An overloaded 'Knives Out' mystery

  A somber Catholic church in upstate New York provides a gloomy backdrop for writer/director Rian Johnson's third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man.

   Johnson, who also wrote the screenplay, immediately distinguishes his movie from its predecessors, introducing an unexpected character, a freshly ordained priest who's in trouble with his superiors.

  Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) has anger-management issues. As punishment for socking a deacon, Father Jud is sentenced to clerical exile at the remote Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude parish.

    It's immediately clear that Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude has taken a bizarre turn. The church's crucifix has been removed from behind the altar, and its priest, Monsignor Jeffrey Wicks (Josh Brolin), quickly asserts himself as a power-hungry nut job.  Obsessive about confession, Wicks can't talk enough about his feverish bouts of masturbation.

   Wicks also preaches a gospel of fear. In his weekly sermons, he selects one parishioner for chastisement, gauging the success of his remarks by how quickly his intimidated victim heads for the door. 

    Although Wake Up Dead Man hosts strains of mordant comedy, it's also a mystery in which the characters become pawns in a game Johnson plays, one involving a tangled plot, excessive complications, and enough red herrings to stock a fishery.

    The parishioners, of course, become suspects after the mystery’s obligatory murder, which precedes the arrival of series savior Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), an ace sleuth who speaks with the lilting intonations of a southern gentleman.

     By the time Blanc arrives, a typically large gallery of actors has already elbowed its way into the proceedings: These include a doctor (Jeremy Renner), an attorney (Kerry Washington), a cellist (Cailee Spaeny) who no longer plays, a local politician (Daryl McCormack), and a struggling sci-fi author (Andrew Scott).

     We also meet the administrator (Glenn Close) in charge of the church’s business and the caretaker (Thomas Haden Church) who has pledged his devotion to her.

     In case the cast weren’t stuffed with enough names, Mila Kunis eventually turns up as a local sheriff who’s skeptical about Blanc’s deductive methods. 

      Fair to say, Johnson’s screenplay offers laughs throughout, and an able cast knows how to mine them, even when the targets loom large. 

      In a semi-serious turn, Johnson also gets some mileage out of the faith vs. reason tensions that develop between Jud and Blanc, who begin investigating the murder together.

     As the movie's most developed character, Jud valiantly tries to conquer his anger with love and compassion. He also struggles with guilt. A former boxer, he once killed a man in the ring.

      O’Connor gives a standout performance, although Johnson wisely provides Craig with a spotlight speech  during the movie’s finale. Blanc calls it his Damascus moment.

     Watching Wake Up Dead Man, you needn't go very far before bumping into another plot point. All of this rests on a foundation filled with plot and backstory, some of it involving a valuable jewel. 

      Call it a matter of taste, but I found some of the maneuvering tiresome, and the gaggle of idiosyncratic characters can become little more than pawns in a mystery game.

     Early on, Jeffrey Wright turns up as the sensible priest who assigns Father Jud to obscurity. Wright's appearance at the end reminded me how much I missed his presence and the character he plays.

     Johnson, who's often compared to Agatha Christie, clearly has mastered the form he has employed in a trilogy that began with Knives Out (2019) and continued with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).

     But clever as it can be, Johnson's latest sometimes drags through its two-hour and 24-minute run time, fighting headwinds created by the story's storm of complications.

    

      

       

      

Swan Song sings an edgeless tune

    In Swan Song, Mahershala Ali plays a dying man who has been  given the opportunity to be replaced by a clone. If Ali's Cameron opts for cloning, his wife (Naomi Harris) and young son (Dax Rey) won't know that he passed away. For them, life will continue seamlessly. 

  To pull off the switch, Cameron, an artist by trade, must conceal his medical condition from his wife. The cloning will be performed under the direction of Dr. Scott (Glenn Close) who conducts her business in a stylishly modern house in the middle of nowhere. 

   While under Dr. Scott's supervision, Cameron meets Kate (Awkwafina), another patient who has agreed to be cloned.

   Cameron is partly motivated by his wife's history. She only recently recovered from a period of crippling grief after the death of her twin brother. 

    Nothing, of course, is as simple as it initially sounds: Cameron finds it difficult to cede his life to a clone, a creation he meets as the movie progresses. 

    This raises another ethical issue: If Cameron decides to return to his life and tell his family that he's dying, the clone (named Jack until the day completely inhabits Cameron's life) will be "terminated." 

   Unfortunately, director Benjamin Cleary's debut feature can't get much beyond its central question, which (in a richer movie) might have been sufficient.

    Flashbacks are used to develop the relationship between Cameron and Harris's Poppy, giving Ali and Harris the opportunity to play a love duet — with some difficulties, of course.

     Even if you buy the idea that clones could become undetectable substitutes for humans, the movie can feel anemic. Cleary creates a version of the future that’s sanitized, sleek, and decidedly upscale. A hollow, edgeless feeling opens the door to for a flood of end-of-picture tear-jerking.

   Despite its fine performances, Swan Song can feel like the clone of what might have been a better, more genuinely affecting movie.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 4/30/'21 -- 'Outside Story,' 'Percy vs. Goliath' and 'Four Good Days’'

A word on Cinema Diary. You may wonder why some movies receive full reviews and others show up in this abbreviated format. Lots of reasons. Some of the involve the number of movies being released in a given week. Eight this week, for example. Some of the reasons for the Diary relate to when I've seen a particular movie and how many more movies I need to watch prior to the weekend.

At the same time, honesty compels me to say that the directors and actors who made these films didn't make them to be regarded as secondary efforts. I don't. At the same time, I've yet to find a way to cope with weeks that are flooded with new movies.

The Outside Story 

Movies don't get much more streamlined than Outside Story, a look at a man (Brian Tyree Henry) who locks himself out of his Brooklyn apartment, interacts with his neighbors, and wonders whether he should have broken up with his girlfriend (Sonequa Marin Green). Henry's Charles seems to be a nice guy, a film editor who specializes in assembling visual obituaries of celebrities. The key to the movie involves Henry's performance as a stressed-out but nice New Yorker who has encounters with a cop (Sunita Mani), a neighborhood kid (Olivia Edward), and an older woman (Lynda Gravatt) whose husband recently died. Director Casimir Nozkowski, who also wrote the screenplay, has a nice feeling for the idiosyncrasies of neighborhood relationships but he can't prevent the material from feeling a bit thin. Henry, currently on view in Godzilla vs. Kong, holds the movie together. Although the movie contains some conflict, the stakes feel pretty low -- which can be viewed as a blessing or a severe limitation or perhaps a bit of both.

Percy Vs Goliath

After seeing Christopher Walken miscast as an Irish farmer in Wild Mountain Thyme, I was dubious about Percy Vs Goliath, the story of a Canadian farmer who takes on the Monsanto in a prolonged court battle over patent rights involving canola seeds. But damn if Walken doesn't pull it off, doing credible work as Percy Schmeiser, a farmer who inadvertently planted Monsanto GMO seeds that had blown onto his property from a neighbor's farm. The result:  a prolonged suit. Roberta Maxwell portrays Schmeiser's wife Louise. Zach Braff signs on as the small-town lawyer who represents Schmeiser, and Christina Ricci appears as an environmental activist who encourages Schmeiser to challenge Monsanto. She also helps him take is story global with a visit to India. The story of a little man fighting a major corporation isn't exactly fresh but director Clark Johnson does a good job presenting complicated issues as Schmeiser's case makes its way to the Canadian Supreme Court. 

Four Good Days

Familiarity may not always breed contempt, but it can breed fatigue when it comes to movies. Glenn Close and Mila Kunis play mother and daughter in an addiction drama about a young woman (Kunis) nearly ruined by drugs. Kunis' Molly wants to make another stab at kicking her habit so she asks her mother, Close's Deb, to take her in. This time she really means it -- or so she says. Director Rodrigo Garcia doesn't skimp on realism: Kunis has been given rotting teeth and a distressingly scrawny look. Deb blames Molly's addiction on the doctors who prescribed an Oxycontin regimen after a skiing injury. Since then, Deb has left her husband (Joshua Leonard) and her two kids. The title stems from the offer Molly receives from a detox doctor: If she can stay clean for four days, he'll give her a shot that will keep her from getting high on heroin. If she takes the shot before her system has been cleansed, she could die from its effects. Close and Kunis deliver strong performances but the movie can't escape the dogged quality of the storytelling.  It's difficult not to feel a bit guilty about wanting a fresh charge from an addiction movie, particularly one based on a true story. Still, we feel a bit like Deb feels when Molly shows up at her door after 14 failed attempts at rehab. What? You want us to go down this movie road again?

Performances elevate 'Hillbilly Elegy'

     What could be more uplifting? A young man overcomes poverty and a host of family issues that include his mother’s self-destructive bouts with addiction. Despite what seem like insurmountable obstacles,  this young man manages to attend college and obtain a law degree from Yale. He ascends,  yes, but he never forgets his Kentucky and Ohio background. Warts and all, he honors his family.

     That's the gist of director Ron Howard's Hillbilly Elegy, an adaptation of J.D. Vance's memoir about growing up among "hill" people who never quite shake their Appalachian roots.

      Howard's  "elegy" distinguishes itself with two strong performances. An unrecognizable Glenn Close plays the family's grandmother, Mamaw. Mamaw embodies the movie's survivalist virtues. Her husband was an alcoholic and her daughter Beth (Amy Adams) has destroyed her life with drugs while floating through bad relationships and lost jobs.  

     But Mamaw refuses to let Beth's son, J.D., throw his life away. She knows pain and suffering but she's as hard as an aging artery and Close turns her into an unapologetic battler.

     When everything else seems to be failing, Mamaw takes over. The wayward J.D. (played as a kid by Owen Asztalos), moves in with Mamaw. She lays down the law, a mighty act of will.

     For her part, Adams gives Beth the volatility that accompanies a life that's constantly spinning out of control. Beth's efforts at conducting something resembling normal life waver between comical and pathetic. 

      The movie shifts time periods, flashing back to the 1990s from the first decade of the 21st Century,  a stop-and-start again structure that can make the story feel longer than its one hour and 56 minutes.

     By the time J.D. heads to law school, he's being played by Gabriel Basso.  He also has an encouraging girlfriend, an East-Indian/American portrayed by Frieda Pinto. 

     On the verge of capitalizing on his law-school bona fides, J.D. is summoned home by his sister (Haley Bennett) because Mom has overdosed. Bennett's character, who married and remained in Middletown, Ohio, has exhausted her capacity to deal with a mother who seems irredeemable. 

     Far from perfect, Hillbilly Elegy, with a screenplay by Vanessa Taylor, calibrates Vance's story for multiplex audiences ready to devour a family tale that gives a full-throated endorsement to tough love, the kind that allows Mamaw to save young J.D.

    The storytelling can be uneven, but to ignore Hillbilly Elegy would mean missing a chance to watch Close build a character from the hard, gravelly soil of deprivation and to experience Adams as a mercurial woman who lights fires that threaten to torch everything her character touches.

She's the afterthought in his life

Jonathan Pryce and Glenn Close play husband and wife in The Wife.

The complicated relationship between a husband and wife moves to the forefront of The Wife, Swedish director Bjorn Runge's adaptation of a 2003 novel by Meg Wolitzer. The movie centers on the Castlemans, a couple brought to convincing life by Jonathan Pryce and Glenn Close.

When the movie begins, Pryce's Joe Castleman is awaiting word on whether he has won the Nobel Prize for literature. He does and the movie then shifts to Oslo, Norway where Joe, his wife and his grown son (Max Irons) have gone to celebrate Joe's success.

Of course, that's not the end of the story, but only the beginning of a slow revelation of the secret behind Joe's literary triumph. For those unfamiliar with the story, I'll say no more except to note that Close's Joan Castleman seems to have taken responsibility for every mundane aspect of Joe's exalted life, tasks she carries out despite Joe's penchant for philandering.

As events in Oslo unfold, Runge shows us flashbacks to various stages of the couple's relationship, which began when Joe, married to someone else at the time, taught writing at the college level. Joan (played as a young woman by Close's real-life daughter Anne Starke) was one of his prize students. At the time -- the 1950s -- prospects for emerging female writers seemed dim and Joan sacrificed her talent on the altar of Joe's ego.

Importantly, the movie shows us that Joan, though definitely exploited, was complicit in her fate. For reasons of her own, she loyally subordinated herself to Joe's ambitions. No one can do such a thing without paying a price, and Joan's resentments ripple through Close's finely tuned performance.

For his part, Pryce conveys the egotism and occasional cruelty of a famous Jewish-American writer. His relationship with his son, an aspiring author, reeks of authoritarianism and neglect. Joe isn't kind when talking about his son's writing, disguising his lack of compassion as an insistence on high standards.

Strong hints of threatening disclosures run throughout the movie. Christian Slater plays a wily journalist who has been trying for years to write Joe's biography. He wants Joan to help him topple Joe from his throne, a lofty perch built on the pile of critically acclaimed books the author has published.

Despite building toward an inevitable showdown between Joe and Joan, The Wife never quite feels revelatory. But Pryce and Close add undeniable polish to this peek into literary lives -- both fulfilled and wasted.

Music, heroin and fatherhood on the fringe

A look at the relationship between a musician and his daughter.

Jazz pianist Joe Albani, who went by the name of Joe Albany, died in 1988 at the age of 64. Albany spent most of his adult life as a musician and heroin addict, not always in that order.

No slouch wannabe, Albany established his reputation playing with such greats as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. That alone might have made for a good movie.

But Low Down, which only touches on Albany's jazz life, turns out to be another kind endeavor, one that focuses on Joe's faltering attempts at fatherhood.

Based on a memoir by his daughter, who also had a hand in writing the screenplay, Low Down introduces us to Albany during the 1970s.

At the time, he was living a marginal life in the kind of seedy Los Angeles dives that writer Charles Bukowski memorialized, single-room occupancy hotels where the clientele was sometimes too drunk or stoned to notice much of anything.

Director Jeff Preiss, who worked as the cinematographer on the Chet Baker documentary Let's Get Lost, tells the story through the eyes of Albany's 13-year-old daughter Amy (Elle Fanning).

Albany -- played by John Hawkes -- bobs in and out of the story, sometimes sober, sometimes not. At times, he allows heroin to disconnect him from music, yet we never doubt his seriousness as an artist.

Hawkes (The Sessions, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Winter's Bone) is too good an actor to serve up a series of junkie cliches. He gives us a father who's gentle and bright with his daughter and who's imbued with a kind of tolerance for himself and others.

Joe obviously has little idea about how to be a father, but he leaves no doubt that he loves his daughter, and Fanning does justice to a teen-ager who's trying not to be overwhelmed by her father's indulgences or by an alcoholic mother (Lena Headley), made viperous by booze and bitterness.

Obviously, Amy isn't living a normal teen life; she's exposed to prostitutes and to a strange but gentle fellow (Peter Dinklage) who lives in the basement of the dump where her dad crashes.

If there's a surprising performance here, it's given by Glenn Close, who plays Joe's mother and Amy's grandmother, a tough woman who chain smokes, takes no guff, and takes care of her granddaughter when her father can't. She appreciates her son's talent, but fears for him.

Fanning observes her father, his friends and the life he's fallen into with baffled curiosity, and Hawkes can feel almost airborne as Joe floats through some awfully dreary days.

The movie floats a bit as well; it's steeped in a kind of '70s filmmaking style in which the truth of every scene often takes precedence over any narrative arc.

I don't know what else to say to give you an idea about this movie, but it might help if I conjectured a bit. I think John Cassavetes would have liked and admired Low Down -- at least, I hope he would have.

A gender-bending story set in the 1890s

How you react to Albert Nobbs, a project that Glenn Close reportedly spent two decades trying to bring to the screen, depends almost entirely on how you react to Close in the title role; she's playing a woman posing as a man in 19th Century Ireland. Close, who played the role on stage in the 1980s, brings the project to the screen under the direction of Rodrigo Garcia (Mother and Child and Nine Lives). As written by Close and John Banville and based on a novella (Celibate Lives) by George Moore, Albert Nobbs feels as meticulously crafted as Close's make-up. But here's the thing: I couldn't buy Close as a woman successfully passing as a man. Maybe it's her delicate facial features. Whatever the case, Nobbs looks like a strange version of Close, pinched into a constricted, almost neutered impression of a man. The screenplay tells us that Nobbs decided -- partly for economic reasons -- to pose as a man, but the movie also serves as commentary on how some people have responded to societies bound by rigid gender-role conventions. While working at a hotel, Nobbs meets Hubert Page, a house painter played by Janet McTeer, who brings robust conviction and humor to her role as another woman posing as a man. McTeer's Hubert essentially steals the picture from the deeply repressed and fussy Nobbs, who dreams of opening a tobacco shop. Hubert lives with a woman who loves and accepts him; he suggests that Nobbs also might be able to find some semblance of normal life. Nobbs then turns his attention to Helen (Mia Wasikowska), a co-worker at the hotel. There's genuine poignancy in watching Nobbs, a man of limited imagination, pursue a dream that we know is beyond his reach. At its best, Albert Nobbs stirs emotion, but I never entirely shook the distracting awareness that I was watching Close create an illusion that didn't quite convince.

*For the record, not everyone shares my view of Close's performance, certainly not the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who nominated her for a best-actress Oscar. The Academy does agree on McTeer, though. She was nominated in the best-supporting actress category.