Everything you need to know about "Knives Out" you can learn from watching "The Last Jedi." Which basically comes down to Rian Johnson being a SJW who is very impressed with his own cleverness and loves to show it off. Fortunately, he's still not rich enough to have the fuck you money one needs to get away with making major studio releases that fail to entertain. So it's a light-hearted and amusing murder mystery in the vein of old classic detective stories where the detective doesn't do much action, just asks a lot of questions and shows off his brains. Christopher Plummer is an aging and wealthy mystery writer and patriarch of a quarrelsome family of selfish parassites who nonetheless cling to the delusion that they are all self-made in the manner of their father. Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Shannon are his children, Don Johnson, Toni Colette and Ricki Lindholm are his son and daughters-in-law. The three grandchildren are a teenage rightwing extremist, a coed leftwing extremist and Chris Evans, who is neither, and in some ways, the most like the sainted patriarch (it's amazing how few mystery writers are actually ever portrayed as evil, selfish or greedy [unless those are the demons with which the writer protagonist struggles] - by contrast, if Plummer was playing someone who made his fortune bringing an actual useful product to society, especially something vital like medicine or electricity, he'd be a monster). There is also a caretaker played by Ana de Armas and a housekeeper who discovers the body while subverting a common trope of such scenes, to the point that I nearly cheered out loud.

The Holmes-Marple-Poirot-Fletcher character is Daniel Craig, trying for a more gentlemanly version of his new Southern accent from "Logan Lucky", as a celebrity sleuth like...well, no one in real life, but sort of the stature Sherlock Holmes has in Doyle's world. He has been hired by an outside party to investigate the apparent suicide of Plummer's character, and does so initially through a series of talking head interview segments, often intercut for humor or dramatic highlighting, with, of course, the obligatory flashbacks of the night in question.

It's very entertaining, and Johnson's direction was probably a difficult task, since it had to involve filming the same scenes from multiple angles and perspectives. If you want to turn off your brain and take everything at face value. But when you know that Johnson is a SJW sci-fi geek, who can't resist letting the former quality out even when given what should be the holy grail to a filmmaker of the latter quality, you know whom he wants to win and which character has the traits he least wants to see win, along with the socialistic (and therefore materialistic) undertones of the more shallow leftists, you know what winning entails, and what the only possible happy outcome to the plot is going to be. And since so many of the characters are placed on an equal footing and the mechanics of the murder quickly established, it will have to be a moral distinction that sets the ultimate "winner" above the others, rather than legal innocence or cleverness in figuring it out and/or exploiting the situation. So you can easily see who is the only acceptable hero for Johnson and how they will have to win (contrary to a lot of the promotional material, the multitude of character conflicts do not degenerate into a murder-fest of literal backstabbings - the "knives" of the title are almost purely figurative), the tension is leeched from the movie, and the twists and turns become minor details you have to sit through until the eventual reveal. There are actual conversations I wished I could fast-forward, because it was obvious what the narrative purpose of the conversation was, and why it was in the story, so the words spoken did not matter, nor do the performances of the scene or the emotions displayed, because we know what they are going to be. Sometimes, it feels like the film wants to you to worry that a confrontation could escalate into violence, but for the most part, that's largely not a thing, and it never really feels like this is the kind of movie, or these are the kind of people who could or would do that. Unless you are so filled with bile at the rich that you come into the theater already primed to think the worst of any character coded as wealthy.

And when did Hollywood decide the pinnacle of cleverness was finding ways to force aphorisms or metaphors common to the leftist persecution narratives on into literal manifestation? Remember in "Get Out" where the rich villains' scheme relies on an actual silver spoon as a prop and the black guy escapes by literally picking cotton? You can all but hear Johnson sniggering over his own wit at a rich old white guy flipping over a gameboard when he can't win, or the heroic character having to literally suppress a gag reflex in multiple conversations with white men. Or patting himself on the back when one character attributes her success at playing Go as, rather than competing against an opponent, "I just try to make a beautiful picture." So make one already, Rian.

The movie doesn't hold your hand too much with the mystery or the smart characters' thought process in some places, but gets heavy handed in others. Like, at one point Craig does something and it isn't really noted by the camera or remarked upon by the characters, but the direction makes it clear that he has just tested and exposed a discrepancy in the killer's account. Other times it's established that there was mud and that someone walked through the mud and then he goes on and on about finding mud where the person must have walked to access the crime scene. Hey, we get it. We know how mud and shoes interact. Supposedly a lot of the benefit-of-the-lowest-common-denominator-audience explanations in these type of movies are for the benefit of the less clever on-screen detectives and cops, but then the climax of the movie relies on the cops being bright and clever enough to follow along with what the audience knows and the genius detective is guessing, you're left a bit skeptical. But the movie dosen't drag and it doesn't depend on tricking or outwitting the audience, so those things don't really detract from the simple entertainment. If you look at it in the right way, it's fun figuring out the Doylist motives for the elements. You could have a good time playing a "spot the SJW reference" drinking game, if nothing else.

In direct contrast to the way "Knives Out" plays fair with the audience by committing to its ideals, there was "The Good Liar". Helen Mirren plays a widow going online to seek companionship in her old age, while Ian McKellan is a con man using the same site to trawl for marks. He presents to her as a widower with similar caution, in order to manipulate her into empathizing with him, while plays off the mild suspicions of helpful grandson, to get her to take his side. Meanwhile, he's wrapping up his last scam alongside his partner, played by Jim Carter, to establish just how ruthless and capable he can be, despite McKellan's age and and his character's affectation of frailty. "The Good Liar" raised expectations due to the enjoyability of watching its leads and the last collaboration I saw between McKellan and director Bill Condon, "Mr. Holmes." I should have realized that Condon also directed the live action "Beauty and the Beast" and a couple of "Twilight" movies, which are apparently the better indicator of his quality. This movie, like so many movies about a con artist, is all about building to the surprise reveal. There is one aspect to this film's reveal, that is obvious from the very beginning, and when it is not as developed through the film, so you are left impatiently waiting for the denouement, but that does come around, the other aspect of the reveal comes completely out of nowhere. Like, it belongs in its own movie. Imagine if you had to know the story of the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo, in order to understand why Han Solo gave Luke a ride out of Mos Eisley. Except even further in the film's relative past. I kind of feel like putting the events of a story in chronological order should enhance our appreciation of the characters and their qualities, or the events of the story, rather than make those with whom we are supposed to empathize seem kind of lame. With a simplistic title like "The Good Liar", you go in wondering about a double meaning (TWIST! It's not which character is ACTUALLY the "good liar", but what they actually mean by "good" ! ), but then to have this weak bit of trickery end with the line of dialogue "it's deeper than it seems" is just insulting.