Knives Out

Revisit Rian Johnson’s 2019 campy mystery, featuring a powerhouse cast and a twisty plot, ahead of the release of its sequel.

Price: $4.99 + taxes and fees

With his arch 2019 mystery, Rian Johnson did for whodunits what he’d done for hard-boiled thrillers in Brick, caper comedies in The Brothers Bloom, time-travel sci-fi in Looper, and Star Wars movies in The Last Jedi ― reinvigorating a familiar genre with knotty plotting, unpredictable characters and a willingness to work against the expectations of his audience. Knives Out not only introduced audiences to Daniel Craig’s eccentric sleuth Benoit Blanc (and really, how he didn’t get an Oscar nomination for that accent is a mystery for the ages), but it gave Ana de Armas the chance to steal the picture out from under him ― and Chris Evans, and Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Shannon, and Toni Collette, and Don Johnson ― as Marta Cabrera, the sympathetic nurse to best-selling author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) who finds herself a suspect in his mysterious death … along with his entire family. With Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery about to open ― and September’s Blonde generating plenty of awards talk for de Armas ― we thought you might appreciate a refresher in Johnson’s genius for twisty plotting, enthusiastic monologuing, and dead-on casting.

NORM WILNER

Content advisory: violence, coarse language, sexual language