Best of the "Whodunnit?" Genre (Part Two)

by Eurocheese

If you missed part one, we're celebreating the whodunnit subgenre since Knives Out is out soon. Last time we listed rules of the genre (not all mystery and investigation films are whodunnits) and sang the praises of Gosford Park and The Thin Man. Now let's continue the list,

6. The Big Sleep
Bogie was bound to show up on this list (spoiler: he will again), and what better way to do it than next to his leading lady Lauren Bacall in her (arguable) career-best role...

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TIFF: Eating the Rich with "Knives Out"

by Chris Feil

When Rian Johnson announced a star-studded murder mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie, you didn’t think it would just be a straightforward genre exercise, did you? As he has shown in films such as Looper (and to an extent Star Wars: The Last Jedi in its brilliant eschewing of franchise dogma), Johnson delights in subverting our expectations of genre ever so slightly. Knives Out film is no exception, not only turning the ensemble comedy into a rollicking eat-the-rich satire, but also taking the standard whodunit plotting and repositioning it with exciting reinvention. Even if your tastes consider the book mold stodginess of Christie to remain delicious, Johnson’s modern narrative take should satisfy even purists.

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Yes No Maybe So: Knives Out

by Ben Miller

Director Rian Johnson can do what he wants these days.  After helming a Star Wars movie, directors have the cache to explore different realms of entertainment.  Johnson decided to go with Knives Out, an original story inspired by Agatha Christie murder mysteries.  Let’s break it down with our Yes, No, Maybe So™ system...

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A Slightly Queer Take on "The Last Jedi"

This was originally published in Nathaniel's intermittent column at Towleroad.

There’s a bit of a macro and micro thing happening at the movies. I’m not talking about Disney’s new merchandising bonanza pairing those miniature “porgs” (think CGI puffins) with towering furry Chewbacca. No we speak of the wide release and limited release divide. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been filling houses at over 4000 theaters and is obliterating the competition (already number #3 of the year in just 10 days) while a bunch of Oscar contenders are playing, not so quietly, in limited release gigs in their pursuit of golden statues. We’ll talk about more of those again soon but first [cue yellow text crawl over space] Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

We now return to The Resistance (aka the proudly defiant “Rebel Scum”) who are even easier to relate to know in December 2017 when it feels like the world will be ending any day with each new disastrous move from our own evil empire. (Sigh) If they can just harness the light side of the force, break through that one gerrymandered code, save that one cornered group of people, fetch Luke Skywalker, they might live to see another day...

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Rian Johnson: A Star Wars Story

By Salim Garami

What's good?

To many, this weekend is the imminent release of "oh my god, the new Star Wars movie". To me... it's also the imminent release of "the new Star Wars movie", I can't even pretend that's not the way I think of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I just also find it very exciting to look at as the new Rian Johnson movie, a filmmaker I've followed since the start and am incredibly happy to find in his successful and stable position. This especially considering that he's one of the few filmmakers who never established a production company of his own (Endgame Entertainment, who produced The Brothers Bloom and Looper, is the only company to produce more than one of his films). 

So if you'll join me, today I'd like to look back on his journey from the lo-fi shoe-string ingenuity that inhabited the beginnings of his filmmaking career to being handed the keys to one of the biggest film properties in the world.

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