Podcast

Wednesday, March 08, 2023

Best Movies of 2022, #3: Glass Onion

Part 2 of our trilogy-within-a-top-ten-list: As with yesterday, we have the disgusting rich, the struggling poor, a boat, an island, tables turned, and people murdered.

This was an absolutely delightful movie. The whole cast is fantastic. Now that Daniel Craig’s James Bond is dead, I hope they make a hundred of these instead.

Can I do spoilers on this one? If you haven’t seen it, stop reading now! Seriously, stop! Go watch this wonderful movie on Netflix!

Okay, are they gone? Good.

Boy oh boy was this movie a great example of Real Life National Pain. It came true even more than White Noise did. One last SPOILER ALERT! Okay, the big reveal is that the thinly-veiled Elon Musk character is both stupid and evil, but most people didn’t realize the real Musk was stupid and/or evil until just a few weeks before the movie came out, so the filmmakers were shockingly prescient. Who do they want to warn us about next, and can they do so in a more timely fashion?

But now that we’re dishing spoilers, and given that I’ve said that I get easily confused by movies these days, let me ask the big question I couldn’t answer. Given what we know by the end, why did Norton go on with his plans for the weekend after Janelle Monae showed up? Didn’t he think he’d killed her? Wouldn’t he freak out more when he saw her, and instantly abandon his plans? Did he assume that he had failed to kill her? And maybe assume that she didn’t know he’d tried? I just couldn’t follow that, which was a major impediment to me enjoying the movie in retrospect, but I figured there must be a good explanation. Was there? What was he thinking when he saw her?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While watching the movie the first time, I happened to notice the key moment that reveals who the killer is (they flash back to it later). This means I spent most of the movie knowing whodunnit. Everyone else watching with me loved the movie, but for me, knowing this aspect completely deflated the mystery. I get the importance of "fair play" in terms of giving audiences all the clues to solve things themselves ... but I don't think they should have kept that shot in the cut.

I also think the movie was hurt by Janelle Monae's performance. She's fine, but not nearly as lived in as most of the other characters. Even when her true identity was revealed, she still projected a sort of false "actory" performance ... which meant I spent most of the movie assuming that there was going to be one final reveal where we see that there's yet another character underneath her facade. Turns out that I was just seeing the limits of her talent.