‘Knives Out’ is the new measuring stick for modern whodunit fun

A fully loaded cast elevates this pure popcorn entertainment to among the year’s best movies

This week the New York Times Magazine released a long, hoping-to-be-definitive profile of Adam Sandler, the first such story the comedic megastar has agreed to in over 20 years. I’ve been slamming Sandler as a talented slacker for YEARS, including probably the harshest review I’ve ever written, but one line from the NYTM story stopped me dead in my tracks: “Critics, as a group, hate Sandler comedies, sometimes fairly, but just as often because the movies undermine the project of close reading altogether.”

It’s useful to remember a large portion of the movie-going public sees movies as diversionary entertainment, not art. Case and point, Marvel movies (I got your back, Marty!). But I loved this quote from the Russo brothers (directors of Avengers: Endgame) responding to Scorcese in a recent interview: “We’re just two guys from Cleveland, Ohio, and ‘cinema’ is a New York word. In Cleveland, we call them movies.”

It’s true. Few things can top the feeling of watching a movie that’s just a rollicking good time.

And few movies have produced that feeling as strongly as Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.