Movie reviews for Nov. 29, 2019

'Knives Out'

PG-13 2:11 3 1/2 of 4 stars

After his polarizing blockbuster trip into space with "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," writer-director Rian Johnson turns back to the stylish mysteries of his excellent crime dramas "Looper" and "Brick" with the hilarious whodunit "Knives Out."

His deliciously tart Thanksgiving treat mixes the twisty puzzles of Agatha Christie's books, the sharp-edged humor of Mike Nichols' films and Johnson's own audacious storytelling style, which involves subtly seasoning the story with timely commentary on family affairs, class strife and immigration policy. Even better, he has an all-star cast eager to feast on the scenery of his cinematic game of "Clue."

The night after wealthy crime novelist Harlan Thrombey's (Christopher Plummer) complicated, combative family gathers for his 85th birthday party at his rambling mansion, the writer is found dead of an apparent suicide. Lt. Elliot (Lakeith Stanfield), the mild-mannered police detective in charge, and Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan), a Thrombey fan boy also on the case, are joined in the investigation by Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a renowned private detective whose observations are as quick as his Southern drawl is slow.

Blanc suspects foul play, and potential suspects abound: Harlan's daughter, Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), is an ambitious real estate mogul whose allegedly supportive husband, Richard (Don Johnson) is having an affair; his son, Walt (Michael Shannon), is the milquetoast head of Harlan's publishing company who chafed at the restrictions his father put on licensing his books; his widowed daughter-in-law, Joni (Toni Collette), is a flighty lifestyle guru who has a canny way of secreting away the support he provides; his favorite grandson, Ransom (Chris Evans), is a selfish playboy and spendthrift; and his other grandson, Jacob (Jaeden Martell) is a right-wing internet troll.

As he painstakingly pieces together the events of that fateful night, Blanc increasingly relies on the testimony of Harlan's nurse and close friend Marta (Ana de Armas), who has a peculiar psychological disorder: attempting to lie induces her to vomit.

"Knives Out" is an enticing addition to Johnson's filmography and a welcome appetizer before he goes back into orbit for more "Star Wars" adventures.

— Brandy McDonnell, The Oklahoman

'Queen & Slim'

R 2:12 3 1/2 of 4 stars

Following her acclaimed music videos for Beyonce and Rihanna, Melina Matsoukas delivers a tense and timely thriller with her feature film directorial debut "Queen & Slim."

Captivating performances by "Get Out" star Daniel Kaluuya and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith -whose characters are only named in the film's title — help to keep the powerful, poetic drama driving forward, even when the script from Emmy winner Lena Waithe ("Master of None"), who developed the story with novelist James Frey, gets bumpy.

In a rundown Cleveland diner, two strangers matched by Tinder are having a lackluster first date: He is an easygoing retail worker with a ready smile and a solid faith in God, while she is an uptight attorney and atheist with a frosty demeanor.

On the drive to her house, a minor moving violation leads to a traffic stop with a hostile police officer (Sturgill Simpson), and it escalates quickly when the lawyer states her rights and reaches for her phone to record the encounter. The patrolman draws his gun, an altercation ensues and the cop ends up shot and killed.

Convinced they won't be treated fairly by the cops, the courts or the media, the mismatched couple leave the scene, destroy their phones and go on the lam. Fleeing first to her estranged Uncle Earl (Bokeem Woodbine), a disturbed Iraq War veteran who is a pimp based in New Orleans, they plan an escape to Cuba.

But a nationwide manhunt is underway, even as the dash cam video of their run-in with the cop goes viral. As they wind their way southeast, they realize that some people consider them murderers or troublemakers, while others believe they are folk heroes and symbols of racial injustice.

Matsoukas and Waithe make several bold storytelling decisions, including narrowing the storytelling perspective to just the couple, who, without their smartphones, are largely cut off from the world. That means the sterling supporting players — Chloë Sevigny, Flea and especially 15-year-old Jahi Di'Allo Winston — are saddled with much of the exposition, and Waithe doubles down on that artistic choice by intercutting the film's sole sex scene with an angry, ultimately violent protest in the clueless couple's honor.

But it also ensures that the story is told exclusively from an African American perspective, an invaluable insight that art forms like cinema are intimately and effectively equipped to provide.

— Brandy McDonnell, The Oklahoman

'The Irishman'

R 3:29 3 1/2 of 4 stars

Despite the grueling 3 1/2-hour runtime, "The Irishman" is a magnetic mob epic from Martin Scorsese, the undisputed don of gangster cinema.

Adapted from the nonfiction book "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt, it chronicles the career of mob hitman and bodyguard Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a World War II veteran who is working as a delivery truck driver when he is rightly accused of stealing. Impressed by Frank's cagey testimony and refusal to name his co-conspirators, his attorney, Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano), gets him acquitted and introduces him to his cousin, Russell (Joe Pesci), the head of the Italian-American crime family that runs the Philadelphia area.

Russell introduces him to charismatic Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the powerful head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Sheeran becomes Hoffa's bodyguard and close friend, with even Frank's stoic daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina as a child, Anna Paquin as an adult), who loathes her father's mob business, charmed by the union leader.

But shifting circumstances — Attorney General Bobby Kennedy's (Jack Huston) "Get Hoffa" squad, Hoffa's prison sentence and his rivalry with fellow Teamster leader Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano (Stephen Graham) — puts Hoffa and the crime family at odds, with Frank's loyalties in the middle.

Even by their superlative standards, De Niro, Pacino and Pesci — the latter came out of retirement at Scorsese's behest — give stellar performances, and Industrial Light & Magic's de-aging effects show just how far that cinematic technology has come in a short time.

Although sweeping and action-packed, Scorsese's gangster films have always shown the toll taken by a life of organized crime, and "The Irishman" goes a step further, inserting into the narrative descriptions of some mobsters' violent, untimely deaths. His cautionary tale even more ruthlessly chronicles the fate of other Mafia members: fading into old age in prison or a nursing home alone.

"The Irishman" bowed Wednesday on Netflix, but for cinema fans whose bladder can bear it, the film is worth seeing on the big screen. In Oklahoma City, it is playing through Dec. 5 at Rodeo Cinema.

— Brandy McDonnell, The Oklahoman

'Synonyms'

Not rated 2:03 3 1/2 of 4 stars

At the heart of the obliquely thrilling"Synonyms" lies an existential question: Can we ever truly change who we are?

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid grapples with this head-on in the story of Yoav (Tom Mercier), a disaffected young Israeli who has fled his homeland for Paris, refusing to speak any Hebrew in an attempt to assimilate.

The film is loosely autobiographical: Lapid, who co-wrote the screenplay with his father, Haim Lapid, also lived in Paris in his early 20s. What makes "Synonyms" so compelling is how it explores the theme of identity through a lens of searing self-reflection.

When we first meet the protagonist, he's roaming the streets of nighttime Paris, where he finds his way into an empty apartment, swaddles himself in a sleeping bag and shuffles into the bathroom to take a shower, emerging to find that the sleeping bag has vanished — along with his clothing. Yoav then frantically runs around the building in search of the thief, his clothes or any human contact.

The next morning, two neighbors (Quentin Dolmaire and Louise Chevillotte, playing a caricature of a spoiled, artsy couple) find him huddled naked in a fetal position in his tub, where he has fallen asleep. The pair right away remark on Yoav's body, finding particular fascination with his circumcised penis.

Yoav's body is front-and-center throughout the film. Mercier — a trained dancer and martial artist who is making his acting debut — has an almost sculptural physique, becoming a great blank block of moving marble through which he effortlessly expresses myriad emotional states, from a deer in the headlights to utter determination to escape from something, as Yoav so often reminds us.

But escape from what exactly?

Lapid makes no bones about confronting the issues he has with the modern Israeli police state, particularly its staunch nationalism and hypermasculinity. In quick (and increasingly absurd) flashbacks to Yoav's compulsory military service, we see how these values were instilled in him — values that he now wishes to shed as fast as he can. Aided by his French-Hebrew dictionary, Yoav has a habit of referring to his home country with various adjectives, such as "odious" and "lamentable" (hence the film's title).

While much of the film is elliptical, the starkest expression of Lapid's critique of Israel comes via the character of Yaron, another Israeli immigrant in Paris. Whereas Yoav tries his best to blend in, Yaron (Uria Hayik) is pure macho id, getting in the face of strangers with the blunt greeting, "I am from Israel." During a job interview with Yoav's boss, Yaron engages the man in a spontaneous wrestling match, in a mutual competition for alpha dominance.

Lapid takes advantage of Mercier's dance abilities, filming Yoav as he flows through the frame in a goldenrod-colored overcoat as he recites vocabulary words from his dictionary, all the while avoiding eye contact with others.

But Yoav soon realizes that he's never more Israeli than in France. There's a particularly memorable — and humiliating — scene in which Yoav's desperation for work leads him to take a job with a pornographer who, after entertaining his imperfect French, instructs him to shout his unerotic exclamations in Hebrew.

In the end, "Synonyms" comes, with a sense of resignation, to the same realization about selfhood that Yoav, or any misfit, does: We're bound to ourselves — not just our physical bodies, but our heritage — as long as we roam this Earth.

— Hau Chu, The Washington Post

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