Knives Out (2019)

What an excellent murder mystery to end the year! Despite the familiarity of the murder mystery genre with the typical big cast of famous names and suspects, Knives Out still manages to entertain and captivates the viewer from start to finish. You may think you have seen it all before in the many adaptations of Agatha Christie novels, Knives Out still manages to provide the twists and turns in a clever manner. What makes Knives Out a delight to watch is the performances from everyone delivering a script that is tight and entertaining. This is akin to reading a splendid page turning murder mystery novel. Director Rian Johnson has a style that often have the camera focus on the actors' face up close and personal making the performances very convincing and involving.

Having a stellar cast is one thing. Making their characters relevant to the story and interesting is no easy task. Rian succeeded in making good use of his stellar cast as each of them makes their presence felt, some more than others. Making up the impresive list in case you are unaware are these more illustrious actors: Daniel Craig as the private detective who gets to solve the crime, Christopher Plummer as the murder victim, Chris Evans as the badly behaved good for nothing grandson of the deceased, Jamie Lee Curtis as the eldest daughter, Don Johnson as the son in law, Michael Shannon as the son of the deceased, Toni Collette the daughter in law and Ana de Armas as the faithful nurse. It may be still early days for Oscar predictions but this film has already garnered three nominations for the Golden Globe under their Musical or Comedy category for Best Picture, Best Actor (Daniel Craig) and Best Actress (Ana de Armas).

It is not often we get a "who dunit" thriller these days without it looking like a poorer remake of something we have already seem many times before. Knives Out manages to court familiarity and use it to its advantage throigh its twists and turns. At the end,  whether you managed to guess the right person or persons who did it matters less when the journey to its conclusion can be such fun.