Knee-jerk reviews: "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery"

1. We liked it a lot.
2. But then, of course, we see all these online articles about how terrible and poorly made it was and we briefly doubted our taste.
3. But no, it's fun and entertaining.
4. Probably not as good as Knives Out (see our 2019 "knee-jerk"), but that film benefitted from Ana de Armas' sympathetic character caught in the middle of everything.  There's no one here that compelling.  (Which is a benefit in a weird way - this is a sequel with an entirely new set of characters and conflicts.)
5. Daniel Craig continues to have a great time as Benoit Blanc. We wish we were half as unflappable and quick on our feet.
6. We don't see any reason why this can't become a long-running franchise.  We certainly want more.
7. So far, these movies work because of the clever writing, not because of any expensive spectacle.  Attract some movie stars, set the story in a posh location, create some obnoxious-yet-kinda-sympathetic rich characters with grudges, and then kill one of them off. 
8. We make it sound so easy, right?
9. Some critics (grouches?) seem put off by some of the more wacky plot turns, but those plot turns are cliches in the Agatha Christie genre of convoluted whodunits.  And so this movie is paying homage to those cliches.  That shouldn't be so hard to grasp.
10. Plus, the world of these Knives Out movies isn't tethered to our reality.  In the first movie, remember, the main character vomited whenever she told a lie.  Benoit Blanc's cases are not the real world.  There are, in fact, some elements that border on fantasy like the impossible-seeming invitation box puzzles.
11. It's a complicated story, yes, so there are going to be moments when you're scratching your head.  Not all of it fits seamlessly together.  That's okay because it mostly comes very close.  Go with it.
12. The loathsome, name dropping, windbag billionaire who takes credit for the work of others - played by Edward Norton -  was supposedly modeled on Jeff Bezos, but since the movie was completed Elon Musk now seems the more appropriate real-world counterpart.  (One online commenter suggested that Norton's character is, in fact, an embodiment of Netflix itself - the cocky "disruptor" who isn't half as smart as it thinks.)
13. We love David Bautista.
14. We're glad writer-director Rian Johnson got paid (Netflix spent close to $500 million for the rights to the two Knives Out sequels), but we hate the ongoing marginalization of the theatrical release.  Movies need to be seen in theaters with others.  
15. Unless it's a loud, visual effects-heavy franchise movie (which we don't hate), it's now all about streaming.  Mid-budget dramas and comedies are vanishing from the local multiplex.  They may still be getting made, but good luck finding them across all of those platforms you're paying $15 a month for.  Netflix put this one in theaters for a week or so, then yanked it.  Who knows how much money they left on the table.  It all seems backwards.  Nowadays, if you don't catch something in theaters in the first week or two, it's gone.  Hollywood seems to be actually training its customers to ignore the movie theater.
16. This all means that the days of two or three big Friday releases may be over.  Someone smarter than us noted that in the old days, a movie had many sources of revenue - first the box office, then home video like DVDs, then cable network licenses.  Films collected money as it worked their way through a big system of distribution.  Now it's sort of just come down to streaming subscriptions and nothing else.  That can't be sustainable, can it?

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