Mystery abounds in brilliantly fun Knives Out

Daniel Craig, LaKeith Stanfield, and Noah Segan in Knives Out. Image courtesy Lions Gate.

At the center of Knives Out is a murder most foul. Legendary mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is discovered dead by his nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) the morning after his birthday party. The suspects are Harlan's flesh and blood. Could it have been his daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), or her husband Richard (Don Johnson), or his son Ransom (Chris Evans)? Was it Walt (Michael Shannon), or his wife Donna (Riki Lindhome), or his son Jacob (Jaeden Martell)? Or maybe it was his daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette) or granddaughter Meg (Katherine Langford)? Everyone has a motive and opportunity, and it's up to private eye Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, sporting a brilliantly absurd southern accent), Lieutenant Elliot (LaKeith Stanfield), and Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) to determine what caused Harlan Thrombey's demise.

Saying too much more would ruin the fun writer/director Rian Johnson has with Knives Out. This movie is a blast from start to end, zigging and zagging and zigging again from one deliriously clever twist to the next. Johnson weaves his tale tightly, providing the audience nearly exactly the amount of information to make the final big swerve ending nearly perfect. This is an incredibly difficult trick to pull off in a genre notorious for hiding vital information from the viewer just for the sake of maintaining the mystery. That isn't Johnson's style though. Rather, he employs storytelling and filmmaking sleights of hand to retain a scintilla of ambiguity, just enough to keep the audience from knowing for sure what led to Harlan Thrombey's demise. You could watch Knives Out for days on end to find the little Easter eggs and hints Johnson throws in to throw viewers off. He borrows liberally from films like Rashomon and The Maltese Falcon as little tricks, playing on audience expectations from years of precedent, only to upend the expectations early on because it's far more fun to play with a genre than adhere to the rules strictly.

Johnson fortunately carries over the mystery genre tradition of the terribly wealthy family being terrible. The characters (and cast by extension) in Knives Out are an absolute hoot, dropping bon mots and retorts with the perfect amount of spite and malice. They are designed to be perfectly detestable, wrapped up in their world of wealth yet trying ever so hard to think they've earned anything despite starting at third base. It is so, so much fun watching these folks squirm during Benoit Blanc's interrogations or realize everything they'd planned for in life has gone to pot. The Thrombeys deserve the worst, and yet there is something sad about the entire affair. The film depicts a family that long ago gave up on ever actually liking one another, effectively waiting for their patriarch to die to inherit their slice of Harlan Thrombey's millions. Johnson's sense of humor doesn't completely cover the sadness of that scenario; avarice tore the Thrombey family asunder and nothing can ever repair that lost connection. Harlan Thrombey's legacy is a family with motive to murder him, which is both tragic and apropos for a genre dedicated to greed.

It is easy to read the tragedy in Knives Out, but Johnson and company are far, far more interested in putting on one helluva show than reflect on the sadness of being. This is one of the most purely fun films to come out this year, balancing entertainment with a fun little mental puzzle to keep viewers enthralled and engaged in the action on screen. Almost everything works about this film – from the writing and directing to the casting and right into the spacing, lighting, and even costumes. Every little thing in this movie means something, every frayed thread on a sweater or confused memory leads to something big and interesting. Knives Out is a piece of exquisite filmmaking that never fails to entertain its viewers, which is about as high of praise as a film can get.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 130 minutes

Genre: Crime

tl;dr

What Worked: Script, Acting, Daniel Craig's accent

What Fell Short: One reveal is a little too obvious

What To Watch As Well: Brick, Murder on the Orient Express

Action falls short in Charlie's Angels reboot

Ella Balinska, Kristen Stewart, and Naomi Scott in Charlie's Angels. Image courtesy Columbia Pictures.

Some credit is due to the new incarnation of Charlie's Angels for being somewhat different than the eponymous television series and recent movie franchise. This new version uses the previous versions as a launching pad to tell a contemporary story about surviving and thriving in a male-dominated world. But there's little else beyond this worth writing home about, as the positives are often undercut by a film with a lot of nagging gaps and unmemorable action sequences. Charlie's Angels isn't a bad film; it's just incomplete.

Charlie's Angels stars Kristen Stewart and Ella Balinska as Sabina and Jane, two agents in the international Townsend Detective Agency. Sabina and Jane are assigned to protect Elena (Naomi Scott), a brilliant programmer turned whistleblower against her boss Peter (Nat Faxon). Elena wants to inform company owner Alexander Brock (Sam Claflin) about a potentially lethal flaw in their new product, but the situation quickly becomes dangerous, leaving the three alone with a new Bosley (writer/director Elizabeth Banks) to investigate what went wrong. Meanwhile, the original Bosley (a wonderful Patrick Stewart) is just starting retirement, but becomes suspicious about potential wrongdoing in his old organization.

Charlie's Angels has some wonky bits that course through the script. There's a twist, and a twist upon the original twist, and neither twist is developed particularly well. Rather, they come across as inorganic to the narrative, existing for the sake of existing because fulfilling the first twist violates one of the film's reason to be. Eliminating the thematic dissonance that first twist brings, the film telegraphs both twists poorly, missing an important beat or two in the order of presentation, as well as a flashback that does not fit the rest of the film.

Generally it seems like there is a scene or two that is missed to tie this twist together. The rest of the film has this feeling too, that there's just something incomplete about Charlie's Angels. Where this strikes most is in the film's character arcs. Banks' script is missing a few key moments of growth in the relationship between Sabina and Jane, with the film jumping from mild hostility to emotional dependence without tying the two elements together. There's not a moment where the two depend on each other, including the action sequences where it would fit naturally to have such a moment. The issue falls with a script that tries to wring so much out of the two-hour run time it can't find time to connect the characters, sequences, and intrigue into a cohesive unit. Charlie's Angels would be a better film with either more time to develop the characters and story or removing some elements in favor of a more linear plot.

The film's script is imperfect, but it's not a bad baseline for the film to build on. Banks has a lot of fun with Charlie's Angels as a concept, creating a fascinating world with a female-oriented spy agency can infiltrate all aspects of society. Female unity is a key theme for this movie, with women uniformly looking out for one another through dangerous situations and chauvinism both brazen and subtle. Sabina is also a fantastic character, a queer lead unashamed of her broad sexual preferences and yet does not fall into the bisexual trope of being overly flirtatious. Sabina is written well and performed even better by Stewart, who expresses more zest and glee than usual while tossing in some pretty solid line deliveries. At the least Banks has a strong sense of humor, writing in some solid little quips and a keen understanding of exactly how long to let a running joke go before cutting it off.

Banks is very good as a comedic writer/director, but her action chops need work. Charlie's Angels suffers from uninspired action sequences that lack excitement and panache. There's nothing awe-inspiring or innovative about the fights on screen, nothing to thrill audiences or give them their money's worth. Even the comedic fight scenes involving Elena fall short, a missed opportunity for the film to showcase a little slapstick. Banks' innate sense of humor keeps Charlie's Angels from failure, but the lack of action and inconsistent character development dooms the film to mediocrity.

Review: Two and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 118 minutes

Genre: Action

tl;dr

What Worked: Kristen Stewart, Patrick Stewart, Humor

What Fell Short: Character Development, Action, Plotting

What To Watch Instead: Charlie's Angels

Last Christmas charms despite multitude of flaws

Emilia Clarke in Last Christmas. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

On many, many levels, Last Christmas is a bad film. It does so much wrong when it comes to writing, plotting, comedy, and tone, coming out as a weird, awkward film that basically rips off a Charles Dickens classic. And yet, for some reason, I kind of like it anyway. Maybe it's due to the seasonal milieu, or the George Michael soaked soundtrack, or perhaps a charming lead performance that lifts the film up just enough to make it work, kind of.

Last Christmas stars Emilia Clarke as Kate, whose aspirations of a singing career have yet to take off. Instead she spends her days working as an elf at an all-year Christmas shop for the stern Santa (Michelle Yeoh), spending her nights couch surfing, angering her friends, and hanging around local pubs. All the while she does her best to avoid her mother Petra (Emma Thompson, who co-wrote the film), father Ivan (Boris Isakovic), and sister Marta (Lydia Leonard). Her life changes after a chance encounter with the charmingly happy Tom (Henry Golding), who inspires Kate to turn her life around. As Kate begins to regain her sense of place, her relationship with Tom becomes a skosh more complicated than expected.

Why is the relationship so complicated? It's the result of a big old swerve in the third act in which Last Christmas takes the most literal interpretation of the opening line to the eponymous song. It is a remarkably ludicrous twist, such a silly little idea it's unclear how Thompson and writing partners Byrony Kimmings and Greg Wise got this film made. And it gets even more ridiculous when they and director Paul Feig try to justify the logic behind this last-act reveal by ripping off a 20-year-old David Fincher movie. The whole thing is madness, and I sort of love that the filmmakers made a film with such a brilliantly misguided premise. 

 

The rest of the film's flaws are far less fun. Last Christmas has a plethora of problems hosted within its script. The most basic is an overload of exposition, particularly when it comes to Kate's depiction of her family. She rants often about her dysfunctional family, yet what the film shows is more kooky than properly broken, which undermines the inevitable family reconciliation in the final act. The film's tone is wonky as all heck, as if the script pulled pieces from other movies and Frankensteined them together with some holly and tinsel. There are so many montages of Kate apologizing for being awful it undercuts her emotional voyage because all her apologies feel far too easy because they're consolidated into montages. Even with that consolidation there remains a slew of plot holes and dropped storylines that make the film feel generally incomplete, like Thompson and friends had an idea but never got around to fleshing it out fully. Last Christmas can't even end right, eliding right over an effective climax for an unsatisfactory finish.

Last Christmas has a few more subtle annoyances to go along with the blatant problems. The filmmakers shame the hell out of Kate, chastising not just her evenings out and mornings after but even her dreams of becoming a singer. The film does a passing attempt at addressing the wave of anti-immigration fervor and LGBTQIA issues but doesn't really connect on either front. The former is undermined by a racially tinged punchline by Petra. The latter is the addition of an incredibly chaste lesbian relationship without depth or proper narrative payoff. Like the rest of Last Christmas, the ideas are there but the execution is all wrong.

Yet despite all those issues there is something ultimately kind of endearing about this movie. If Last Christmas hits one's feels, it hits them because below the chaos is a basic enough story of a person trying to find the good inside herself. Feig, Thompson, and the rest of the filmmakers get this one bit of storytelling correct, and Clarke does her best to charm the audience into finding value in her character's redemption. This might be the film's one real saving grace, and it's just enough to make Last Christmas a bit charming, warts and all.

Review: Two and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 102 minutes

Genre: Romantic Comedy

tl;dr

What Worked: Emilia Clarke, Michelle Yeoh

What Fell Short: Writing, Directing, Twist

What To Watch Instead: About Time