Knives Out (2019)

With the current state of the world being as rough as it is, we all sometimes need lighthearted fun to remind ourselves that there’s still greatness in the world. Wakaliwood — a Ugandan production studio consisting entirely of native citizens — provides such fare and a great laugh. It came as a major, delightful surprise to me that the newest Wakaliwood film, Crazy World, was selected to be a part of YouTube’s We Are One digital film festival after it initially debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. I’ve been craving some cheeky fun by the dedicated artists from Kampala, Uganda, and Crazy World did not disappoint in the slightest. This also helps us remember that their are real people in Uganda suffering from a regime hell bent on harming LGBTQIA+ people at the expense of actually helping their citizens.

For anyone who’s watched anything from Wakaliwood, you know what you’re getting yourself into when turning on Crazy World, but for the uninitiated, you’re about to have your eyes opened to a whole new world of filmmaking.

When it comes to film budgets, you have your big-budget films like The Avengers (appx. $220 mil), mid-budget films like Knives Out (appx. $40 mil), and low-budget films like One Cut of the Dead (appx. $25,000), but rarely do any of us watch micro-budget movies. Wakaliwood presents possibly the lowest budgets any feature films have seen, with their breakout film, Who Killed Captain Alex? made on a mere $200 budget. When you hear famous directors and other people say that there’s no excuse for you to not make films if you have the passion for it, Wakaliwood is the prime example of that philosophy. Like Who Killed Captain Alex?, Crazy World retains that charming D.I.Y filmmaking style by having the filmmakers utilizing whatever assets they had on hand to craft their art, and that dedication to making the best possible movie they could make with such little resources is what drives the main appeal for these movies. Seeing the creativity that spawns from people who have next to nothing to make a movie shows how much they care about crafting entertainment that represents their culture.

Budgetary discussions aside, Crazy World gives fans of Wakaliwood movies what they want by playing up the comedy and action just like their movies before. An amazing running theme among Wakaliwood movies is the sheer amount of on-screen talent their movies boast. Dedicated performances come from each of their actors, who sink into their roles better than many American films. The entirely Ugandan cast boasts solid line delivery, staging, and emotional weight that’s beyond admirable, but one thing truly shines above the rest, and that’s the action. I kid you not when I say the dedication put into the action scenes rivals and even beats out many American action films in sheer entertainment value and care for the craft. Watching self-taught actors swing their fists, perform jumping kicks, and perform other insane stunts is truly a marvel to witness! Although the violence is always on the cornier side of entertainment, unlike the brooding seriousness of a John Wick, a lot of the action within Crazy World connects and had me wonder how these actors were able to pull some of this stuff off; as an example, there are a few moments where bricks come into the action and are either thrown or smashed against people. I have no idea if the bricks featured in the movie are real, but it was convincing enough to make me feel the brutal impact of hard objects smashing against people’s heads.

After getting to screen Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery at the Austin Film Festival a few weeks back, I was chomping at the bit to share my in-depth analysis of why this film is such a great follow-up to Knives Out. Now that the film is enjoying a limited theatrical release, more people are getting to experience the murder mystery mastery of Rian Johnson and I could not be more thrilled. However, the twists and turns that this franchise is known for are so juicy that I am willing to hold off on my full review and give everyone a little more time to see the film before really unpacking the plot.

Thus, I have taken on the nearly impossible task of providing a spoiler-free review.

Enjoy!

[update 1 year later] Out of 11 nominations, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) won 7 Oscars at the 95th Academy Awards this March 2023! That's for:

The new A24 film was just as the title describes: Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). A friend saw an early screening and reported that the movie was all over the place, not what he was expecting. Isn’t that in the title? – was my smart reply. I couldn’t possibly have expected what the film turned out to be, like many. The already-cult limited release film stars Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh from MCU’s Shang-Chi, Crazy Rich Asians, and numerous films) and Joy (Stephanie Hsu from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), with supporting roles Waymond (Ke Huy Quan from The Goonies), and Jamie Lee Curtis (The Halloween movies and Knives Out). Everything Everywhere is like the Matrix, but with OCD and hallucinogens, plus a heart’s dose of mother-daughter intergenerational intercultural growing pains. The movie currently scores 5 for the Incluvie score, and 4.5 for the Movie score, with 97% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. People love it! Personally, I wouldn’t say I love it, but I also didn’t dislike it.

Writing mystery can be a rather difficult task. Where other genres can mask exposition through action or worldbuilding or jump scares, pure mystery has much fewer tools available to generate intrigue among exposition drops. Some more successful examples include Knives Out’s flashbacks revealing twist after twist filtered through the perspective of a non-detective main character; Sherlock’s flashy visuals and witty, lighting speed dialogue, and Hitchcock’s mastery of suspense. However, for any of this matter, you need a mystery to start the film or book off, and no hint of Agatha Christie's mystery appears in either adaptation of Death on the Nile until an hour into each film.

Both films employ the story of investigating the murder of a wealthy English-woman (Linnet Doyle/Ridgeway, portrayed by Lois Chiles in 1978 and Gal Gadot in 2022) which occurs during her honeymoon paddleboat cruise down the Nile River. Everyone on the boat bears some grudge against Linnet making our detective Hercule Poirot’s (Peter Ustinov in 1978, Kenneth Branagh in 2022) work cut out for him.  Both films also use a structure of exposing us to many of the clues before we have a mystery to solve, but the difference between the self-serious tone which Branagh’s 2022 adaptation attempts to strike and the embraced camp of the 1978 adaptation is quite marked.

Many will probably feel disinclined to see the 2022 film purely on the basis of controversy and scandals surrounding the cast (most of which came to light after casting & filming happened in 2019), whereas the 1978 film had at most a couple of divorces which would have interfered with its box office returns. While startext (public perception of an actor/actress given previous performances & actions) can add another dimension to a film (check out Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo), the limited engagement of startext in Branagh’s adaptation only serves to muddle character motivations and dynamics. In fact, many of the performances seem so generalized that it’s difficult to find the more dramatic beats anything but comical and may stand as some of the worst performances of the actors and actresses careers.

On a dark and dreary day that matched up with my mood, I watched Netflix’s new thriller — because a thriller always seems to pop up there every week, and most of the time they aren’t good — Dangerous Lies, and it certainly didn’t bring up my mood.

The film is about a woman named Katie (Camila Mendes) who’s a caretaker for this rich, elderly man named Leonard (Elliot Goud). One day, Leonard dies and leaves his estate to Katie. However, something’s amiss when an eccentric real estate agent appears at the house, and other strange events occur that heightens Katie’s paranoia.

Katie has a husband named Adam (Jessie Usher) who struggles to find work, but ends up working alongside Katie at Leonard’s estate. Adam also has a mysterious past which may link to a robbery that occurs at the beginning of the movie.

The film may be a thriller, but I wasn’t thrilled by it. If anything, I was bored and annoyed. Bored because nothing exciting happens, and annoyed because the characters are dumb — particularly Adam. Adam makes rash decisions that get Katie in trouble, but Katie isn’t exactly the brightest either; at one point in the film, the two find a body in a shed and they don’t call the police. They just sit around and talk while I’m sitting on my couch ready to rip out my hair.

Did I mention that this was boring? It’s so boring that I don’t have much to say about it. The first half reminds me a bit of Knives Out which was a much better film…actually, can I review that one instead? I know it’s been out for several months now but — okay fine, I’ll continue to review this.