Knives Outs (Rian Johnson, 2019/2022/?)

[therewillbeblus]

Glass Onion trailer

[yoloswegmaster]

Netflix will only be screening this for a week in major theaters across the U.S., U.K., and Canada, from November 23-29.

[zaladane]

The five or six screenings in Austin sold out in minutes, ugh.

[therewillbeblus]

I've got good news for everyone: Glass Onion is vastly superior to its predecessor in almost every conceivable way. It's modus operandi will likely 'right' the wrongs of the first film for those who felt underwhelmed, and deliver more of the same for those who loved it. That might sound antithetical, but I assure you it's not. I've come to appreciate Knives Out quite a bit, but its lack of investment in developing its suspects, and general disinterest in its 'mystery' in favor of concocting an inviting narrative thrust, weighed it down a bit and threatened to alienate those not on board with the gratifications from its chosen path in friction with classic mysteries.

Well, this sequel takes a different approach while capturing the same light vibe. Johnson delivers what the first film promised to be: an actual whodunit committed to its setup and execution. There is a long windup before the pitch, and Johnson uses every minute of it to craft an actual mystery and carefully explore dynamics between real subjects who can relate to one another beyond a one-note gag or an isolated piece of evidence of deception, like in the last round. The first film's sociopolitical satire worked fine, but the doses were slight and shallow and relatively safe and muted next to the sprawling zeitgeist and class commentaries regurgitated here. Some are low hanging fruit but others are transmitted in very intelligent and hilarious ways- and very few are eye-rolling, even the jabs that aren’t remotely novel. There are clever gags throughout- with running jokes and punchlines coming from archetypes, stereotypes, antisocial humor, inanimate stimuli, and the occasional genius reflexive taunt: a late-act reveal about linguistic flubs we collectively failed to catch pulls one over on the audience in an exceptionally earned way, that has unsettling implications in positioning us right with the selfish bystanders we’ve judged throughout (but never overstating that the joke’s on us, since the target of evisceration on the screen deserves it far more).

However, after the midpoint narrative-stopping reveal (that owes a lot to Gone Girl and The Skin I Live In; not as profound or shocking as either of those, but sourced in the same strategy of narrative pleasures), kicking off a Russian Doll unraveling of intel, the liberties taken regarding withheld information and narrative shifts aren't playing very fair to the audience who sat through the first half. There’s just too much information elided through cheap editing to make it work, and it’s disingenuous even for an audience that signed up for a ride of deception. Johnson tries to have his cake and eat it too, and has an insatiable appetite, but I didn’t care, because 95% of a movie that works and contains this much... well, everything, has more to offer than most perfect movies and deserves a little slack. Even when the ending appears to peter out with predictability followed by seemingly-arbitrary pearl-clutching in a series of theatrical Grand Gestures, Johnson pulls a rabbit out of his hat to offer a cathartic payoff in lieu of the preceding faux-catharsis that appeared trivial and derivative.

What the sequel loses from the diffusion of a compelling surrogate lead into a more detailed ensemble piece, it makes up for by being a funnier, smarter, more entertaining, and generally interesting multi-mystery. It's also a lot sillier and more reflexively-aware of its ludicrous nature (there's way more fun-poking at Benoit Blanc's childish qualities- not just being Pynchon-illiterate, or whatever- which feels quite appropriate given how cartoonish these films can be). My biggest fear -that de Armas' absence would haunt the film like a ghost- is thankfully compensated, in a sleek manner that successfully reverses the assumed loss I just maybe-sorta lied about. This bait and switch might be the film’s most rewarding twist- and while I won’t reveal the Who, it’s a similarly rich and delightful star-making turn. The whole cast is on-point and clearly having a blast, particularly Kate Hudson, who admittedly plays one of the most easily-derided personalities, ripe for receiving a funnel of jokes at her expense. Oh, and while the influx cameos occasionally feel forced, the wins outweigh the failures.

Now, I've been a bit cocky here. I still expect some people who didn't like Knives Out to shrug or scoff at this one too, but I do think Glass Onion effectively responds to many of their complaints. For me, whose opinion on that pre-covid hit exists somewhere in the middle, this is as much fun as I’ve had at the movies all year.

[MichaelB]

I’ll be very happy to give it a fair hearing: as I hope I made clear earlier in this thread, I liked the first film, while thinking that it fell well short of what the hype promised. But I suspect I’ll go to the second one with correspondingly diminished expectations only to be pleasantly surprised, which is fine by me.

[colinr0380]

So this is that new Hellraiser film that everyone has been talking about?

[therewillbeblus]

I’ll be very happy to give it a fair hearing: as I hope I made clear earlier in this thread, I liked the first film, while thinking that it fell well short of what the hype promised. But I suspect I’ll go to the second one with correspondingly diminished expectations only to be pleasantly surprised, which is fine by me.

That was my experience. The biggest difference is that I think the sequel is more self-aware of what it actually 'is', which is popcorn entertainment with mostly on-the-nose but welcome bits of social commentary, and because it goes 'bigger' in every conceivable way, and wears its influences on its sleeve, it works on those reflexively humble terms. And yes, there is something ironic about calling a movie this bombastic "humble"- but I think its simmering vibe coupled with a more confessional approach to its masturbatory tactics goes a long way to give it rope. A lot of what I think is clever about this film is not overstated at all, and there's a lot of boldened stimuli that is very winky in its emphasis, so I don't want to give the impression that this is some genius concoction working in opposition to the first. However, I do think Johnson is doing some subtly intelligent stuff hidden beneath the shiny surface.

Also, as I mentioned before, the first one wasn't really a good mystery, and this one is. And I should specify that my criteria for that has nothing to do with the ultimate disclosure, which isn't likely to turn any heads, but the process by which it establishes its characters, their relationships, and its overarching narrative, and then unravels for us. That doesn't mean it's including us in on information that could help us figure out what's coming next - that withholding is absurdly manipulative (some of it is fair play and some is kinda obnoxious), so there's just no conceivable way we could glean necessary clues to anticipate certain reveals - but it operates a lot like Gone Girl's narrative (intentionally so, given an in-film name-drop), where the pleasures are in being taken along for a ride of relentless reveals, rather than in participating in guessing What's Coming (but, that film got away with its manipulations in part by aligning with perspectives through diary entries and cued narrative switching vs. elided editing trickery from the 'objective' perspective of filmmaker here, which is where this loses points). So, yeah, Glass Onion delivers on the promises of narrative twists that I didn't think the first film really lived up to

[yoloswegmaster]

Nothing more to add to what's already been wonderfully stated by TWBB but I will say that while I really liked 'Glass Onion', I think I prefer the first a bit more due to it's more small and intimate local versus the sequel's more boisterous and not-as-interpersonal setting. I will also say that there is a fun and cool nod to Janus Films in it that is pretty hard to miss.

[DarkImbecile]

I wish I could sign on to the effusive praise, but while still enjoyable enough on the strength of Rian Johnson's core talents for ingenious narrative structure and livley dialogue, this felt like a marginal step back from the original on nearly every front — less engaging characters, weaker performances, less effective humor, and socio-political commentary on less interesting subjects even more bluntly delivered. I did have a lot of fun with this entry's version of the subversive way Johnson finds to play with the genre, building a puzzle box that doesn't even let you know what it is you're trying to solve until more than halfway through; similarly, the deflation of Miles' plans for the weekend's game, which most versions of this would have made more central to the main event, was delightful.

When I say that the characters and performances are worse than the originals, I don't mean to say that they're poorly written or acted, just that they're more familiar and easy archetypes that none of the actors seem to find unique ways to deliver. The skewering of Zuckerberg/Musk tech bros who think success at one thing makes them a genius at every single other thing is certainly timely, but felt a little too familiar alongside the men's right's YouTuber (and his ambitious piece of arm candy), ditzy declining supermodel (and her harried assistant), and corrupted politician, while Leslie Odom Jr.'s conflicted scientist barely made an impression. Janelle Monae delivers, and Craig and Johnson do both affirm Benoit Blanc's deductive superpowers while at the same time allow him to be even sillier and looser, which bodes well for this series going forward.

While I also found the billionaire's island paradise a blander, less evocative setting than the creaky mansion of the first, the element I found least successful was the mystery itself which

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like the first film ends up pointing the finger at what is initially the most obvious and least likable of the suspects, but this time does a less convincing and effective job of steering the audience away from suspecting that character. Even when he appears to be the target, Norton is never given the chance to seem even somewhat appealing in the way Evans was, and when it became clear who the real victim is, Johnson only weakly feints at steering suspicion away from him.

Anyway, despite my relative disappointment, there's plenty of fun to be had here, and I think this series could continue to bear fruit as long as Craig and Johnson are inclined to continue it.

[therewillbeblus]

I felt the first movie was deliberately nosediving into bombastic and manipulate leisure (not a dis) by design, so I appreciated how Johnson was a lot more transparent at what he was doing here in every respect. The shots at easy targets were perhaps more on-the-nose, but the bar wasn't exactly set at subtlety with the first entry, and more time to flesh out the targets/supporting players this time around was quite welcome (vs the first film, where each big-name actor suspect got maybe one or two moments to display their flawed behaviors/beliefs dissonance). I don't think there was any chance at delivering a successful answer to the mystery, but these movies aren't about the reveal (I wouldn't have been stimulated by any one of the characters here being unveiled as the culprit, and that goes double for the last film where each of them got much less screen time/investigation by Johnson's script). Johnson cheekily acknowledges this as the throwaway aspect to his whodunits with how "dumb" it is at the end, and then delivers a clever denouement. It's inherently manipulative and you can't participate in the detective work to predict what's coming, but it's a well-crafted fun ride.

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The film functions a lot like Gone Girl, which is just an A-movie version of a B-narrative, whereas this film operates under the same principles, strategy, and unpredictable midpoint reveal, only leaning more into its B-movie DNA. The Gillian Flynn reference isn't just for show.

Also, to be clearer about what I thought was so intelligent in my initial rave, the disclosure that Norton was using made-up words the entire movie (all within frames we were included in, rather than all the other manipulations in camera angles that obscured our line of sight to ingest necessary information regarding Monae's degree of participation) casts a mirror back to the audience. I doubt most viewers questioned Norton's language while watching, after all he's a talented and charismatic actor just like the character pretends to be. But our tendency to trust the powerful (be they influencers/ostensible-"geniuses" like Norton, or a filmmaker like Johnson) is revealed back to us as a bit foolish. Johnson has been forthcoming about himself as an unreliable narrator. He's going to withhold and tinker with what he shows to help us have more fun, and so are people we naturally believe and hoist into dominant positions over us, only for their own self-gain and without that transparency. Regardless of how liberal and critical thinking the audience is, who pride themselves on an ability to 'see through' the Musks of the world, we're all susceptible to this social blind spot to some extent. I thought Johnson avoided a chance to be snidely provocative here, and utilized an opportunity to deliver an interesting a-ha moment of humbling us all onto the same playing field - and, ideally, to then lend a tad of vicarious compassion to the band of players who also fell "victim" to his faux-'power'. Not that this diffuses their sacrifices of integrity and morality, but it offers us a path to get down off a pedestal and meet these people without condescension for a second, and that feels important after critiquing them with superiority for two+ hours.

[DarkImbecile]

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Maybe because I was a (not particularly good) copy editor for a few years, but I was viewing those malapropisms as they happened to be a somewhat subtle way of undercutting Miles’ pretensions, before they became a centerpiece of Blanc’s climactic denunciation. In fact, it felt to me more like the opposite of the effect you describe, a way of letting the audience in on the joke about this guy whether or not they caught on to it in the moment — artificially elevating viewers to Blanc’s level as opposed to bringing them down to Norton’s.

[therewillbeblus]

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Interesting, that doesn't really work for me because the rest of the movie is chock full of information that is intentionally obfuscated for the viewer, at least in context (there's no way we could use it to deduce where it winds up). The first film did that too with the grandmother seeing De Armas and saying the name of the culprit, and we as an audience just dismissed that because there was no connective tissue to lead us to believe he would've snuck in to kill a man that died by suicide to our knowledge at that point in the movie... Glass Onion landed better for me because I thought Johnson was pretty obviously crafting a more leisurely, self-actualized admission that Blanc's Holmes-esque detective work is based on absurd conjectures regardless of the sparse and disconnected cues we've gotten a fraction of, so if this was indeed a sincere attempt to offer compromised olive branches to elevate us to Blanc's level, it makes the movie come off a lot worse and is a bit condescending to the audience. Like, both movies certainly do throw these bits in for us to recognize I suppose, but we can't do anything with them- so where the first film's shown "evidence" doesn't have a reflexive and intelligent effect on the audience, this one made it work in an interesting way. Or so I thought

[therewillbeblus]

Ben Shapiro's Twitter rant critiquing Glass Onion for operating like a typical movie containing twists, as if it's the first one to do this (warning: major spoilers)

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm afraid I only lasted for 25 or so minutes watching this along with my wife. It just wasn't making me care at all about anything that was going on. So no mini-review will be forthcoming from me....

[therewillbeblus]

That’s a shame, the film pivots halfway through and becomes something else entirely, which only makes the content from the first hour richer. If you liked the first film for de Armas’ star-making role and felt that was lacking in the little you watched of this so far, I’d suggest continuing

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm afraid I liked the first film no more than "barely moderately". Just not my sort of movies, I guess.

[cdnchris]

Ben Shapiro's Twitter rant critiquing Glass Onion for operating like a typical movie containing twists, as if it's the first one to do this (warning: major spoilers)

Lol. Clearly it was his first time ever watching a film, or a mystery anyways, a genre that has to misdirect. I remember hearing something about him being a failed screenwriter and I see some have been throwing that back at him based on his comments.

I thought this was pretty fun, but I also liked the first. I can see the first half maybe not being all that involving as it's pretty by the numbers (and I'm sure that was all purposely set up) but then it changes direction and goes a fun route with, Shapiro's big problem with it.

And though I'm sure Norton's character is a composite of numerous billionaires

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the character feels very timely with Musk's status as tech genius falling apart recently.

[therewillbeblus]

Ben Shapiro's Twitter rant critiquing Glass Onion for operating like a typical movie containing twists, as if it's the first one to do this (warning: major spoilers)

Lol. Clearly it was his first time ever watching a film, or a mystery anyways, a genre that has to misdirect.

Apparently he actually has seen the film's biggest influence, and didn't get it either

[Never Cursed]

If he wants to do some more failed introspection through the influences of the Knives Outs, I imagine he would feel a twinge of self-recognition when Laurence Olivier calls Michael Caine "a jumped-up pantry boy who doesn't know his place"

[thirtyframesasecond]

If he wants to do some more failed introspection through the influences of the Knives Outs, I imagine he would feel a twinge of self-recognition when Laurence Olivier calls Michael Caine "a jumped-up pantry boy who doesn't know his place"

Having never seen Sleuth before, I now know where the line from This Charming Man comes from.

[Never Cursed]

Having never seen Sleuth before, I now know where the line from This Charming Man comes from.

Sleuth is one of those "if you haven't seen it, drop everything and watch it immediately without looking anything up about it" movies. See it as soon as you can. Astonishing acting from Olivier and Caine, as well as the less-well-known but still supremely effective Alec Cawthorne.

[therewillbeblus]

Alec Cawthorne

This is a strange tie-in but relevant if you’ve seen all the films discussed:

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seeing Dan Chariton show up in Glass Onion made me finally concede that he played Sam Harpoon, not Ben Stiller, in Licorice Pizza

[Kracker]

Glad to see Rian was just as pissed about them putting "A Knives Out Mystery" in the title. After all, i didnt see them titling another film that came out this year, "Death on the Nile: A Murder on the Orient Express Mystery"

[Never Cursed]

Unfortunately I agree that Glass Onion is a big step down from the first (though still good). Johnson's approach to Blanc's existence outside of a single two-hour narrative feels weirdly indebted to the structure of a self-contained TV episode rather than a movie (same guy, same milieu, same things about him that change and stay constant, but different location and partner), but it works for an ensemble piece that uses him as a disarming superhero; ultimately I think the sitcomification of the narrative says more about where the medium of film is right now than this film. The movie flounders the most in its laugh-free first hour, an endless parade of mugging and celeb cameos that collectively resembles the ricketiness of a current-day SNL episode. I don't think the movie is Too Online or Regurgitates Discourse in the way that some real terminally online critics of it have accused it (and I say this as someone who is much too Online), but the Fauci gags and the sight of Daniel Craig playing Among Us with some recently deceased theater luminaries still lands with a whiff of desperate relevance-chasing that the structure of a potboiler doesn't even demand. Why include anything about the pandemic if the film doesn't play off the safety-unsafety dichotomy it introduces, and why is the worldly and class-conscious Benoit Blanc a celeb-focused starfucker? It also doesn't help that the ensemble of rich bitch suspects is weaker here than in the first Knives Out: Dave Bautista (so weird that he has become the Gallant to the Rock's Goofus) and Edward Norton kill with somewhat undercooked roles, Leslie Odom Jr. and Madelyn Cline barely register, and Kathryn Hahn and Kate Hudson turn in some of the worst comic performances I've seen in a recent film. Is Hahn's work in particular always this suffused with the cloying audience wink-nudges?

So one suffers for an hour, and then at that 60 minute mark precisely, the movie finally starts unfolding and twisting. Even though this segment begins with

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a murder depicted with surprising viscerality and pain,

there is an almost palpable sense of elation on Johnson's part, as though the kid that made the relentlessly-paced Brick has finally freed himself from a trap of his own design.

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And while Janelle Monae does not pull the same miracle trick that Ana de Armas did in the previous movie, her Pygmalion-aping segment of the film still leaves a good impression. I know the nature of the twist has ruffled some feathers elsewhere on the internet, but I think it's pretty smart. There's no actual filmic reason to assume that Blanc is a focal character and his expressed thoughts are the truth (and this disarming quality is the real function of his Kentucky-fried charm, and the reason why it mostly goes away once we return to the final drawing-room scene), but Johnson and Craig do a lot of good work to nudge the viewer in that direction without ever cheating. If you were fine with the solution to the last film, impossibility-of-reasonable-deduction and all, this one's shouldn't bother you. And if there's one surprising positive to take away from the film's political message, it's the acknowledgement that some punishments for the ultra-powerful have to extend beyond what the law or legalist figures such as Blanc can offer. He's completed by Marta and Helen, he needs them as partners, because they can deceive and play underhanded in ways that he won't (and also because they're not offended by stupidity in the way that he is - shades of that one Reddit(?) post contrasting Waltz and Foxx in Django Unchained).

No matter what, there are at least 70 minutes of good entertainment here, even if the film is smothered a little under all the trappings of a sequel with an expanded mandate.

[knives]

I suspect the structural similarities have less to do with television and more to do with the dimeback basis of these films. I’ve been mentally comparing him the Poirot for example. Those narratives tend to have a very fixed structure. Also, I’m pretty sure Grant isn’t playing himself.