics like - in this case - the intersection of science and soldiers (see also Stiff and Packing for Mars).
Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions, Ed Zwick - Perhaps not at the level of William Goldman's seminal Adventures in the Screen Trade, this show business memoir from one of Hollywood's more successful filmmakers (and TV showrunner) offers juicy behind-the-scenes angst and drama alongside practical advice for making TV shows and movies.
Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay - Long on the Cheese Fry's reading wish list, this book was ultimately a big disappointment, a bizarrely complicated and unpleasant meta story about the rebooting of an infamous underground horror movie and the ways the line between fiction and reality can blur. [This one and Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets are the only books on this list currently exiled to the "give away" box in our garage.]
Lock Every Door, Riley Sager - A sharp, entertaining thriller about a down-on-her-luck woman agreeing to a too-good-to-be-true job housesitting a posh Central Avenue high-rise condo only to realize too late that there are creepy, possibly deadly shenanigans afoot among her wealthy neighbors.
Running with the Devil, Noel Monk - A fascinating glimpse into the rise of rock band Van Halen, as told by their tour manager, chronicling not just the band's extreme interpersonal dysfunction, but also the staggering amount of substance abuse and sexual conquests they pursued on the road in the late 1970s.
12.28.2025
Knee-jerk review: "Anaconda"
1. It can be hard to accurately judge the comic content of a movie when you're sitting in a crowded theater surrounded by people howling with laughter. You can definitely get swept up in it.
2. But this movie certainly seems hilarious.
3. There's at least three moments of over-the-top, are-they-really-doing-that insanity.
4. The boar sequence alone is worth the price of admission.
5. Jack Black's sweaty, arched brows intensity is an acquired taste that we still haven't yet fully acquired, but it works pretty well here.
6. Paul Rudd, on the other hand, is 100% always a slam dunk. He's fantastic.
7. This movie is the very definition of looking-glass meta, taking place in a world where the original 1997 Anaconda exists and this gaggle of frustrated filmmakers - played by recognizable stars of 2025 - decide to remake it, which leads to an unending run of inside baseball gags about the movie business and a commentary on sequels like the one we're watching.
8. At first we were going to argue that movies about people in the movie business aren't usually appealing to mass audiences, but this one at least tries to make it more about the friendship of this group of misfits and a need to chase your dream no matter what. It'll do.
9. "Sometimes I go to Trader Joe's just to feel the air conditioning" is a fantastic living-in-L.A. joke and we are here for it.
10. Yes, we get some obligatory cameos from the original movie. Of course we do.
11. Selton Mello - playing a deeply weird snake wrangler - steals the movie, which is hard to do when Black and Rudd (and Steve Zahn doing funny Steve Zahn things) are around.
12. Effective movies, even goofy diversions like this, have to sell in the first few minutes that the hero's life is in some significant way an unsatisfying dead end. The adventure in the movie we're watching is what will ultimately pull the hero out of that awful life. Anaconda spells this out explicitly with some business about Jack Black's life being "B, maybe B-plus."
13. Bonus points for a pretty decent character reversal plot twist involving stolen gold. Remember the old adage that comedy plots still need to work without the jokes.
14. For the record, Sir Mix A Lot's comic "Baby Got Back" rap song with its infamous anaconda lyric came out in 1992, five years before the Jennifer Lopez movie. But we have no recollection whether her Anaconda featured the song. As you might imagine, Jack Black's Anaconda most definitely does use the song.
15. Way more funny than we expected. This has to have really good word-of-mouth, right?
11.28.2025
Knee-jerk review: "Now You See Me Now You Don't"
1. Not our choice. The Eighth Grade Fry wanted to see it.
2. Completely implausible and illogical in so many ways, but certainly also entertaining.
3. What a bizarre concept: world-famous magicians who broke up years ago have such a rabid following that (and two key plot points hinge on this fact) any hint of a possible reunion show attracts thousands of people. It's like they're the Beatles crossed with Taylor Swift. Only this group doesn't sing hit songs... they do magic.
4. Like superheroes, these heroes all have their own secret power. There's the mentalist, the escape artist, and.. well, one of them can fling playing cards like weapons. Seriously. Let us remind you that this is a three-movie franchise now.
5. We can't recall many details of the first two movies (2013 and 2016), but this one definitely has a pleasant Ocean's Eleven con artist, let's-get-the-bad-guy vibe.
6. We would probably watch Woody Harrelson do anything. Always an excess of charm and charisma.
7. This may be the first-ever movie police chase involving an F1 racing car. Fun!
8. "What's the trick?"
9. Jesse Eisenberg always just sort of plays himself, doesn't he? He's very good at it, of course. But is it acting?
10. As silly as so much of this is, gold star for the big twists at the end. Satisfying.
10.19.2025
Knee-jerk review: "Tron Ares"
1. There's a curious amount of negative buzz out there, but the movie is not bad at all. For what it is, it gets the job done.
2. We did find it odd, however, that for a movie called Tron, almost all of the action takes place in the real world. That makes for a novel approach (when we saw a Recognizer patrolling the skies over a real world city in the trailer, we were 100% sold), but the fun of Tron movies are the scenes on "the grid." We were particularly disappointed when Greta Lee's kidnapping to the grid was cut so short.
3. Bonus points for retro 1982-era lightcycles.
4. Jeff Bridges... is he playing a wizened old Kevin Flynn here or the Dude from The Big Lebowski?
5. This movie looks really, really expensive. Not just the digital effects, but there's a lot of practical stunts and car crashes as well.
6. Gillian Anderson doing a British accent, presumably because she's playing David Warner's (for the original movie) daughter?
7. Bummer not even a Bruce Boxleitner cameo.
8. We were worried at first because the first five minutes or so is a huge information dump recapping a very convoluted background of the Tron universe, which is mostly just corporate backbiting and tedious business intrique. But in the end, you get the gist.
9. Pundits have correctly noted it's a strange choice for Disney to bet hundreds of millions of dollars on a second sequel to a rather niche 1980s nerd property, especially given the so-so reaction to the last one (Tron Legacy - which was 15 years ago!).
10. There's some pretty cool action stuff in here, especially the extended chase in the first hour. Top notch.
11. Jared Leto is definitely a solid character actor. Quirky, smart... but also a little creepy. We're not sold on him as a leading man hero.
12. Cool to see that the evil Dillinger family still likes to use the flat desktop glass computer keyboard and monitor. Some things should never change, no matter how impractical.
13. Fantastic music by Nine Inch Nails, as you may have heard.
14. All of the business with the "particle lasers" (which can zap you to the grid or bring grid things to our world because... technology) is completely illogical, but it's consistent in its illogic so it mostly works.
15. The movie tries to be hip with some Depeche Mode and Frankenstein references, which is the right idea in a movie that's mostly way too serious and grim, but those moments are a little cringey.
16. We're scared to go back and watch the first Tron again. We suspect is has not aged well at all.
17. Derezzing is still way cool.
18. How many people will get the 1982 movie Sark reference at the very end? In theory, that moment points to another Tron movie, but the box office results thus far suggest this is, as they say in Tron, "end of line."
19. Space Paranoids is still a terrible name for a video game.
20. Overall, it's totally fine, people.
10.05.2025
Knee-jerk review: "Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale"
1. We admit that's a pretty stuffy, arrogant title for a movie. Let us decide how "grand" this finale is, okay?
2. If you liked the show and the last two(!) movies, you're certainly going to like this one. A wonderful immersion in this fascinating world, like putting on an weathered, cozy coat on a blustery day.
3. What is it about Americans that makes period English stories about class and station so interesting? That's also part of what made Game of Thrones so fun - the royals scheming concurrent with drama among the peasants.
4. As usual, everyone makes a huge fuss over Mary (Michelle Dockery). Good grief. So much hand-wringing and furrowed brows about making sure she's okay and she doesn't need anything. Between the two Crawley sisters, the real catch, of course, has always been Edith (Laura Carmichael).
5. Not much plot, really, other than more of the same as everyone worries about how the world is changing and ending their way of life. Sort of been the background theme since the show started all the way back in 2010. It's more like a TV show - little storylines that bump along (some funny, some serious) with only this broader thread involving a character who may be a con artist trying to worm his way into London society tying it all together.
6. Without a traditional storyline, then, the real fun comes from these characters interacting.
7. We call this production design porn - you can entertain yourself just by soaking in the layered, detailed 1930 period costumes and sets and exteriors. Downtown London, a horse race, a carnival? Yes, please.
8. If you step back and really look at this... franchise? [Is this a franchise? A long-running television show and now three movies. That's a franchise, right?] If you step back and really look at this franchise, it's a little awkward to realize you're rooting for A) a wealthy aristocrat family always concerned they may soon be a little less wealthy and B) a fleet of servants so fully shaped and indoctrinated by the culture that they can imagine no other worthwhile life than running around catering to the silly social whims this aristocratic family.
9. It's rare that we have an issue with casting in a Hollywood movie, but Alessandro Nivola simply isn't as charismatic and charming in his performance (not by a long shot) as the film needs him to be for the story to make sense.
10. It took us a moment to realize that - per number 8 above - the Crawleys not only have this huge mansion called Downton Abbey, but they also have this sprawling, posh house in London called Grantham House. Seems like every house needs a name.
11. We didn't know there was a mid-credits scene until after we left the theater.
12. We wish we could speak with the polite charm and dry wit of these people. Truly. In fact, when the villain gets a comeuppance, the insults and threats are so totally cloaked in London niceties that we as an audience member felt wholly unsatisfied. Did he even understand that he's been told off?
Favorite Downton Abbey characters:
* Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville is especially good in this one as the dad who's totally getting left behind by progress)
* Edith Pelham (smooth where Mary is sharp)
* Bertie Pelham (smart, clever guy but his wife Edith is totally out of his league - good for him)
* Charles Carson (the stuffiest of stuffy butlers but if you need a butler who knows his stuff, he's your guy)
* Tom Branson (you always need a guy like this who shows up from out of town and knows exactly what to do)
9.20.2025
Knee-jerk review: "The Long Walk"
1. Yeah, it's pretty bleak.
2. And very gory. The filmmakers certainly don't shy away from the violent, shocking brutality of gunfire. Seems a little gratuitous maybe. Then again, too many movies make gunfights unrealistically bloodless and tidy.
3. We were in a serious Stephen King phase back in middle school and high school. We read everything, including terrible books like The Tommyknockers, which King famously wrote while high on painkillers. So we read The Long Walk probably in... 8th grade? (For the record, The Shining and It remain two of the scariest books we've ever read.)
4. Mark Hamill makes a pretty good villain. He's completely unrecognizable here.
5. The book was written in the late 1960s and is very clearly a Vietnam War allegory: young men enter a hopeless situation and die horrible deaths one by one, forging strong friendships and sharing personal secrets along the way. The brotherhood stuff here is very powerful. Too bad it's forged in such a terrible, grim fire.
6. Stories like this clearly inspired The Hunger Games. Aside from the first movie, all of the Hunger Games sequels were directed by Francis Lawrence, who's also the director here. One could argue he's making a companion movie. While The Hunger Games had an over-the-top, exaggerated vibe - it may be set on Earth, but no one would mistake Panem for our America - The Long Walk has a drab, gritty, urgent feel to it. This is what our world could become. If The Hunger Games is a fairy tale, The Long Walk is a "60 Minutes" story.
7. There's really no way to end a film like this well. Just about everyone is going to be dead before the final fade out. But how it all plays out was particularly disappointing to us. One character makes a choice that goes against everything he's been arguing for 90 minutes. The Long Walk, it seems, broke him. We get it, but we don't have to like it.
8. "Warning!"
9. Actors Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, the two main characters, are fantastic together. There's an interesting dynamic that emerges as they debate vengenace and hate versus love and forgiveness. It practically turns religious.
10. Some of the flashbacks involving secret police, summary judgments, and the suppression of speech feel uncomfortably timely. This sort of cultural synergy is always fascinating to us because those scenes were surely shot at least a year ago. The zeitgeist always finds its way into art whether we know it's happening at the time or not.
11. It is good? Absolutely. Is it fun? Not especially.
9.06.2025
Ten Points About 1995's "Seven"
The Cheese Fry recently watched David Fincher's serial killer masterpiece Seven with the 16-year-old, who'd never seen it. We've watched it many times over the years, of course, but it's been a while. We were coming into it pretty fresh. And, of course, there's something special about watching a favorite movie with someone who's never seen it before. And the 16-year-old knew next to nothing about Seven aside from it being about a serial killer and starring Brad Pitt. Here's a few observations.
1. It's aged very, very well. True, there are no smartphones or flatscreen computers so it's definitely of the 1990s, but the movie has such a timeless, fable quality that it still feels very contemporary and strangely urgent. Morgan Freeman's big speech about living in a world where apathy is considered a virtue strikes a nerve all these years later. It's much easier to tune out with social media than engage with people around you.
2. The ending ("John Doe's got the upper hand!") remains unflinchingly genius. As shocking and tragic as it may be - the bad guy is more or less winning, the ending also feels completely inevitable and totally earned. It's very hard to watch the torture on Brad Pitt's face as he wrestles with what to do, gun in hand, John Doe cuffed on his knees in front of him. It's easy to say that a movie star like Pitt just coasts on charisma and charm, as in something like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He's fantastic in that movie, but it's mostly just Pitt being cool. When properly motivated, however, like in moments like this in Seven, he can deliver the actorly goods.
3. We realized for the first time that John Doe likely doesn't have a plan for the last two deadly sins (wrath and envy) until he poses as a news photographer and encounters Pitt. Pitt goes nuts, breaking the camera and displaying his character's hot-headed rage, which John Doe will use against him. What if Pitt hadn't done that? How might the movie have ended?
4. There's just the one traditional action sequence when Pitt chases John Doe through apartment buildings and into the street. Otherwise, it's mostly a seedier, grosser episode of your favorite TV police procedural with red herrings, high tech forensic geek-outs, and talky philosophizing about justice and crime.
5. Some interesting irony in that John Doe's twisted mission to showcase society's shameless evils more or less aligns with Freeman's view of the world.
6. There is no sanctuary in this infamously unnamed city. It's always raining, dark, and crowded. Everyone, in fact, seems in need of a bath and a fresh change of clothes. Note also that our main characters can't even find solace in their homes: Pitt's apartment is rattled by a subway every ten minutes, while Freeman has to use a metronome at his bedside to drown out the constant yelling of arguing neighbors. The one respite (aside from the bright desert sunshine of the movie's most devastating moment, although technically everyone had to drive for many miles out of the city to get there) is the city library after hours, where Freeman wanders the aisles in peace.
7. No surprise that Morgan Freeman turns every line into a polished jewel. A national treasure.
8. Kevin Spacey is so very young here, but he packs such a punch, the essence of speaking softly and carrying a big stick. It's an incredibly high bar to meet after so much build up with the gruesome, complicated deaths, but Spacey's creepy calm more than lives up to the hype.
9. We don't think Seven invented the "tired cop who's about to retire gets one last case" trope, but it certainly plays it out effectively. When we first meet him, Freeman is a cop eager to quit. He's seen it all and has had enough. But by at the end, he tells his captain "I'll be around." A big part of this transformation comes in the scene at the bar where Pitt loudly refuses to believe Freeman cares so little. Pitt's lines here are so, so great: "I don’t think you’re quitting because you believe these things you say. I don’t. I think you want to believe them because you’re quitting." You can see on Freeman's face - no dialogue needed - that there's truth in that.
10. We'd be remiss without also pointing out the insane title sequence of stuttering, skewed, overlapping images over grungy guitars. Brilliant tone-setter.
8.16.2025
Knee-jerk review: "Weapons"
1. It's a great movie, but that is one terrible title.
2. Probably more unsettling than traditionally scary. There are a handful of old-fashioned jump scares for the traditionalists out there, however.
3. And one truly creepy moment that gave us chills. Okay, maybe two.
4. Josh Brolin is always great, isn't he?
5. The pop culture buzz for this movie is pretty strong. There's certainly a risk in situations like this where the actual movie has no chance of living up to the hype; everyone's expectations are sky high. But for the most part, we were not disappointed.
6. Very clever, novelistic structure, using a series of "chapters" from different character POVs (most of the characters interconnect in some way) to slowly reveal the whole story. The way it all comes together is pretty perfect.
7. Lots of interesting subtext (domestic violence, school shootings, addiction) simmering under the plot, which gives the story unexpected heft. These are all pretty flawed, miserable people doing their best, which isn't always good enough.
8. Aunt Gladys. Wow.
9. What's really happening with the missing kids isn't 100% spelled out, but there are a few throwaway background references that we think provides the answer.
10. Nothing good at all can be happening in a house with newspapers covering all of the windows from the inside.
11. "Your two o'clock is here." Indeed.
12. Always a fun moment in a movie when someone studies a map and starts drawing lines and circles to try and Understand What Is Happening.
13. The ending is bonkers in the most completely satisfying way.
14. The citizens of Maybrook are going to need a whole lot of therapy after all of this.
15. If you're going to see it, avoid spoilers so you won't know what's coming. 100% unpredictable.
Sidebar: To the teen girls in front of us checking social media on their phone 90 minutes into the movie, at least have the common courtesy to dim your screen.
Sidebar #2: If movie theaters are going to insist on running 20 minutes of commercials (we're not talking about "coming attraction" trailers, we're talking about the endless ads for insurance and cars and soft drinks), at least have the common courtesy to not run the same spot twice.
8.07.2025
Knee-jerk review: "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"
2. But we were hoping for more than "okay." The snazzy, candy-colored trailers had us pretty excited, but the movie was a let down.
4. To us, Vanessa Kirby always gives cold, brittle performances so casting her as a supposedly warm, maternal figure seems pretty questionable. Joseph Quinn also feels miscast as the Human Torch.
5. Considering how ridiculous their powers are, the Fantastic Four characters are pretty dull and flat here. They may be freed from the shackles of 20th Century Fox movies, but this cast is not that much of an upgrade over the Ioan Gruffudd (2005) or Miles Teller (2015) teams.
6. We do wonder about Pedro Pascal and his agent. What a time those two are having right now. He's literally everywhere.
7. Mole Man!
8. We will stipulate that this one is certainly more polished and epic-feeling than the Fox movies, which are pretty forgettable. But First Steps feels undercooked and weirdly slapdash in many ways (rumors of big reshoots and last-minute edits may be true). A truly awesome movie is in there somewhere.
9. Bonus points to the Galactus climax that was pretty satisfying and also to the clever teleporter subplot.
10. Perhaps most surprising of all is that there's so little humor. We kept wondering what James Gunn could have done with this ragtag dysfunctional family and the supposedly wisecracking characters of Ben and Johnny. We needed more gags like the car seat bit.
11. Thunderbolts* was better.
12. Meh.
13. Are we all just about done with these Marvel movies? This one is the 37th MCU movie. Holy cow. Even the big post-credits stinger scene here with someone who appears to be Doctor Doom - setting him up as the Big Bad for yet another string of movies - feels tiresome.
7.13.2025
Knee-jerk review: "Superman"
1. You've never seen a Superman movie like this. Take that as either a compliment or an insult. This is a world of flying cars, sentient robots, alien dragons, and black hole portals. Plus a Kryptonian dog. It, like, totally goes there.
2. As expected, with James Gunn writing and directing, it's a got a weirdo Guardians of the Galaxy vibe to it. Even with all the comic book strangeness, the movie's packed with real emotion and humor.
3. The most evil and awful Lex Luthor ever. We're way past the avuncular charm of a Gene Hackman.
4. There's definitely a lot going on. Lots of characters and plot, but it mostly all comes together.
5. Whether intentional or not, this is a movie with a lot of political layers, like the manipulative propaganda power of social media, the raging mistrust and fear of people who aren't like you, and the very real-world problem of countries invading other countries for secret, nefarious reasons.
6. But we remind you that it takes years to go from script to screen. Media can maybe comment on hot topic current events with something like "Law and Order" or a pop song, things with quick production turnarounds. Movies, on the other hand, are too slow and creaky. Especially giant movies like this.
7. The more we think about it, the more we like it.
8. That's definitely an interesting choice for Jimmy Olson's character.
9. Wendell Pierce sighting.
10. An "interdimensional imp" is a thing apparently.
11. Superman is tricky thing for us because the first two Richard Donner movies (especially 1980's Superman II, which we know, we know was technically credited to director Richard Lester) are a big pop culture part of our youth. We remember those movies with rose-colored glasses, willfully overlooking their flaws and occasional accidental cheesiness. As an 11-year-old we even tried hard to really like 1983's Superman III, but surely we can all agree that is an awful movie in spite of (or because of?) the countless times we watched it on HBO.
12. We sort of appreciated what Superman Returns (2006) was trying to do as a Donner homage, but it was a pretty limp, forgettable movie.
13. The "Snyderverse" thing continues to baffle us. Man of Steel (2013) was at least a real movie with strong actors and a distinctive sensibility, albeit a humorless and dour sensibility. We really liked Henry Cavill as Superman. But no one can honestly and objectively look at Batman v. Superman (2016) or Justice League (2017) as anything other complete disasters of filmmaking, bleakly self-indulgent, narratively confusing, and completely off-putting and unsatisfying. And yet those movies have a sizable - well, loud anyway - legion of fans who act like they're the pinnacle of Hollywood storytelling. As a result, these Snyder fans are out there attacking this new movie. Right now there's a lot of online chatter about which film made more in the opening weekend box office, as if that's the only arbiter of a successful movie (plus keep in mind that the mass media entertainment environment of 2013 is way different than 2025, so it's apples and oranges anyway).
14. Christopher Reeve was perfect casting, no doubt, but David Corenswet has that same sort of square-jawed earnestness to him. He's pretty good, people.
15. "I'm not Superman" indeed.
16. That's quite a twist with Jor-El. Marlon Brando wouldn't have liked that.
17. Nice to actually get Lois Lane into the action to help save the day.
18. What you may have heard is true: Mr. Terrific steals the movie.
19. It's a solid B+, which isn't bad.
7.05.2025
Knee-jerk review: "Jurassic World Rebirth"
1. So look, this movie knew what it needed to do and it delivered it exceedingly well. Polished, competent, efficient.
2. We weren't really looking forward to seeing this, but the family decided watching dinosaurs eat people was the perfect way to spend July 4th.
3. All in all, a pleasant surprise. It's pretty dang good, people.
4. We weren't huge fans of the last three Chris Pratt/Bryce Dallas Howard Jurassic movies and can't even remember the storylines, but this one introduces a whole new (if familiar) set of characters and quickly strands them on a dinosaur island. Back to basics.
5. Jonathan Bailey looks like Guy Pearce's younger brother. Seems like he could be a real movie star.
6. No self-respecting Jurassic movie would ever miss the chance to put a tween character in harm's way.
7. Most of the movie is a string of exciting impossibly-close-call, escape-the-hungry-dinosaur set pieces. Good enough.
8. Shout out to the guy sitting next to us who had to keep explaining everything to his daughter. You made our experience so much better as a result.
9. Mahershala Ali is probably slumming here, but that's okay. He brings welcome gravitas. And he likely got a good paycheck.
10. We should talk about the sailboat family. It's good that the movie took time to develop their characters before the dinosaurs attack so we feel more of an investment in their safety, but their little cruise seems incredibly reckless given the exposition audiences were provided about the world of the movie. We also noted that without the family's side adventure, the run time would probably only 90 minutes.
11. When it comes to concocting a reason to undertake yet another dangerous mission to an off-limits dinosaur island, the one the filmmakers come up with (gathering samples from three live dinosaurs) is pretty good.
12. The D-Rex is a bit much perhaps.
13. Even after all of that, we're still skeptical of Xavier.
14. Sci-fi research facilities always have huge vent systems to allow for convenient hero escapes, don't they? They must all use the same architectural firm.
15. Scarlett Johannson, pony-tailed action hero? More please.
16. We appreciated the Jaws homage.
17. Ending is probably a little long, but the plot pieces all come together nicely. Ticking clocks are always welcome.
18. Honestly, it may be the best one since Spielberg's 1993 original.
Twenty "Howard Stern Show" Characters, Ranked
The dysfunctional collection of people on SiriusXM's "Howard Stern Show" are not exactly fictional characters, but they're not really regular civilians either. They're eccentric personalities (cast members?) that are either on the show payroll as staff members or calling in for free as infamous members of the Wack Pack, manipulated and managed by Stern to create the distinctive fabric of the show. Here's our current ranking of these folks from #1 (always instant entertainment) to #20 (hope to never hear from that person again).
1. Ronnie the Limo Driver, obviously
2. Richard
3. Sal
4. Sour Shoes
5. J.D.
6. Benjy
7. Chris
8. Pearlman
9. Wolfie
10. Jon
11. Samantha
12. Nowicki
13. King of All Blacks
14. Mariann
15. Jason
16. High Pitch
20(tie). Memet, Bobo, Blitt, A.N. Ed
**This list does not include the Fab Four of Howard, Robin, Gary, and Fred.
Six months of books
The Cheese Fry has been doing a lot a reading since January 1, possibly because we've been doing more traveling than usual and nothing goes better with plane rides and quiet hotel rooms than a book. Here's some one-line reviews.
Challenger, Adam Higginbotham - Top-notch exploration of the 1986 shuttle explosion (they knew about the O-ring problems for years but bureaucratic paralysis kept them from ever addressing it) from the same author who wrote the similarly powerful Midnight in Chernobyl.
Eruption, Steve Olson - A detailed, if brief, account of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption that apparently needed to add in long-winded history of the American logging industry to bulk up the page count.
Live from New York, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales - An excruciatingly thorough - and ultimately repetitive - oral history of "Saturday Night Live" that eventually wore us out with unending praise for the genius of Lorne Michaels.
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick - It took us a while to realize that, rather than a high concept sci-fi spy thriller like the Amazon series adaptation, this is more of a moody relationship drama that just happens to take place in a world where the United State lost World War II.
60 Songs to Explain the 90s, Rob Harvilla - A deliciously nostalgic andquirky trip down 1990s pop culture through the lens of popular music.
The Song Is You, Megan Abbott - While it's got an interesting seedy noir premise - 1950s Hollywood fixer gets wrapped up in the case of a missing actress - it's one of the few books that has gone right into our giveaway stack rather than on our shelf.
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel - A memorable mix of poetic literary style (although we didn't fully understand the comic book subplot) and post-apocalyptic suspense that ends on a supremely satisfying note as multiple plotlines converge in unexpected ways.
Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins - The entertaining prequel story of the Hunger Games experience of Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the movies), a much more deserving protagonist than Collins' last novel that weirdly spent 300 pages telling us how President Snow turned heel.
Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, Ian Mortimer - A dense, engrossing textbook-style look at the minutia (food, law and order, household chores, clothing) of life in 1300s England. For example, the water was so so dirty that, unless you captured rainwater in a cistern, you mostly drank ale all day every day.
Wake Me After the Apocalypse, Jordan Rivet - There's a whole lot of post-apocalyptic YA fiction out there that incongruously layers teen romance onto tragic end-of-the-world stories and, if done right like this one, we are there for it.
6.29.2025
Knee-jerk review: "28 Years Later"
1. Don't let the creepy marketing strategy fool you - this is actually a traditional sort of coming-of-age domestic drama that just happens to take place in a crazy post-apocalyptic setting.
2. That doesn't mean, however, that there's any shortage of scary, suspenseful sequences of "how will our heroes survive this?"
3. We'd somehow forgotten Ralph Fiennes is in the movie. What a treat to be surprised by his entrance.
4. There are plenty of good movies out there, but not a lot of truly great filmmakers. Danny Boyle movies aren't always great (see: Yesterday and the last 20 minutes of Sunshine), but there's no denying they are always artistic and exceptionally well-made.
5. Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later are top-notch, of course, but we always thought Trainspotting was way overrated.
6. Of course they'd eventually run out of arrows.
7. They're not zombies, you see. They're infected with the rage virus.
8. How does he still have a supply of tranquilizers? It's, like, 28 years later.
9. We don't want to spoil anything, but there's a rather shocking moment that Changes Everything about the infected.
10. There's always something tragic about that moment when you realize your parents are actually just flawed people who don't always make wise decisions.
11. Bonus points for the "Jimmy" call back at the very end.
12. Only in an English movie would the hero be called Spike.
13. The Swedish soldier delivers a welcome dose of humor in an otherwise very serious, dour movie of Important Themes.
14. The doctor may not be as crazy and dangerous as the villagers think he is... but he still seems to be little bit nuts. In a benevolent cuckoo sort of way.
15. Much better than you might imagine.