Brick, however, was far less of a pastiche than Knives Out and more of a formal experiment.
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At any rate, the movie has proven more influential than anyone would’ve predicted: when critics say Rian Johnson revived the murder mystery with Knives Out, what they really mean is he just remade Clue for the 21st century.įourteen years before resurrecting the old-fashioned murder mystery, Rian Johnson resuscitated another antique genre: the old-fashioned noir. Taking the game’s basic set-up – six strangers are called to a mysterious mansion, a seventh ends up dead and everyone’s a suspect – and adding winking humour, Cold War paranoia and a delightful Tim Curry as the suspicious butler trying to sort it all out, it leads to a conclusion that’s either brilliant or totally daft. Met with derision from critics and middling box office, the film’s stature is now at least equal to the game itself. Best among them is Daniel Craig, whose attempt at playing a Southern gentleman is so ridiculous it goes all the way around to being brilliant.Ī movie based on a board game? Wow, Hollywood has really run out of ideas, haven’t they? Three decades before Battleship, British director Jonathan Lynn took on the challenge of adapting a different Hasbro property, and against all logic, it actually worked out – in the long run, anyway. Its plot is basic whodunnit stuff – a wealthy novelist (Christopher Plummer) dies suddenly and everyone’s a suspect – but the execution is flawless, due to a massive A-list cast who have no problem cranking the ham levels to 11. Now years removed from the leftfield hype, and overshadowed in scope by the sequel, the original is still a superior blast. Apparently, audiences had been waiting for someone to bring back the old-school, Clue -style murder mystery, and while it wasn’t entirely obvious at the time, Johnson was just the guy to do it – after all, his first movie, Brick, was a throwback noir dressed up as a suburban teen flick. When it came out, Knives Out scanned like a lightweight palate cleanser for Rian Johnson after shouldering the high stakes of the Star Wars franchise. Not to mention that its themes of urban isolation and voyeurism hit even harder in the post-pandemic world, now that we’ve all had our own experiences being confined to our homes, with little more to do for entertainment than stare a bit too long out the window. Hitchcock had dabbled in minimalist, play-like setups before – see 1948’s Rope – but all things considered, Rear Window just might be his greatest achievement, as he proved he could achieve almost queasy levels of stress and tension even while working within the barest narrative constrictions. Homebound due to a broken leg, photojournalist LB Jefferies begins taking an interest in the lives of the folks in the neighbouring apartment complex – and eventually becomes convinced one of them has committed a grisly crime. 🔪 The best true crime documentaries on Netflix in the USĬonstructing a heart-palpitating thriller that takes place almost entirely in one room and from a single point of view is no easy task, but then, they don’t call Alfred Hitchcock the master of suspense for nothing. 🕵️ The 100 best thriller films of all time Here are 40 of the best.Ĭontributors: Phil de Semlyen, Matthew Singer, Annette Richardson, Ashanti Omkar
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With a renaissance now in full swing, we felt it was time to round up some of the genre’s classics, along with its hidden gems. Also, in the age of streaming, when most of us struggle to pay full attention to whatever’s on television while doomscrolling on Twitter, movies that force us to engage, follow clues and essentially become a participation serve as an ideal antidote to distracted viewing. For one thing, murder-mystery movies are one of cinema’s foundational genres, and having them back in style has a way of reconnecting viewers with film history.
Now, it seems like you can’t look through a magnifying glass without seeing a dead body that’s turned up under suspicious circumstances, either in cinemas (the recent remakes of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile ) or on television ( Only Murders in the Building, Poker Face ). After decades of being woefully out of fashion, the classic whodunnit has returned to cultural prominence, thanks in large part to the leftfield success of 2019’s Knives Out and its even bigger follow-up, Glass Onion. It’s safe to say that the murder-mystery is back.
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