‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ (2025)
The latest “Knives Out Mystery” serves up Josh O’Connor in his fourth feature this year – “The Mastermind,” “The History of Sound” and “Rebuilding” are the others – as a priest seeking to suss out a killer in a reclusive burg. (It was his part in last-year’s amped-up tennis drama “Challengers” that seemed to push the affable British actor to Hollywood’s must-have list.) Director Rian Johnson (“Brick,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) attracts an A-list cast to these “Knives” projects and shoehorns their unique personas into unlikely parts, which is where the magic happens. The main trick is Bond boy Daniel Craig as the Southern-twanged sleuth Benoit Blanc. He’s one part Hercule Poirot and another part Columbo with a splash of fop and Inspector Clouseau goofiness stirred in. Blanc’s the engine for the series, but it’s the casting of that ensemble he must work his way through to find out whodunit that brings joy to each episode. Here we settle in at a quaint upstate New York rectory led by monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher with demonstrative Trumpian undertones. Others in the crew of suspects when one goes belly-up are Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, a devout church lady and the monsignor’s stalwart ally; former bestselling sci-fi author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott); groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church); local attorney and church devotee Vera Draven (Kerry Washington); her adopted kid brother Cy (Daryl McCormack); smarmy doc and something of an Andrew Tate/Joe Rogan alt-right politico, Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner); and concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny, “Civil War’’). O’Connor’s reverend Jud is the fly in the ointment when he shows up to check in on the church. The murderous plot’s already afoot; after the first corpse crops up, Blanc’s called in by the local police chief (Mila Kunis). At two and a half hours, the film folds in on itself too many times for its own good. Many of the characters are too thinly drawn, and there are logical flaws such as footage from Cy’s mounted iPhone that’s problematic because he’s often in the frame holding the camera. O’Connor gets a passing grade as the main focus, but it’s Close and Craig that sell it. Not as tight as the first “Knives Out,” but still a passable “Murder by Death”-lite caper.
At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge, and Apple Cinemas Cambridge, 168 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge Highlands near Alewife and Fresh Pond, and coming to Netflix this month.
‘Eternity’ (2025)
In this afterlife dramedy by David Freyne (“Dating Amber”), bawdy lightheartedness turns something that could have had power into the trite and ephemeral. It doesn’t help that there’s no chemistry between the three leads, a fatal flaw for a love triangle. Elder couple Joan and Larry are attending a gender reveal party for a grandchild when Larry chokes on a pretzel and checks out. In the hereafter he wakes up – pink confetti in his hair – as a younger version of himself that we recognize as Miles Teller (“Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Gorge”). The great beyond is a bubble of Disney theme parks where you choose your forever adventure land, among them a Clown World, the stodgy, intellectual Museum World and pride-party Queer World. There’s also Man-Free World, which is filled to the gills and taking no more – a moratorium on men, enough said. To navigate their path, the dearly departed are assigned an A.C. (afterlife coordinator). Larry’s comes in the form of the boisterous, chummy Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers’’), but no choice of final destination is made when Joan, now played by Elizabeth Olsen (the Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Universe) shows up at the afterlife depot. Before the two can fully reunite, in walks Luke (Callum Turner), Joan’s first husband, who died in the Korean War some 67 years earlier. The swoon on Joan’s face is hyperbolic and unearned, but tells us all we need to know: Luke was the love of her life. The rest of the film has Larry trying to outduel Luke and win Joan’s heart. This empty melodrama isn’t filled by the quirk of Freyne’s after-world building – think “Beetlejuice.” If this is what eternity looks like, I’ll choose hell.
At the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, and AMC Assembly Row 12, 395 Artisan Way, Assembly Square, Somerville.
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
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