Three Films Make A Post: A Rian Johnson Whodunit.

RRR (2022): It’s a little wonder the kind of mainstream critics who’d usually spit on an Indian mainstream movies the same way as they do on a Marvel flick seem to have seen the light for S.S. Rajamouli’s latest. It’s probably the cartoonish (yet certainly not un-earned) anti-colonialism, whose treatment of Big, Serious Themes is just as enthusiastically maximalist as everything else in the movie, be it manly friendship or turning historical figures into the mythical equivalent of superheroes. The musical numbers (apart from the flag-waving post-movie sequence that really takes things too far in the nationalist direction for my tastes) are awesome (in all meanings of the word), as are the fights scenes, the melodrama, the CGI (realism can shut it),  and the oversized personalities. If this doesn’t grab you already simply by the virtue of being EVERYTHING at its loudest, but also most charming, then just look at how Rajamouli paces this thing, as if a three hour runtime weren’t a marathon but a damn sprint he – clearly as heroically made as his characters – can keep up for so long without even the slightest of efforts.

Glass Onion (2022): Full disclosure: I don’t actually like Knives Out, despite my huge admiration for everything else Rian Johnson has made. I found it unpleasantly smug in the way certain parts of the “progressive” side of US politics can look from over here (where their reactionary counterparts simply tend to look like fascist assholes), and wasn’t impressed by it never giving a character a second dimension if one was available. This one here, with the same basic politics, does everything right, grounding snarky politics in actual characterisation and much more complex relationships, which does tend to make one’s politics much more convincing. All the while, the film keeps the ease with which Johnson has always juggled plot, humour and a sharp visual eye. The cast is doing fantastic work as well. Hell, even Daniel Craig has toned down his “Southern” accent from rage-inducingly obnoxious to terrible (which is of course the traditional note the detective in a Christie-style traditional murder mystery has to hit).

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022): This tragical comedy about the end of friendship, boredom, depression, places and people that drag everyone in and around them down, as well as the one woman who gets the hell away by Martin McDonagh is the wonder everyone says it is. Funny and sad at the same moment, this shows what are foibles in most of us turn big and toxic in its characters, self-destructive and violent in ways that are grotesque when you think about them but also feel completely natural and logical.

In McDonagh’s usual style, there’s much space left for the actors –particularly of course Kerry Condon, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson – where lesser films aiming where McDonagh does might bury them under mawkish or too knowing dialogue.