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.

    

      

       

      

Buddies on the road -- and on the water

A country boy and a young man with Down syndrome team for a fairy tale of an adventure in The Peanut Butter Falcon.

We've all seen enough bromances to last several lifetimes. But that doesn't mean anyone plans to retire a genre that continues to connect with audiences.

The Peanut Butter Falcon arrives in theaters as a buddy movie -- but one with a difference. It teams Shia LaBeouf, as a red-neck renegade, with a young man with Down syndrome, played by Zack Gottsagen, an actor who really does have Down syndrome and for whom the movie was written.

LaBeouf's Tyler and Gottsagen's Zak make a typically unlikely duo. Tyler's on the run from a couple of guys (John Hawkes and Yelawolf) who want to kill him for messing up their crab-fishing business. He's also troubled by the death of his older brother (Jon Bernthal).

To hit the road, Zak must escape from the nursing home where he's being housed, no other placement being available. Zak's roommate (Bruce Dern) helps the young man engineer the breakout that leads to his hook-up with Tyler.

A nursing home volunteer (Dakota Johnson) follows. She's supposed to return Zak to the home. She also adds feminine energy to the generally masculine proceedings, which are heightened by Zak's burning ambition. He wants to be a professional wrestler and dreams of visiting a training school run by his idol, a wrestler who goes by the name of Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church).

Eventually, Johnson's Eleanor joins Tyler and Zak's brotherhood of two. Reluctantly, she agrees to help Zak pursue his dream.

Shot in the Florida Panhandle, the movie -- a passion project from first-time directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz -- relies heavily on the chemistry generated by a fully committed LaBeouf and by Gottsagen, a natural charmer with a robust sense of humor.

They're playing two characters who are thrown together for an adventure that includes a raft trip and an encounter with a backwoods preacher (Wayne DeHart) -- all spaced over sufficient time to allow LaBeouf and Gottsagen to develop a conspiratorial bond, two against the world.

Peanut Butter Falcon, which avoids gooey sentiment, takes its fanciful title from the name Zak chooses for his wrestling alter ego. The title proves suggestive; this is a movie that isn't afraid of its sometimes goofy appeal.

To fully enjoy Peanut Butter Falcon, it's probably best to set aside demands for total plausibility and accept the movie as a fairy tale about what it means to be young and feel free.

And -- at least to my knowledge -- The Peanut Butter Falcon is the only film in the long history of cinema that includes a scene in which the characters cook a fish, smear it with peanut butter and eat it. That moment, I should point out, marks the only time I felt sorry for anyone in the movie.