‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ (2025)
The latest “Knives Out Mystery” serves up Josh O’Connor in his fourth feature this year – “The Mastermind,” “The History of Sound” and “Rebuilding” are the others – as a priest seeking to suss out a killer in a reclusive burg. (It was his part in last-year’s amped-up tennis drama “Challengers” that seemed to push the affable British actor to Hollywood’s must-have list.) Director Rian Johnson (“Brick,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) attracts an A-list cast to these “Knives” projects and shoehorns their unique personas into unlikely parts, which is where the magic happens. The main trick is Bond boy Daniel Craig as the Southern-twanged sleuth Benoit Blanc. He’s one part Hercule Poirot and another part Columbo with a splash of fop and Inspector Clouseau goofiness stirred in. Blanc’s the engine for the series, but it’s the casting of that ensemble he must work his way through to find out whodunit that brings joy to each episode. Here we settle in at a quaint upstate New York rectory led by monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher with demonstrative Trumpian undertones. Others in the crew of suspects when one goes belly-up are Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, a devout church lady and the monsignor’s stalwart ally; former bestselling sci-fi author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott); groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church); local attorney and church devotee Vera Draven (Kerry Washington); her adopted kid brother Cy (Daryl McCormack); smarmy doc and something of an Andrew Tate/Joe Rogan alt-right politico, Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner); and concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny, “Civil War’’). O’Connor’s reverend Jud is the fly in the ointment when he shows up to check in on the church. The murderous plot’s already afoot; after the first corpse crops up, Blanc’s called in by the local police chief (Mila Kunis). At two and a half hours, the film folds in on itself too many times for its own good. Many of the characters are too thinly drawn, and there are logical flaws such as footage from Cy’s mounted iPhone that’s problematic because he’s often in the frame holding the camera. O’Connor gets a passing grade as the main focus, but it’s Close and Craig that sell it. Not as tight as the first “Knives Out,” but still a passable “Murder by Death”-lite caper.
Sisu: Road to Revenge’ (2025)
A holiday alternative to “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” (1987)? It’s a stretch, but all of those entities – and a tank or two – find their way into this follow-up to the hit 2022 Finnish actioner about a one-person army kicking the stuffing out of Nazi hide in World War II Europe. The title of the series stems from an “untranslatable” Finnish word referring to inner strength and unrelenting energy (sounds like a translation to me, but okay). In the first “Sisu,” Atami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), a former commando with hundreds of kills to his credit, was the target of Nazis retreating in the waning moments of the war. Bad idea to pick on Sisu. That movie was Rambo meets “Fury Road” with WWII relics. You might even say it was Indiana Jones-like, without the humor, wit and family appeal, as heads exploded, limbs were blown off and Atami was ever smeared in the blood of himself and others, akin to Alexander Skarsgård’s berserker in Robert Eggers’ Norse epic, “The Northman” (also made in 2022). Atami never speaks; the ire and rage in his crystalline blue eyes say it all. In “Road to Revenge” he’s marked by the Russian lieutenant (Stephen Lang) responsible for the butchering of his wife and progeny before the first “Sisu” (low on ammo, the bad guys used shovels and axes). Plotwise, it’s pretty convenient to have the bane of your existence come to you so you can settle matters. The film has Atami porting a massive load of lumber (his deconstructed family home in Russian-occupied Karelia) across the tundra and though the boreal forest. The plot doesn’t much matter, as men in medieval armor on motorcycles give pursuit to the lumber-laden truck and planes drop frequently from above. Through it all Atami remains committed to protecting the vestige of his family and his loyal Bedlington terrier. There are some inventive twists from director Jalmari Helander, sharp, well-choreographed stunt work and rich framing by cinematographer Mika Orasmaa. It’s bloody fun nonsense with a snarl and fist in the air. Tommila embodies the never-say-die warrior, and Lang makes for an aptly grizzled offset. At 80-something minutes, “Road to Revenge” is lean, and necessarily so, as it’s one note. The bloody orgy of bullets and metal mangled mayhem likely isn’t for all, but will certainly please fans of the original.
‘Eternity’ (2025)
In this afterlife dramedy by David Freyne (“Dating Amber”), bawdy lightheartedness turns something that could have had power into the trite and ephemeral. It doesn’t help that there’s no chemistry between the three leads, a fatal flaw for a love triangle. Elder couple Joan and Larry are attending a gender reveal party for a grandchild when Larry chokes on a pretzel and checks out. In the hereafter he wakes up – pink confetti in his hair – as a younger version of himself that we recognize as Miles Teller (“Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Gorge”). The great beyond is a bubble of Disney theme parks where you choose your forever adventure land, among them a Clown World, the stodgy, intellectual Museum World and pride-party Queer World. There’s also Man-Free World, which is filled to the gills and taking no more – a moratorium on men, enough said. To navigate their path, the dearly departed are assigned an A.C. (afterlife coordinator). Larry’s comes in the form of the boisterous, chummy Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers’’), but no choice of final destination is made when Joan, now played by Elizabeth Olsen (the Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Universe) shows up at the afterlife depot. Before the two can fully reunite, in walks Luke (Callum Turner), Joan’s first husband, who died in the Korean War some 67 years earlier. The swoon on Joan’s face is hyperbolic and unearned, but tells us all we need to know: Luke was the love of her life. The rest of the film has Larry trying to outduel Luke and win Joan’s heart. This empty melodrama isn’t filled by the quirk of Freyne’s after-world building – think “Beetlejuice.” If this is what eternity looks like, I’ll choose hell.
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