Rollicking Good Time

Rating: 9/10 (16 December 2019)

Awards season is the only time of year I feel like theaters are full of movies for adults, when films focus on mature and serious subject matter. But I like to laugh and have fun at a movie too, and man did I do both at "Knives Out." Rian Johnson embraces the murder mystery genre wholesale and delivers a twisty-turner thriller that's both wildly entertaining and very funny. A superlative cast, witty screenplay, and brilliantly quirky production design are three of this movie's standout qualities. Daniel Craig, complete with Southern Gothic accent, and Ana de Armas are the leads, but they're surrounded by a cast of supporting actors performing at the top of their game. Indeed, if I have any criticism of the film, it's actually a compliment, and that's that I wish the supporting players -- like Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, and Don Johnson (of all people) -- were in the film more.
"Knives Out" is mostly just a good time, but it's also got some serious barbs to throw out at its presumably mostly liberal audience about a certain kind of liberal progressive hypocrisy that rears its ugly head when issues like immigration and economic equality take center stage.
Grade: A