Tag: Daryl McCormack

Cinema Dispatch: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and all the images you see in this review are owned by Netflix

Directed by Rian Johnson

The thing about the Knives Out series is that you never seem to get what you wanted going into it, and yet it still manages to come around to being a great movie. The first one revealed its mystery fairly early on but managed to have enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end, and while its sequel was a bit messier with an oddly underwhelming denouement for its own mystery, it’s a well-made Whodunit that worked even better for me on a second viewing. Rian Johnson is definitely doing something interesting with these Benoit Blanc mysteries, but can this latest entry in the series be yet another masterful take on the classic genre, or have the gimmicks gotten staler than the corpses Blanc is sent to investigate? Let’s find out!!

In a sleepy rural town somewhere in upstate New York, a young priest has been transferred in after an altercation with a deacon and is now under the watchful eye of Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin); an ornery man with a childish sense of humor and a teenage view on the world. His fire and brimstone sermons are a hit with his core fan base which includes the local church lady Martha (Glenn Close), the town doctor (Jeremy Renner), a conspiracy writer (Andrew Scott), a disabled violinist looking for a cure (Cailee Spaeny), and a mother and son who don’t get along (Kerry Washington and Daryl McCormack), but to the newly arrived Father Jed (Josh O’Connor), they seem to be alienating these people rather than helping the community. Still, at least it leaves the suspect count low when the Monsignor dies during the Good Friday service and Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is called in to investigate. All suspicions seem to land on poor Father Jed as he’s the only one who was not a fan of the Monsignor, and as evidence mounts against him, it’s up to Blanc to cut through the hysteria and histrionics to find the truth. Who is truly responsible for the death of Monsignor Wicks, and will the investigation uncover unsavory truths about him and this community? Can Blanc and Jed get along despite coming from such vastly different worlds, and what will this case reveal within both of them that neither wishes to face head on? Maybe the secret Jed wishes to hide is that he’s really good at playing Bad Cop when they start interviewing suspects.

“This here is Blanc. He’s your friend. I’m not, and if you don’t tell him who did it, I’ll make you recite SO many Hail Marys it will make your head spin! ARE WE CLEAR!?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Bad Boys: Ride or Die & Twisters

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure I say this every other month, but life can come at you pretty fast, and I’ve let a few things slip through the cracks in trying to keep up with it all. The casualties this time around were two very successful summer blockbusters which I probably would have gotten a few extra views if I was timely with these reviews, but there’s no time like the present to try and catch up! Were these classic films carelessly shunted to the end of my to-do list, or does it make some amount of sense that I couldn’t be bothered to finish these reviews when they were relevant? Let’s find out!!

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Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Adil & Bilall

The first two Bad Boys movies are obnoxious and crass in a way that left me very ambivalent about going into the third one, but the new blood behind the camera ended up being the shot in the arm the franchise needed to stay relevant. This one, however, is content to rest on its laurels and use the excuse of a sequel to work out some fancy camera techniques. It’s not a bad movie by any stretch, and it still runs circles around the first two, but it lacks a meaningful reason to exist. The third one actually had something to say about its aging heroes, which gave it a sense of purpose beyond the action spectacle and funny banter. They try to keep that thread going here, but there’s nothing of substance to it, as Laurence’s brush with death early in the movie is a complete goof and doesn’t hit the same way that it did with Smith in the first one. They’re also not as interesting to watch as Smith and Laurence seem to be going through the motions at times, but I would chalk that up to the lackluster script. It’s supposed to be a redemptive story, but the plot is far too convoluted for it to have the raw emotional catharsis that you’d want, and without a clear direction to point our two leads, they feel a little lost in the weeds. Still, the action is fantastic with Adil & Bilall proving once again why Warner Bros were fools to dump their Batgirl movie, and while the action is certainly sillier than in the last one, there’s more than enough of it at a fast enough clip that you hardly even notice as you’re sitting through it. I got the sense that the third movie was written to be an end to the series, even if the door was open to possible sequels. I don’t get that sense watching this one, as the sequel door is left wide open with neon signs around it and a twenty dollar bill dangling on a fishing line. If they want to keep this franchise going for as long as Smith and Laurence are interested in doing so, then the best of luck to them, but running the sequel mill has its drawbacks, and despite the movie’s subtitle, there’s no significant shakeup to the status quo to mark this one out as a significant entry. It’s been several weeks since I saw it and very little has stuck with me the same way that Bad Boys for Life has, so by that measure it’s a disappointing sequel. Not a significant disappointment, especially since it’s still the second best in the series by my estimation, but you’re only gonna get so far when not trying to do too much.

3 out of 5

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