Movie Breakdown: Knives Out (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Oh, Rian Johnson made a new film? Cool, I’ve only been waiting for this one to come out since that kid in The Last Jedi stared into the stars and I was like, “ohhhhh, that’s nice.” But yeah, this is exciting.
Post-Screening Ramble:
You will enjoy Knives Out. Rian Johnson has crafted a movie chock full of your favorite actors in various takes on their beloved personas and he has cast them in a fast paced film that is both enjoyable, surprising, nostalgic, twisty, politically prescient, eye-poppingly gorgeous and on and on and on. This film – which you will want to know nothing about because the surprise of, well, all of it is all of the fun – is great and you should take your grandparents and your cousins and that creepy guy who showed up with your sister because it’s almost Thanksgiving and you should be nicer. So yes, Rian Johnson and every famous person in Hollywood’s new movie Knives Out is a damn good time.
That said, Knives Out, to a small degree, feels a little bit, narratively, like a lot of smoke with very small amounts of fire. It might be the way the film has been marketed – the twistiest twister of all twistitudes with lots of twists! – and the fact that halfway through it Johnson throws that movie right out the fucking window and all of sudden you aren’t just scrambling to figure out what’s going on but also what kind of film you’re now watching. Or maybe it’s just that when Johnson does pull the rug he does so with a narrative trick that doesn’t turn the dial as much as it needs to be turned and when the twists of all twists are suddenly untwisted, it isn’t all that surprising. Instead it’s like, “oh yeah, I can see that,” when it should be, “Whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Rian Johnson you’ve blown my mindddddddddddd!!!” What Johnson gives the audience instead is a sort of behind-the-curtain stab at wealth parity and politics and the importance of kindness wrapped up in the illusion of the illusion of a whodunnit. Which is great, and yeah, this film is fun and I walked out with a weird smile on my face and was happy to have seen it even if there’s a touch of emptiness at the heart of it, but maybe that was my expectation, my assumption, and you know what they say about assuming things (it involves asses).
One Last Thought:
Second time this week I was totally shocked by the reveal of when I’d seen an actor before. Ana de Armas, who plays the seemingly very young Marta was also the sexy hologram in Blade Runner 2049. This really just tossed my sense of perception right out the window.
