Knives Out

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Knives Out is a highly enjoyable whodunit comedy with terrific directing and writing from Rian Johnson and excellent performances from its cast. One of the best films in recent years.

I rented this movie from RedBox.

This is a good solid crime mystery in the same vein as Clue. They even reference Clue once in the film when talking about the house.
At the same time, this takes your typical mystery formula and flips some of the elements on its head, turning the story out in a very different and fun way through the perspective of one of the characters.

And despite the movie actually showing you a lot of what actually happened early on, it still keeps you on your toes, at the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next.
It's very difficult to talk much about this movie without giving too much away in spoilers, but it's very good. As I was hoping and expecting from Rian Johnson with how good The Last Jedi turned out. Yes I said it.

Mistake Status: Didn't catch any on the first viewing. I'll likely buy and watch this movie again.

Quantom X

This movie deserves praise for being an unconventional wuddunit, but it does not necessarily mean it is a good one. Its structure is not devoid of intriguing aspects, and does a lovely job involving the viewer by putting some real stakes in for the protagonist, going beyond the pure intellectual cat-and-mouse guessing game. The two elements that perplex me, especially considering the wild praise for its cleverness, are the fact that the plot is well structured when it comes to emotion and storytelling but way too rough around the edges in small irritating ways, with large logical loopholes (some may be deliberate, some certainly are not), and most importantly, it utterly wastes about half of its cast giving them practically nothing to do, in part exactly because eliminating entirely the guesswork there's little reason for them to be there except for rather formulaic interactions. I have my reservations about the writing when it comes to dialogues, not so memorable for the most part, and painfully self-aware at times. In fact, I don't really know what to do with the political subtext, or rather, flashing hovertext: it is handled in such a hamfisted way that I am not even sure of its actual meaning. The story itself conveys a 'political' message without any need for actual random buzzwords thrown in all of a sudden.

Good news is that those characters who do get a fair amount of screentime and any weight in the plot work wonderfully. De Armas is very likeable, Craig is hilarious, Evans is charmingly villainous. It's a fun movie, just it feels like parts of the mix did not quite work as smoothly as they were supposed to be, but I suspect it's because Rian Johnson's idea of what is funny or clever do not resonate well with me. It happens!

Sammo

Continuity mistake: There's a clear mix-up in editing during the car chase. Marta checks her phone twice for Blanc's calls as she tries to get away from the police. The first time the phone signals 9:36 AM, the second time 9:34 AM. (01:31:50)

Sammo

More mistakes in Knives Out

Benoit Blanc: I suspect foul play. I have eliminated no suspects.

More quotes from Knives Out
More trivia for Knives Out

Question: How did blood drop reached Marta's shoes, even though it was too far from Christopher Plummer in the suicide scene? (00:53:50)

Answer: To add slightly to the other answer, evidently some of the blood in the scene had to be digitally removed for the film to secure a PG-13 rating, which explains why we don't see any actual spray/gush. But we are to assume that a drop managed to splash onto her shoe when he slit his throat.

TedStixon

Answer: The rationale is that blood can travel quite far from an artery and her shoe therefore got the droplet on it even from the doorway - however it does seem to me that the filmic portrayal is lacking, since you don't actually see any instance of spray. Rian Johnson' script says "Blood gushes." What we see in the scene is that it is trickling down his cut - a bit.

Sammo

More questions & answers from Knives Out

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