Category Archives: Movies

Movie: Review M3gan

When the trailers for M3gan dropped I was far from impressed and planned not to see the movie. However, as reports came in from both the horror community and non-horror community that this was actually an entertaining film, I became curious enough to see it. I held my expectations in check though, having remembered that the horror community lost its mind over X, and I found that slasher far from coherent.

M3gan worked and I quite enjoyed myself at last night’s screening. Instead of pursuing a serious realistic tone this screenplay and movie leaned more into camp and irony, leaping to playfulness rather than seriousness to achieve its entertainment.

Cady (Violet McGraw) after becoming orphaned goes to live with her Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) who is a genius at artificial intelligence and robots creating robotic toys. Gemma, thrust suddenly into the role of parent, and utterly at a loss as to how to help Cady process her grief, adapts her robot toy project M3gan to assist, imprinting the android on Cady with the directive to protect Cady from harm. Harm having a wide definition and M3gan with a capacity to learn, adapt, and self-program leads to the expected horrific outcomes.

M3gan can be closely compared to Alex Garland’s Ex Machina another film that deals with the complexities of artificial intelligence and androids that develop their own agendas. Where Garland’s film is a serious mediation on the subject, and quite excellent, M3gan utilizes a far less serious tenor to achieve a similar story. Of course, both stories owe a deep debt to Shelly’s Frankenstein as both ex-Machina and M3gan explore in their own manner the responsibility that creators owe their creations.

A quite pleasant surprise in the movie was Ronnie Chang as Gemma’s boss playing a role that while it had comedic elements was not principally devoted to laughter.

Director Gerard Johnstone and writer Akela Cooper managed to violate a few screenplay ‘rules’ about who and what you can kill in a film and not lose the audience, displaying a confidence and skill that elevated the project.

M3gan is fun, campy, and entertaining and is currently still in theaters and available on VOD at ‘theater at home’ pricing.

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ANOTHER CLICHE I DISLIKE

 

Twice in the space of a week I have been subjected to films that used the cliche ‘the character was psychotic’ and none of the dramatic events actually transpired.

(Spoilers for a 48-year-old film.) In 1975’s Footprints on the Moon, a woman discovers that she cannot remember the previous several days while also being terrified by a recurrent dream about a sadistic doctor torturing astronauts on the moon. She investigates clues as to where she had been during her amnesiac hours with the movie’s final reveal being that she was insane and all of it had been the product of a psychotic break.

The other film I shall not mention by title as it is much more recent and still playing exclusively on a streaming service. However, it lands with the same climax, a woman, after trauma from her past resurfaces and disrupts her perfect life, attempts to deal with the man who cause the trauma but none of it was real, and the entire film had been her break with reality.

When a movie utilizes the “Our protagonist is insane and all the fantastic events were hallucinations” trope this is little more than a dressed up, fancier edition of ‘it was all a dream.’

Like dream narratives psychotic break twists are infuriating. Throughout the story I may have invested serious emotional weight to the character’s issue, objectives, and challenges only to discover that I have been a sucker. None of it mattered, none it had any real consequence. Success and failure held the same values because reality did not apply. The ‘mystery’ Alice is attempting to solve in Footprints on the Moon has not weight because at the story’s start and its conclusion nothing has changed. She began the tale insane and ended it equally mad.

Shutter Island (2010) plays close to this cliche but the events on the screen are reality it is their interpretation that is subject to the protagonist’s delusions. When the story resolves there has been actual character growth and change making the tale have meaning rather than attempting a ‘gotcha’ with a twist.

There is the crux of the matter for me with this cliche. It renders everything meaningless without the weight of dramatic change.

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What I Want From Horror Films

 

 

In a word the answer is unsettled. I want well after the film has ended and I have either returned home or switched off the television to still be thinking about and uneasy with what was presented to me.

This is part of the reason why slashers, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the like do very little for me. I am not principally interested ‘the kills’ and jump scares are only startling in the moment lacking in any lasting emotional weight. A good jump scare can add spice to a movie, but most are predictable, telegraphing their arrival well before the moment of sudden movement accompanied by a loud discharge on the soundtrack.

A monster movie can be better than a slasher, particularly when the monster has a symbolic role, such as ‘The Nothing’ in The Night House or The Babadook, each a representation of the horror of grief without losing the requirements of good story and tension needed for an excellent horror film.

But like jump scares, metaphor can be over employed yielding a less coherent experience that is more confounding than unsettling. Alex Garland’s Men is like this for me. Clearly Garland is tilling the fields of grief and regret with a plow of generalized gendered threat that is common to women’s experience in the real world. However, by the film’s end it is impossible to know what was diegetic, that is to say real within the fictional setting, and what was cinematic metaphoric convention for the audience’s consumption. Rory Kinnear portrayed every male role in the film except for Harper’s deceased spouse. Now, as a metaphor intended for the audience that’s fine and dandy. We understand why harper takes no notice that every man she meets in the village wears the same face, because only we are seeing that repeated appearance. But, in the film’s final sequence when her friend Riley arrives, the detritus of the previous night’s horrific events is strewn about indicating that this was not a symbolism of Harper’s trauma but diegetic reality. If that’s the case, then why did Harper not react to all the men being physically the same? It’s a circle I can’t seem to square. Men has many a scene, shot, and sequence that is vastly unsettling, but the interpretation is so difficult that I find the film impossible to enjoy. half-way to Lynch leaves me stranded.

I recognize that I am ‘tough room.’ There are many recent horror films that have been enthusiastically embraced by the community that failed for me but luckily the genre is wide and deep enough that there are plenty of films for all of us.

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A Re-interpretation of Signs (2002)

 

 

This essay is laden with spoilers.

Signs, the third feature film from M. Night Shyamalan, released in 2002 has widely been interpreted as a science-fiction film concerning an alien invasion. While the ‘invasion’ takes place globally the film remains fixed on a single Pennsylvanian farm family head by Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) a former priest who has lost his faith following the traffic accident death of his wife. Throughout the story is peppered with disconnected actions and random quirks of characters, the wife’s dying words seemingly referring to a baseball game, the youngest daughter’s habit of abandoning half full glasses of water, the older boy’s asthma, but by the end of the film each item is precisely placed to ensure the family’s survival. The accumulation of these ‘random’ events restores Graham’s faith in religion and that ‘everything happens for a reason.’

The film, while successful upon release with a US domestic box office total of more than 200 million dollars, was criticized for the unlikely occurrence that a spacefaring race would ‘invade’ Earth when half a tumbler of water was more than enough to cause them serious physical damage.

As science-fiction the film makes no sense. Presuming some form of life may exist without liquid water the nature of that life would be so radically different from terrestrial life as to render our entire environment lethal to them. To walk upon the Earth without benefit of protective gear would be like a person walking on a planet with acid hanging in the air. Let’s not talk about the absurdity of ‘crop circles’ as a method of navigation to a race capable of crossing the nearly unimageable distance between stars. Patterns in local crops are visible to only a few hundred or thousand kilometers,

Additionally, the concept that ‘everything happened for a reason’ is wholly incompatible with a universe governed by blind physical laws devoid of a creator or guiding intelligence. Science-Fiction is a rationalist medium and requires that the fantastic be ‘explained’ by natural law and physical processes. That is not to say that SF is incompatible with horror, author Gregory Benford in his short story A Dance to Strange Music crafter a terrifying tale of planetary exploration with disturbing imagery and events that were fully explained by physical laws but remained terrifying.

Signs makes no attempt to justify how all these little random things existed to save the Hess household other than that ‘they were there for a reason.’ Simply put, the story does not work as science-fiction.

But what if it is not science-fiction? What if Signs belongs to another genre of horror?

Consider, we never actually saw the ‘starships’ that brought the ‘aliens’ to Earth. Why do we ‘know’ that they are actually aliens? They never stopped to announce such a thing to us, never proclaimed that they originated from the star system we call Zeta Reticuli. (Bonus points for spotting that SF Horror reference.)

What if Signs is a better fit for an Occult Horror movie than a science-fiction one? So much that is incompatible with science-fiction works if we consider everything to be occult driven.

Not aliens, but demons.

Strange glyphs and symbols are traditionally part of the occult.

 Water makes much more sense against supernatural creature than naturally evolved organisms.

And of course, then there is a ‘purpose’ to life, existence, and all the ‘random’ things and quirks are part of the grand plan.

Signs is much more akin to The Exorcist, a priest with shattered faith finds it again when confront by a demon, than War of the Worlds.

Nothing in the record supports that writer/director Shyamalan intended such an interpretation so call this my personal head cannon, but it resolves all the films issues without contradicting anything on the screen.

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Objective Achieved: Enys Men

 

Writer/Director Mark Jenkin in a recent interview stated that one of his goals with his new atmospheric folk horror film Enys Men (the second word is pronounced like ‘main.) is to replicate the look of a low budgeted film from the 1970s.

He has nailed that objective to perfection.

Everything in the trailer, with the exception of the helicopter, looks period perfect. The film stock, the lenses, the aspect ratio, and even the composition of the frames all look spot on for a low budget horror movie of say 1972 or 73.

Take a look yourself. This is one film I will be catching the moment I can.

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A Study of the Toxic Fanboy: Tyler in The Menu

Searchlight Pictures

 

 

 

The following essay includes plot details including the major twist in Mark Mylod’s feature film The Menu.

 

The Menu has been principally viewed as a class focused social satire with strong elements of horror. Even the characters, such as Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) refer to each other by class distinction, ‘Givers’ and ‘Takers.’ Slowik bemoans the fact that his artistry has reached a price point where the only people with the means to experience it are constitutionally incapable of enjoying it as they are never satisfied. The ultra-wealthy consume mindlessly, the act of consumption becoming merely a peacocking display utterly devoid of enjoyment, meaning, or even memorable. One set of characters are revealed to have spent nearly 28,000 dollars experiencing Chef’s artistry and yet fail to recall a single clear instance of it.

Beyond the social economic class divide between the service industry artists of Chef, his staff, and wealth patrons The Menu also holds sharp biting commentary of the Uber-Fan, represented by Tyle (Nicholas Hoult.)

While Tyler is in fact a member of the wealth class, he mentions the price of the exclusive dinner, $1250 per person, without even the slightest hesitation or hint of trouble at this extravagance. It is also clear that Tyler is well off since he can hire an expensive escort for an evening date. That said Tyler is not here because he is wealthy, ruined Chef’s day off with a pitiful performance, or has failed to appreciate the artistry, but rather he is precisely for because his slavish adoration of Chef and his ‘experience’ is an example of the taxic fan that disgraces the art for both the artist and consumer.

Tyler, like a devoted franchise fa who can quote every obscure fact of legendary lore, has buried himself in the minutia of technique but without any understanding or comprehension of art’s meaning. While horrors unfold around him, dismemberment and suicide, Tyler is lost in the taste and texture of the menu’s courses.

Desperate for validation and as a vainglorious showboat Tyler takes every opportunity to demonstrate his deep knowledge or culinary tools and techniques while simultaneously snubbing and disparaging his companion for her own tastes and interests. He berates ‘Margot’ (Anya Taylor-Joy) for ruining her palate with cigarette smoke and demeans her intelligence when it comes to Chef’s final thematic point. “You won’t figure it out until the end.”

Later it is revealed that not only it was Chef’s intent that the culmination of the evening was that everyone was doomed to die but that Tyler was already fully aware of this. Tyler, utterly obsessed with experiencing Chef Slowik’s extraordinary talents, is willing to die for a single evening meal at the exclusive restaurant. Even more horrifying Tyler engaged a professional escort, ‘Margot’, when his original date broke up with him. Tyler held everyone else in contempt, holding himself above and apart from the rabble due to his deep knowledge and understanding to the culinary arts.

However, he was blind to Chef’s disdain for him. Tyler’s obsession is not the honor that Chef wants for his skill. Slowik hates Tyler for his pathetic, fawning, idolization and it was not enough for Chef that Tyler die along with himself, the staff, and the other diners, but Tyler’s humiliation was required.

Turning into the film third act, Chef Slowik pulls Tyler from his seat and, after dressing him as a chef, brings him into the kitchen to display his own culinary talents.

Of which Tyler has none.

Like so many dedicate, noisy, bossy, and opinionated fanboys Tyler when faced with creating a work in the art he knows so well fails miserably producing the supplemental course labeled Tyler’s Bullshit. For all his posturing, pronouncements, and peacocking Tyler is revealed an empty vessel with nothing of his own to contribute.

Chef words, unheard by the audience, destroys what little remained of Tyler and prompting Tyler’s suicide.  The obsessive fan, and it is wise to remember that the word ‘fan’ is derived from ‘fanatic,’ corrupt the art that they profess to love. They have replaced understanding with minutia, promoting with gatekeeping, and empathy with arrogance.

Real art and real appreciation require humility as well talent and understanding.

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Glass Onion’s Ending

 

 

Clearly as I am speaking about the final resolution to the satirical second outing of Detective

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Benoit Blanc, the center piece of this post is built entirely on a crucial and major spoiler for the film. Proceed if you have seen the movie or simply do not care about knowing the ending.

 

 

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

After Detective Blanc revealed that billionaire tech-bro Miles Bron had murdered his former partner, Cassandra Brand, along with a friend bent on blackmailing Bron with that knowledge, but that he lacked direct evidence to convict Bron, Cassandra’s sister Helen’s rampage destroys Bron’s home. The fire destroyed Bron plans, upon which he had wagered his entire company, for a new safe energy system.

Among the artifacts destroyed in the conflagration was the famed painting The Mona Lisa, on loan to Bron by the French government and for whom Bron held an obsessive interest. Expressed in his desire to do something that would be so great, so extraordinary, that it would be remembered in the same breath as Davinci’s famous work. The ironic justice in Helen’s rampage is that by being responsible for the Mona Lisa’s destruction Miles Bron as in fact achieved his obsessive fantasy of forever being linked with the painting.

On the screenwriting podcast Scriptnotes writer/Director Rian Johnson, admitted that there was some trepidation that the audience would rebel at the priceless work of art’s destruction. As an insurance policy should the audience find that a bridge too far for their enjoyment, Johnson filmed a never utilized post-credit scene that revealed that painting consumed on in the blaze had been in fact a reproduction and not the original. However, test screenings showed that people accepted his original scripted intentions and the cannon of the film remained that the original was destroyed.

Had that post-credit sequence been used it would have been a mistake and a terrible disservice to the story.

It is a firm conviction of mine that endings are where all the critical themes and meanings in a story are fully realized. Endings must be earned and that must fulfill not only the narrative and emotional requirements of the story they must mean something.

Famously when Frank Oz adapted the musical play Little Shop of Horrors into a feature film, he found that the audience hated the ending with the protagonist feeding his love to the plant followed by himself. However, Oz’s also edited the number The Meek Shall Inherit where the protagonist, faced with the choice between doing right or self-serving interests, removing that character’s critical decision which justified the character’s death.

Had Johnson used the post-credit scene revealing that the Mona Lisa was in fact safe and sound in Paris then the entire ending would lose all its power. With the original unharmed the most devastating consequence of Bron’s idiocy and arrogance would have been wholly negated. That ending would have lacked justice.

Endings are the most critical element of the story. A flawed ending ruins the destination’s journey. (I am looking at you HBO’s Game of Thrones.) It is why I must be a plotter, outlining my novel before starting them because without knowing the destination how can I ever to earn it?

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A Tired Trope

 

Feature films and television is filled with tired worn-out tropes used to glide past problem spots in scripts and create false tension. There is one that I wish desperately to die, the improvised or fortunate bullet-stopper.

We’ve seen this for decades upon decades. A character is shot in the chest, almost certainly dead, only for it to be revealed later that something stopped the bullet. Bruce Wayne’s improved one with a silver tray in Tim Burton’s Batman, a lead token proved the essential protection in Deadpool 2, books are a commonly used device, though it can be forgiven in Sleepy Hollow as at least there was no modern ammunition was used.

Variations on this trope include impromptu shields, Arnold used bystanders to prevent himself from being riddled with sub-machine gun rounds in Total Recall and Steve Rogers used a convenient taxi door to stop rounds from a semi-automatic pistol in Captain American: The First Avenger.

In all these cases the filmmakers and writers have ignored that modern bullets posses ‘overpenetration.’ The rounds often, depending on the substance of the target, have more the energy to pierce metal and flesh with enough remaining to exit and continue on presenting danger to those beyond.

The sub-machine rounds in Total Recall would have torn through the poor bystander Quaid used as a shield and into Arnold’s character himself. No mere silver tray would stop even a small caliber round and Wayne would have been grievously injured.

I have learned to ignore this trope when it raises it ignorant head, but I will not continue its presence in my own work. Firearms are lethally dangerous even if you have a book in your breast pocket.

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Both Miles Bron AND Ben Shapiro are Idiots

 

 

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Two days ago, Ben Shapiro took to Twitter to pronounce Glass Onion, reviewed on this blog and a wonderful film, was in fact bad artistically and politically. His opinion is flawed and idiotic as I will demonstrate.

 

 

Be warned after this  like blood, There Will Be Spoilers.

 

 

Ben Writes:

First, the writing. The first half of the movie is a complete misdirect and a waste of time.

and

We only find out about the actual murder we’re supposed to investigate full one hour and ten minutes into the film, as well as an entirely new backstory (Miles never invited Blanc, and Andi has a twin sister masquerading as her). We’re actively deceived by the writer.

Many people have already pointed out the idiocy of not expecting misdirection in a murder mystery, but I want to lean on the word ‘complete’ which implies quite falsely that there were no clues, (You know what clues are don’t you Ben?) in the first act that what we were presented with was not the entire picture.

As each invitee receives the box, they each understand it is a puzzle and seek to solve it. Calling on each other for help. Helen/Andi doesn’t try to solve it but attacks it with furious anger. Not frustration, not annoyance, but intense hatred.

When we see the first puzzle box delivered to Claire, we are shown that it came by professional courier. Yet, while Blanc is in the tub playing online games with celebrities a voice calls out, “Someone is here to see you.” pause “And they have a box.”

Phillip did not shout out, “There’s a delivery!” or “Ben you have to sign for this!” or “What did you order?” None of the things people actually say when confronted with a surprise delivery. Look Ben, a clue that this was not like the others.

As the invitees arrive at the pier to go to the private island it is clear that Blanc is watching each arrival carefully. Yet, when he speaks it is an exaggeration of his normal patterns. A clue that he is already playing a part.

When Miles sees Andi’s arrival at the island, the reaction is one of utter shock. Edward Norton gives you the full reaction of a man seeing someone who he really really thought was dead. Not the socially awkward reaction of an unwanted guest. It is as obvious and as easily missed as looking directly at Bruce Willis and saying, “I see dead people.”

After Helen/Andi’s initial confrontation with the disruptors, she stumbles off, after she clearly not knowing that Claire had called following up on the email, Claire muses “She’s changed.” Well, yes here’s another clue that Andi is not in fact Andi, a pretty big one.

Oh, and ben we didn’t wait half the film to discover that Miles hadn’t invited Blanc. Miles took Blanc aside when he arrived and stated he had not invited him, and Blanc misdirects him to think one of the others ‘reset’ their puzzle box to invite him as a gag.

Why the misdirect? Because the story itself in the purest form of incredible laziness. It relies on not one, not two, but three bad writing tropes: an identical twin, a comprehensive journal, and a moron of a murderer.

Well, as has been stated, misdirection in mysteries, like magic tricks, are an essential element of the genre. There were, as I have detailed, plenty of clues that Andi was not Andi, and Miles, while a moron, actually performed a pretty decent murder. So well executed in fact that at the end of the story it is clear he will face no legal consequences for killing Andi.

Now onto Ben’s interpretation of the film’s politics.

Rian Johnson’s politics is as lazy as his writing. His take on the universe is that Elon Musk is a bad and stupid man, and that anyone who likes him – in media, politics, or tech – is being paid off by him.

A common interpretation is the Miles Bron is a thinly veiled swipe at Elon Musk. While Bron is a ‘tech bro’ there is actually nothing in the film that makes him a direct comparison to Musk. There is never a mention of any space venture, though that would cover both Musk and Bezos, no mention of electric cars, in fact it is a plot point that Miles’ car, that he loves, is a gas car, and no mention of any form of electronic payment systems. Nor is there any hint that Miles owns social media.  The film was written and produced before Musk nose-dived into Twitter. In short none of the businesses that briefly made Musk the richest man in the world apply to the character of Miles Bron. In fact, Miles’ internet company, Alpha, with things like Alpha News, an important plot point, is much more like Alphabet, the company that owns Google, than anything Musk has been associated with.

For the rest of his twitter thread Ben continue to treat Miles as a stand-in for Musk apparently unaware that a character can represent a general type of person, douchey tech bro, rather than a specific person.

What about all the people who like Musk? They’re dumb and corrupt, too (which means you need no logic for them, so more bad writing!). This means that all Miles’ friends/supporters are still “sucking the golden teat” for Miles/Musk because he keeps signing them checks.

Ben is incredulous that rich powerful people can be surrounded by sycophants, yes-people, and moochers. We can look to Trump’s current legal teams to see how the best and the brightest are attracted to wealth and power.

One of the most important lines, defining the character of Vito Corleone, in The Godfather is when Tom tells the movie mogul “Mr. Corleone is the sort of man who insists on hearing bad news right away.” It tells us that unlike many many powerful people the Godfather does not want yes-men but the truth and that is an aberration.

But any of them could, at any time, burn down Miles/Musk and reap massive benefits. Literally any of them. Duke would become, overnight, the biggest host in the world for uncovering the conspiracy of silence.

Ben really is either ignoring the realities of taking on the rich or he is an idiot. I’m not sure how Ben thinks the group of Mile’s ‘hanger-ons’ can take him down. Certainly not over the murder that they are ignorant of, perhaps by publicly stating he is in idiot. Hmm people do that all the time and it has failed to take down Musk or Trump. Of course, if you have something real, something damaging, then billionaire will take you to court and guess who will have the nearly unlimited resources and legal teams to grind you into poverty before it ever gets before the bench? Not one of the ‘disruptors’ has anything close to the financial or legal resources to take down Miles. Their livelihood is wedded to his, hence they are sycophants.

Now Glass Onion has well-worn and tired Hollywood tropes, but Ben is too thick to actually see those and instead he wails, cries, and moans that liberals are unfair to Musk, too blinded by his own prejudices to see what is really there. Honestly, Ben has done a perfect job of misdirecting himself.

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Movie Review: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

 

In 2019 writer/director Rian Johnson released his love letter to the classic mystery genre with his film Knives Out. A movie without a pre-existing fan base, no novel, no boomer television series, no classic film reboot, and the domestic box office still soared past 300 million dollars. Audiences fell in love with southern gentleman Detective Benoit Blanc. The success guaranteed a sequel and Netflix brought truckloads of money to Johnson for two more Benoit Blanc mysteries, the first of which, after a one-week theatrical run over Thanksgiving, drops onto the streaming service today.

Glass Onion, taking in May of 2020 as the world grapples with the Covid 19 pandemic, is set on a secluded Greek island as tech billionaire boy Miles Bron (Edward Norton) has invited his close group of friends, nicknamed the Disruptors and his estranged former partner, for a weekend of

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a murder mystery game. Blanc’s arrival is the first mystery as someone other than Bron dispatched to Blanc of the puzzle box invitations. Naturally the weekend does no go as planned and soon the participants find that the dangers are for more real than the party games that they had expected.

The next Benoit Blanc mystery is structured very much the pervious one.  The first act of the film establishes a collection of eccentric characters, this time drawn more broadly that the Thrombey clan, but when you are dealing with an internet billionaire and the surrounding sycophants broad is the order of the day.

The second act inverts everything you thought you understood had been established while playing fair with the information it had presented.

The third act swings into the actual mystery and revelations to land in an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

Glass Onion present more comedy and less mystery than the previous movie but retains all the essential elements that made Knives Out such a fun and entertaining experience. The cast is uniformly fantastic with golden cameos from a number of well know persons. Outstanding in this cast is Janelle Monae though it takes more than half to film to uncover what makes her performance so stellar.

It is a shame that Glass Onion has such a short theatrical run as this is the sort of movie that is best experienced with a crowd but even alone on the couch this is still a movie that should not be missed.

Glass Onion is currently streaming exclusively on Netflix.

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