This week:
- A mystery worth solving.
- George Clooney’s new movie.
- An underrated new sitcom.
- Whining about AI
- Wild stories about a surprising movie shoot.
The Best Movie Franchise We Have
Netflix is taking over our lives. Resistance is futile.
First, it came for our holidays. (Who needs one last Christmas memory with Nana when four hours of Stranger Things just dropped?) Now, it’s plotting its full pop-culture takeover.
While there’s still a battle ongoing with Paramount to take over Warner Bros., we’re staring down the barrel of a future where Netflix controls essentially everything you watch besides Real Housewives. My attempt to find a silver lining in something so seemingly dystopian: at least sometimes they make something that’s actually good.
Case in point is the release of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third in the Knives Out franchise and one of the most entertaining movies I’ve seen this year. It may clock in at over two-and-a-half hours, a heinous crime against humanity according to the Film Running-Time Tribunal that includes me and myself. But, allergic as I am to such an egregious thing, I was so rapt and tickled by it that I took my antihistamine and gleefully trudged along.
Daniel Craig is back doing his Foghorn Leghorn drag as detective Benoit Blanc, who doesn’t just talk, but somehow also walks and dresses with a Southern drawl. That the Knives Out movies haven’t exactly reinvented the wheel is part of the appeal: They’re versions of an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit but with characters who use iPhones. The structure has a cozy familiarity, settling you in so you can pay closer attention to the characters’ quirky curiosities and the kaleidoscope of clues.
In Wake Up Dead Man (titled infuriatingly without a proper comma), a murder (duh) happens in a church (ooooohhh). One of the church’s priests and several of its congregants, who have a cult-like devotion to its monsigneur, are all suspects. Enter Craig’s Benoit Blanc, twirling his mustache and solving the crime. (Sure, the character has more of a fuzzy beard than a mustache. But he definitely has mustache energy.)
Rather, enter Craig’s Benoit Blanc…eventually. The entire first act unfolds before Blanc arrives, with Josh O’Connor’s Father Jud Duplenticity introducing the eccentric members of the church where he’s just been assigned.
There’s Josh Brolin’s sacrilegiously brash Monsigneur Wicks, Glenn Close as his devout and devoted church assistant Martha, Andrew Scott as a doofy sci-fi author with writer’s block, Jeremy Renner as a depressed alcoholic, Kerry Washington and Darryl McCormack’s listless mother and adopted son, and Cailee Spaeny’s wallowing, disabled concert cellist.
Apologies to James Bond, but this is O’Connor’s movie. It is a quintessential movie star performance—even though we’ll all be watching it on our TVs and our phones. He’s magnetic, alternately desperate, earnest, and combustible, and so naturally, easily funny.
Glenn Close is giving my favorite performance of hers in over a decade. That’s not a slight to her recent work; that’s just how enjoyable she is in this. And look out for Bridgett Everett to arrive like a wrecking ball for a one-scene performance that will knock your socks off, and is essentially the heart of the movie.
The mystery of what to watch this weekend? That’s one case that’s closed.
George Clooney, Good Actor. Who Knew?
Speaking of Netflix offering up good things once in a while, I’m a big fan of Jay Kelly.
The movie’s not for everybody. It’s very sentimental, at times almost aggressively corny, and absolutely emotionally manipulative. That means it is, in fact, very much for me.
George Clooney plays a movie star named Jay Kelly who is, well, George Clooney-level famous. He’s going through an existential crisis, looking back at all he accomplished and wondering if it was worth all that it cost in his personal life to achieve it: fractured relationships with his family, no friends who aren’t on his payroll, and a startling inability to decipher between performing as “Jay Kelly, Movie Star” and living as Jay Kelly, himself.
There are great performances in the film; if Adam Sandler gets his first Oscar nod for this, I wouldn’t be mad, and Billy Crudup stuns in a handful of scenes. But it only works because of Clooney. No other actor could be convincing as a fictional star of the magnitude that Jay Kelly is, and no actor could manage to elicit sympathy for the character’s woe-is-me pity party.
Jay Kelly is a surprise for cinema lovers—and not always a good one—considering it was co-written and directed by Noah Baumbach, known for films like Marriage Story and The Squid and the Whale.
Typically, Baumbach’s movies are so prickly they’re basically cinematic cactuses. They’re so bitter they might as well be the movie versions of a grapefruit. (I was so proud of myself for coming up with both of those comparisons that instead of just including one like a good writer/sane person, I included both.) Jay Kelly, in contrast, is nakedly earnest.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I’m sipping with gusto.
My Favorite TV Performance Right Now
Every year, it seems like there’s a new comedy series that quietly premieres awkwardly in a middle-of-nowhere section of the typical TV season. I discover them, essentially, by accident, but they’re typically a delight!
That’s what happened with Stumble, the NBC sitcom that has aired a handful of episodes and is now the series I most look forward to watching each week. It’s basically Abbott Elementary meets Bad News Bears, a mockumentary comedy about a small-town college gymnastics team with ambition to beat their elite, snobby rival at a major competition.
Jenn Lyon plays the coach, a no-nonsense, yet endearingly maternal Texas spitfire. Lyon is a reliable scene-stealer. Her guest turns on English Teacher should win Emmys, and she was the heart and soul of the nail-salon-mafia drama series Claws. (Seriously, everyone should watch Claws. Did you read that description?) It’s a treat to see her in a leading role, and she totally sticks the landing. That’s gymnastics speak, right?
There’s No Greater Hell Than AI Mickey Mouse
I used ChatGPT for the first time last night, and I got into a fight with it within seven minutes. So suffice it to say that I don’t feel fully equipped, and certainly not excited, to embrace this future of AI all the time, everywhere.
Disney’s investing in Chat GPT-maker Open AI and licensing its iconic characters for its use is a grim development in the once-complicated conversation of how much should or will Hollywood embrace AI. The answer now is, apparently: fully.
Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars: all those characters are up for grabs for whatever demented thing people want to make with them. Sure, the potential for making kids’ birthday party invites or something is cute. But there’s also opportunity for people to make their own movies using these characters, which seems not, like, great for the creative community.
That’s not to mention what twisted things people will come up with to do with them that I don’t dare even think of. Protect Lilo at all costs!
Sounds Like a Real Grinch of a Film Shoot
You are not prepared for how wild the film shoot was for the Jim Carrey live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas, as detailed in a great oral history on Vulture. Torture coach? The CIA?? Seal Team 6???
More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed
Meet the new Netflix holiday movie hunk. He’s French! Read more.
The secrets behind the wildest children’s movie of the year. Read more.
June Squibb is 96 (!!!) and giving the best performance on Broadway. Read more.
What to Watch This Week:
Oy to the World: Hallmark made a Hanukkah movie and, yes, that’s really its title. (Sun. on Hallmark)
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery: A total delight despite its endless running time. (Now on Netflix)
Resurrection: There’s a 30-minute sequence in this that is the coolest thing of the year. (Now in theaters)
What to Skip This Week:
Ella McCay: Go watch Broadcast News or Terms of Endearment instead, and let’s forget this James L. Brooks movie happened. (Now in theaters)
Taylor Swift: The End of an Era: Here we thought the era already ended. (Now on Disney+)
