Rian Johnson

A film starring Daniel Craig (Netflix, 2022).

A detective is invited to an isolated mansion and nothing could possibly go wrong.

B+ (Very good).

Knives Out was a remarkably unique and original movie. Glass Onion is just a perfectly satisfactory second episode in a series. It's clever and thoroughly entertaining, but it's a more disposable variety of entertainment.

(Jan. 2023)

I'm very conflicted about this film. On the one hand, I applaud Johnson's clear desire to do something new and different in the Star Wars saga, to build on the oh-so-safe rehash film that Force Awakens was with a film that is unexpected and goes in innovative directions. On the other hand, I feel that if you're taking a big risk like that, you should stick the landing better on the easy stuff.

By easy stuff, I mean nonsense like the pointless B-story on the casino planet that adds nothing to show more the story and feels very much like someone last minute remembered they had to give some characters something to do. I mean not building your entire film around a passive, super-slow spaceship chase if your other main storyline is an equally passive back and forth between an unwilling mentor and a stubborn mentee, leaving the film cutting back and forth almost entirely without building momentum. I mean making a film entertaining and successful enough, that your ambitious themes and innovations won't all be completely retconned and ignored in the next installment.

I see what Johnson tried to do, and while I understand it might thrill some fans and gall others, to me the direction is less important than the quality of the storytelling getting there. Still, Leia gets to be awesome, and compared to "Rise of Skywalker", it is (as frankly are most films) an absolute masterpiece. And I do appreciate it trying. With a bit more script polishing and perhaps some harsher editing, "Last Jedi" could have been rather good. With a great continuation building upon it, it could also have been retroactively made something quite special. With the giant Disney machinery behind it, it's kind of unforgivable, though, that it got neither. show less

Knives Out is a traditional murder mystery, in the vein of Agatha Christie except with vomit.

The basic story: The police, with the assistance of a famous private detective working for an anonymous employer, are investigating the death of Harlan Thrombey, a famous mystery writer. Harlan's death appears to be a clear case of suicide. After his birthday party, he played a game of Go with his caretaker, Marta Cabrera, and then, after she left, laid down and slit his own throat.

However, something show more doesn't quite add up. Why was a famous detective like Benoit Blanc hired to look into Harlan's death? On the day of his birthday, Harlan cut his financial ties to several members of his family. If he was actually murdered, there are quite a few potential suspects. And Marta, who can't lie without needing to throw up, knows more about what happened that night than she's saying.

I hadn't realized until yesterday that this had been added to the Amazon Prime catalog. I first watched it while it was in theaters and loved it, despite disliking the on-screen vomiting (even the second time around, I still couldn't watch that last scene without feeling a little sympathy nausea). It was just as good the second time around.

In the first part of the movie, viewers are introduced to all the members of the dysfunctional Thrombey family, as well as their potential motives for killing Harlan. They're a delightfully horrible and privileged bunch, and none of them take well to being cut off from Harlan's money. The movie touches on politics a bit - part of the family is Republican, part of it is Democrat, and both sides tend to use Marta to illustrate the rightness of their political stances. Marta's mother, meanwhile, is undocumented, something only a couple members of the Thrombey family know.

After Harlan's death, everyone in the Thrombey family keeps referring to Marta as being "like family," despite the fact that she wasn't invited to Harlan's funeral. The "like family" fiction is stripped away in an instant later on in the movie, forcing Marta to decide who she can really trust and how much.

I absolutely loved Ana de Armas as Marta, and I appreciated that it was her kindness, honesty, and goodness that helped her most in the end. The movie was maybe overly obvious about that fact, but I didn't mind.

When I first watched this, the one thing I suspected I'd have the most trouble with was Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc. Specifically his accent, which one of the characters even compares to Foghorn Leghorn. It wasn't as hard to get used to as I'd though it would be, and it definitely wasn't an issue during my second viewing. It was as fun to watch him in action as it was to watch Marta, although I was even more amazed, the second time around, with some of the things he allowed to happen considering one detail he'd noticed.

I still don't know that I want to own this, but it was definitely worth watching a couple times, once for the mystery and another time to see how all the pieces came together.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Modern Agatha Christie style murder mystery with tongue in cheek. Enjoyed it mostly and it kept my attention which TV is struggling to do at the moment. Daniel Craig's accent is bizarre but was obviously meant to be. And the woman who can't lie without vomiting - what a strange plot device. But it was entertaining.