Tag: whodunit

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) | REVIEW

Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor in Rian Johnson’s WAKE UP DEAD MAN — PHOTO: NETFLIX (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Rian Johnson — Screenplay by Rian Johnson.

Rian Johnson, the renowned writer-director behind films like Looper and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, has successfully made himself synonymous with the whodunnit mystery genre in recent years with his Knives Out films centered around Benoit Blanc, the heavily accented detective character, which has helped Daniel Craig reinvent his career following his James Bond exit. These are films that have become highly celebrated for their distinctive detective, their star-studded casts, and the way they merge comedy, modern inventiveness, and a genre affinity to form films that are always a highlight of the year in which they are released. This was the case with both Knives Out and Glass Onion, and it is certainly also the case with Wake Up Dead Man, which, arguably, features the best protagonist performance that we’ve seen in any of these films.

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REVIEW: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson’s GLASS ONION — PHOTO: NETFLIX.

Directed by Rian Johnson — Screenplay by Rian Johnson.

In 2019, Looper and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson released his original ‘whodunnit’ ensemble crime mystery Knives Out. It was a huge success as it received critical acclaim and notable Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Oscar nominations. The film also helped to bring new life to the ‘whodunnit’ genre. It was so successful that this year there are several of those stories including See How They Run and the Apple-series The Afterparty. The massive success also led to a bidding war for Johnson’s Benoit Blanc-led Knives Out sequels. That bidding war was won by Netflix (they paid a whopping $469 million) and they have released its first sequel today just in time for Christmas. It brings me great joy to report that Glass Onion is almost exactly as good as the original film that preceded it, even though it no longer feels quite as fresh.

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