Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery — Delightfully devious

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violent content, bloody images, profanity and crude sexual content

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Rian Johnson certainly hasn’t lost his fiendishly macabre touch.

 

Although it runs a bit too long, this third entry in the Knives Out series is another gleeful descent into depraved behavior, with a stellar cast dropped into the middle of a twisty whodunit. Orchestrating its slow unraveling, as before, is Daniel Craig’s idiosyncratic private detective, Benoit Blanc.

 

Under the watchful gaze of Police Chief Scott (Mila Kunis) and Father Jud Duplenticy
(Josh O'Connor, right), Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) examines an unexpected clue.

Blanc’s hair has grown longer, and he has left his droll Southern witticisms behind (and they’re missed), but he still cuts a commanding figure in costume designer Jenny Eagan’s debonair outfits.

But we don’t meet Blanc until the second act. Employing his usual penchant for non-linear storytelling, Johnson first introduces us to ex-boxer turned devout young priest Jud Duplenticy (John O’Connor), who regards himself as “young, dumb and full of Christ.” He narrates earlier events while writing … what? A witness statement? A confession? A memoir?

 

Duplenticy lives with the burden of having killed a fellow fighter during his boxing days, the shame of which drove him into the priesthood. But his temper still gets away from him at times, most recently resulting in a “reprimand” that finds him sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, in upstate New York’s Chimney Rock (shades of Stephen King!).

 

He’s assigned to assist firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who rules this tiny parish with a blend of charismatic smarm and thundering, shock-and-awe sermons. In short, he’s a sadistic bully … and proud of it.

 

The primary members of his flock — those who tolerate or cater to Wicks’ whims, or (worse yet) believe in his God-given powers — include:

 

• staunchly faithful church-goer Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close);

 

• tightly wound lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington);

 

• town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner);

 

• bestselling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott);

 

• aspiring politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack);

 

• wheelchair-bound concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeney); and

 

• circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church).

The Lesson: A moody page-turner

The Lesson (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and expliciy sexuality

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Memories of the first act of Ira Levin’s play, Deathtrap — transformed into a terrific 1982 film by director Sidney Lumet — surfaced while watching this nasty little character piece.

 

While Liam (Daryl McCormack, background) watches with dismay, Sinclair (Richard E.
Grant, left) crueslly tells his son, Bertie (Stephen McMcillan) that he'll never amount to
anything. The boy's mother Hélèle (Julie Delpy) offers no rebuttal.

Scripter Alex MacKeith’s similarly twisty drama telegraphs its intentions with the first words spoken by arrogant novelist J.M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant), during a live interview: “Great writers steal.”

The only questions are who will do the stealing, and from whom. And while both answers soon may seem obvious, it’s best not to make assumptions.

 

Classics scholar Liam Somers (Daryl McCormack) is hired by Sinclair’s wife, Hélène (Julie Delpy), to help their son Bertie (Stephen McMillan) sharpen his writing skills, in order to improve the young man’s chances for university admission. After establishing a worthy talent for this assignment, Liam is hired full-time, and invited to live in the lavish Sinclair estate’s guest cottage.

 

Although at first blush this seems an average posting, the atmosphere is tense, the family dynamic quite brittle. Sinclair enjoys belittling his wife and son; the former responds with calm detachment, while the latter clearly fears his father. Liam is warned, early on, never to mention the Sinclairs’ older son, Felix.

 

Bertie’s cowering nature in his father’s presence notwithstanding, the boy is uncooperative — even dismissive — under Liam’s gentle efforts at guidance, although the boy is grudgingly impressed by his tutor’s “party trick.”

 

Liam has a form of eidetic memory that allows him to remember a complete literary work — sonnet, poem, short story — if triggered by a brief quoted passage.

 

Although an acknowledged fan of Sinclair’s work — Liam wonders if that has any bearing on why he was hired by Hélène — his relationship with the author initially remains formal and distant. Sinclair is trying to finish his newest novel — after a lapse of many years — and, after hours, Liam also is struggling to complete his first novel, titled Tower 24.

 

A droll scene follows: Liam — able to see Sinclair in his study, from the guest house’s bedroom window — tries desperately to match the author’s late-night pace … but, ultimately, falls asleep at his desk. Upon waking the following morning, Liam is chagrined to see that Sinclair still is hard at work.

 

Bertie eventually thaws. Warning Liam not to touch the poisonous blossoms of a particularly lush rhododendron, the boy further explains that “It’s basically a weed; nothing can grow around it.” Liam realizes — as do we — that the boy isn’t really speaking about the bush.

 

A rhododendron also is known as a Rose Tree, which just happens to be the title of Sinclair’s novel-in-progress.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande: A close encounter with captivating strangers

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor, profanity and explicity nudity

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang

This film is most emphatically adults-only.

 

(In fact, you kids shouldn’t even read this review. Check out my comments about Lightyear instead.)

 

Getting Nancy (Emma Thompson) into bed requires considerable patience and gentle
persuasion by sex worker Leo (Daryl McCormack). But, once there, will she succumb
to the moment?

Director Sophie Hyde’s approach to Katy Brand’s script is the perfect Covid shoot: a two-hander which — aside from a brief prologue and epilogue — takes place solely within a hotel room.

I was surprised to learn that Leo Grande didn’t originate as a play, as it would have been perfect on a minimal stage. Regardless, this intimate 97-minute drama never is boring; stars Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack make the most of Brand’s thoughtful, tender, sweetly sensitive and frequently amusing dialogue.

 

The premise is simple: Retired teacher and recent widow Nancy Stokes (Thompson), attempting to compensate for a sexually dull marriage, arranges a hotel room session with sex worker Leo (McCormack). She thinks she wants to experience the sort of all-stops-out libidinous pleasure that her husband never deigned to provide.

 

But when Nancy answers the soft knock and allows Leo into the room … well, best intentions and a lifetime of fantasies aren’t nearly the same as being confronted by this attractive, well-muscled and instinctively sensitive stranger.

 

What follows is thoroughly charming … and, as time passes, increasingly verbally explicit.

 

Thompson excels at poor Nancy’s initial blend of shyness, flustered embarrassment and second thoughts. (Heck, third, fourth and fifth thoughts!) Thompson plays it perfectly, her wary, closed-off body language matched by Nancy’s nervous non-sequiturs and an absolutely inability to look Leo directly in the eye.

 

Her stream-of-consciousness comments often are funny: gently amusing at the very least, and possibly hilarious (depending upon the sexual awareness of the individual viewer). Much of what Nancy eventually reveals likely will sound and feel familiar to many women; Brand clearly knows her way around the (often unfulfilled) female sexual experience.

 

As a means of keeping her barriers up, Nancy also wants to know more about Leo as a person … which is to say, what his life is like when he isn’t, um, on call. Leo adeptly deflects such inquiries, always with a warm smile; such inquiries would destroy what is, in effect, role play with rigid, unspoken rules.