Knives Out (PG-13)
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Christopher Plummer plays a rich mystery novelist named Harlan Thrombey. The movie starts with his housekeeper, Fran, finding him dead, with a slit throat, the morning after his 85th birthday party. We then see Harlan's family members being questioned by police lieutenant Elliott (LaKeith Stanfield) and trooper Wagner (who is a big fan of Harlan's work). In the background is a private investigator named Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who eventually comes to the foreground of the investigation. The police believe Harlan's death was a suicide, but Blanc believes otherwise. He was hired anonymously, which makes him curious. The people being questioned include Harlan's daughter, Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis); her husband, Richard (Don Johnson); Harlan's son, Walt; Harlan's daughter-in-law, Joni Thrombey (Toni Collette); and Linda and Richard's son, Hugh Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans). Four of them have potential motives for the murder (if it was a murder). Other relatives include Joni's daughter, Meg; Walt's son, Jacob; Harlan's mother, Wanetta (K Callan, whom I know from Lois & Clark, though I found her completely unrecognizable, here); and Walt's wife, Donna (Riki Lindhome). Caught up in all of this is Harlan's caregiver, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), who has an unusual condition: lying causes her to vomit. Blanc enlists her as his "Watson" in the course of his investigation. Things become more complicated when it turns out that a week before his death, Harlan had changed his will to leave everything to Marta.

Throughout the movie, we see flashbacks that show us things that had actually happened, but about which various characters lied. This includes the circumstances leading to Harlan's death, so while it's still a mystery to Blanc and the police, it seems as if the audience already knows the truth. But of course, we only see fragments of the truth, until the end of the movie, in which it turns out that the whole truth was more complicated. (This strikes me as a neat parallel to one scene in which Marta only told fragments of the truth, in order to prevent herself from vomiting.) I also liked how the movie was bookended by a certain coffee mug. Though I find the whole truth about Harlan's death quite tragic, even more so than it seemed throughout most of the movie. And I don't really know what else to say, except that there's a fair amount of relatively subtle humor, and it was a pretty good story, with a good cast.

There will be a couple of sequels on Netflix, but I have no idea if or when I might get to see them.