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Summary:

Famed Southern detective Benoit Blanc travels to Greece for his latest case.

Director:

Rian Johnson

Writers:

Rian Johnson

Cast:

• Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc

• Edward Norton as Miles Bron

• Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay

• Dave Bautista as Duke Cody

• Janelle Monae as Andi Brand

• Kathryn Hahn as Claire Debella

• Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussant

-- Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

Metacritic: 81

VOD: Theaters (Netflix on December 24th when there will be a second Official Discussion)

To be fair I'm not that online so there may be more negativity than I can see, but it seems like the film is being well received which I just can't understand. I've even seen people call this the best one.

For one thing this is easily the worst looking film out of the three, the naturalistic tones and color of the first are long absent. Glass Onion had the same issue but at least that had a lot of large set pieces and fun environments. This film, texturally speaking, is incredibly dull. This is a setting that should feel aesthetically rich, a lot of opportunities for beautiful lighting and moody tones, but it's just not there. It's incredibly bright and flat.

Secondly, the cast has never had less to do. I legitimately consider Andrew Scott one of the best actors working and he's kinda funny I guess, but him and most of the other characters are uncompelling. Jeremy Renner is already so boring and he's working with literally nothing here.

Really those two things right there are enough to kill a film for me, but also the messaging at this point has never been less compelling for reasons that are hard to articulate.

Anyways that's just how I feel.

We're all in agreement that adding "A Knives Out Mystery" to the title of Glass Onion was stupid, right?

But after that decision was done, there was still a way to fix it. They should have called the next movie "Wake Up Dead Man: A Glass Onion Mystery", then add "A Wake Up Dead Man Mystery" to the end of the next title, and so on.

Alas, they didn't.

Thank you for your time.

I thought that the social themes of the film really blended well just like the first and it really seems to fit with the times. The performances were absolutely great especially from Edward Norton. I was never bored through the entire runtime and it was really a blast. Cannot wait for the third movie to be written and made with a new ensemble of A Listers.

Writer/director Rian Johnson has created a superior followup to “Knives Out”, and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc certainly has what it takes to lead a few more of these films. Hopefully future entries in this series will drop the unnecessary “Knives Out” subtitle in favor of “A Benoit Blanc Mystery.” I understand why the parent film’s subtitle was needed this time, but I’m hoping Rian Johnson’s Benoit Blanc might someday earn the same brand-name recognition as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, or at the very least, Frank Columbo.

With fewer characters, a smartly-sequestered setting, and a ticking clock, “Glass Onion” runs a lot swifter than “Knives Out”, despite its slightly longer running time of 139 minutes. This “Onion” is well worth slicing into.

https://musingsofamiddleagedgeek.blog/2023/01/04/glass-onion-a-knives-out-mystery-is-an-electrifying-improvement/

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Summary Detective Benoit Blanc returns to solve his most dangerous case yet. Set against a darker backdrop than his previous investigations, the mystery pulls Blanc into a web of secrets, betrayal, and buried sins where every suspect has something to hide—and the truth may come at a deadly cost.

Director Rian Johnson

Writer Rian Johnson

Cast

• Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc

• Josh O’Connor

• Glenn Close

• Josh Brolin

• Mila Kunis

• Jeremy Renner

• Kerry Washington

• Andrew Scott

• Cailee Spaeny

• Daryl McCormack

• Thomas Haden Church

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Metacritic: 81

VOD / Release On Netflix

Trailer Official Trailer

First things first, Glass Onion is still a pretty solid sequel to Knives Out but I feel some of the intricate plotting and third act reveals do not fully work in putting the pieces together.

The cast and most of the direction is great but I hope Knives Out 3 takes a bit of a differenr turn personally.

I’ll start. Here’s my list:

1. Knives out (won by a mile for me)

2. Wake up dead man

3. Glass onion

The first story is still to this day one of my favourite whodunnit stories ever written, there’s just something about it that I thought was extremely clever. The twist in the end was bittersweet but it tied up the whole story nicely (I did not leave with any further questions unanswered).

I generally have a bad memory about films I don’t love and can’t remember a single thing about glass onion as I didn’t love it.

I enjoyed the newest one more than glass onion but I felt like the story fell a bit flat for me midway through till the end and it was missing a lot of shock factor in comparison to the first film.

Keen to hear what other fans think!!!

So lets just go over my opinion on all of the movies

Knives Out is, ironically, the worst Knives Out movie. It really didn't grip me in any way. The problem for me being that it really isn't a mystery movie, it's a thriller (up to the point where everything is revealed at the end). Benoit seems more like a joke character throughout the movie. A funny joke, but still a joke who made me feel even less like there is an actual mystery to solve. The cast, while great in the scenes they are in, is underutilized and just there for padding in a similar manner that is criticized in WUDM (and I agree with; we will come to that later). The solution of the mystery also didn't feel all that impressive. Also, a minor nitpick, but Ana De Armas character puking every time she lies is so stupid I thought it had to come back in some kind of final twist or that she was faking it as some kind of red-herring

Glass Onion has by far the best utilization of the cast and is by far the funniest. The mystery thus also has the biggest scope among the 3 movies. And the reveal is an amusing twist to the genre. Benoit, while still funny, feels like a proper detective this time around

Wake Up Dead Man is the first "proper" whodunnit, impossible mystery in this series. The meta-commentary about the genre is still there, but it has nothing to do with the mystery per se, but with how Blanc handles the culprit and the whole mystery. It is the most thematically rich and in-depth of all of them, being a surprisingly deep exploration of what it means to have faith and grace, and how to help even people who may not deserve it. It has the most compelling main character, expertly acted by Josh O'Connor, and thanks to him and Josh Brolin and the overall writing I didn't really care that Benoit only arrived after 40 minutes. That being said, the problem with going so in-depth on the themes is that that doesn't lend itself to having a huge cast, so most of them just fell to the way-side, even thought you might expect them to have a bigger role by the way they were introduced and by some of the scenes they had (I'm specifically talking about the girl in the wheelchair being so insistent to see the murder scene)

In conclusion 1<2<3

I hope Rian Johnson can keep this up!

I'm not sure if I'm jumping the gun here since the movie just came out last night and there will probably be an official thread soon but I just saw it a couple hours ago and I'm dying to see some discussion about it. Really adored this one; much better than Glass Onion and honestly might surpass the first on rewatch. It's a lot more centered on its central character (Josh O'Connor's, not Benoit) than the previous entries and I think that narrower focus gave it a much richer emotional and thematic core. There is still at least one "contemporary conservative" caricature but the film doesn't really beat you over the head with its satire like Glass Onion did, which was a much needed change of pace. Its critique and reflections on religion didn't come off as heavy-handed at all and I thought it was much more nuanced and compelling than the "eat-the-rich" stories of the previous entries (although I still adore the first film). The only thing is that a lot of the suspect-list is underutilized (don't expect much from Andrew Scott for example) but the characters that do get the spotlight make it feel worth it.

So I watched the movie last night for the first time, and I'll have to watch it at least once more or two more to really get it all.

But why does it seem like it's not as good as 1 or 2? Don't get me wrong, the third movie is entertaining, it has the twists, the acting (other than Mila Kunis) was great, and it's up there with the other two but Blanc didn't have the charm or anything like the other two movies. At least with the other two Blanc was entertaining with the other characters, he was all over trying to solve the mystery. But in the third one it felt like, "Oh yeah I'll help the priest and ah... Yeah everyone else can be over there I guess." Like it felt off but it didn't?

And Mila Kunis playing a cop was just out of left field. Every time she was on the screen it felt like she was trying so hard not to act. And it felt like she was cosplaying as a cop and I couldn't take her seriously.

A bit late, but please discuss your thoughts on the 3rd Knives out film.

Now, I know that it’s a standalone sequel and has a completely different cast aside from Daniel Craig. But it has a very similar feel to Knives Out and is a lot more grounded just like that movie was. One of my biggest complaints about Glass Onion was how over the top it got at times, more specifically in the climax. This movie tones down a lot of that and has a more grounded climax similar to how Knives Out did. I really appreciated that.