Monday, January 06, 2020

Movie review - "Knives Out" (2019) ***1/2

I get why Rian Johnson is so beloved by film buffs - his films are full of references to other movies and they tend to have a clearly understood theme which is spelt out; they are also generally entertaining to watch and he seems like a lovely guy.

This is a homage to Agatha Christie murder mysteries - but also Hitchcock and Anthony Schaeffer and that whole genre, complete with an all star cast, an old dark house, a will reading, a corpse. It's a bit over long and wobbly in places -I keep wishing Johnson would use a co writer - and could have used more spooky stuff like the body in the cellar, but is smart and I'm delighted a non comic book movie did so well at the box office.

There's lots of close ups of Ana de Armas' face reacting to things -Johnson really loves putting her center of the frame - she is the leading person more so than Daniel Craig, who has a high old time with his Mississippi  accent as the detective.

Excellent support from Don Johnson (having a career renaissance with this and Watchmen),  Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Plummer, Chris Evans... actually everyone is good.

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