Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery plus a few Short Takes on some other cinematic topics
A Brief Farewell to 2025 (with Knives barely out)
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
However, if you’d like to know more about rationale of my ratings visit this explanatory site.
12/16/2025: Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark will go dark for a few weeks at the end of 2025 while your devoted critic celebrates the holidays (including me becoming 78 and still mobile) and deals with situations like a sick cat and a pile of car repairs. We’ll return in early January with hopes this year ends on a better note than we’ve witnessed with so many tragic deaths lately. As a send-off, here are some concise comments about one final current movie.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
Here's the third installment of the Knives Out series starring Daniel Craig as master detective Benoit Blanc (this summary‘s very short [almost a deadly sin for me] so if you want details of the story access this extensive plot description—with Spoilers of course). Young, anger-ridden priest Jud Duplenticly (Josh O’Connor) is sent to a small, rural parish to serve under firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), tension easily growing between them. During a Good Friday service Wicks is suddenly killed with Jud as the prime suspect so Benoit’s called in to solve the mysterious crime which also involves finding a valuable diamond, even as circumstances show Wick’s few devoted parishioners have motives also. I found this movie to be intriguing—if a bit lengthy in setting up the Duplenticy-Wicks conflict—but unlike the supportive CCAL (Rotten Tomatoes 93% positive reviews, Metacritic 80% average score) I wasn’t as impressed with this one as I’ve been with the previous Knives Out excursions, possibly because its pro-Christ messages from Father Jud rubbed up somewhat distractingly against my “fall” from the Catholicism I was raised in (and what was that “Damascus moment” of Benoit’s all about?—even as he joins me in rejection of religiosity). Still, overall this is a quite entertaining experience (as Brolin, Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, and Kerry Washington are especially impactful in their roles, joining the powerhouse-performances of Craig and O'Conner) which you might be able to find in a few domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters but is mostly available through streaming on Netflix (free to subscribers; $7.99 for a month’s sign-up with ads, $17.99 without). I’ll now hasten my departure with my usual Musical Metaphor, this time the traditional African-American spiritual “Jesus on the Mainline” (“You just call him up and tell Him what you want”), which I remember as a radio hit but I can’t tell you when I heard it or who sang it so here's Ry Cooder's version (video from March 25, 1987 at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz, CA, a place I've been to but not that night). That’s (shockingly) all from me for now; see you again come January.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
(1) IMDb's Most Popular Movies of 2025 (I agree with some of them)
(2) IMDb's Staff Picks of 2025 (I haven’t seen most of these)
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