tumultuous thoughts

one thing i have loved from the knives out movies is the way benoit blanc visually changes to fit each narrative. classic noir in the first, beach vacation in the second, and new england gothic in the third. his taste remains consistent across movies, but he makes enough adjustments to his style to blend into each story. i just find it such a nice detail that works so well with the anthology aspect of the series

I do love how the characters in wake up dead man are a lot more subtle with how awful they are. They're not the cartoonish evils of Glass Onion or the loud and chaotic old money evils of the first movie (which fit the vibe of their own movie). But the evil was more grounded. They were normal people that were radicalized by a man who used their bad sides to secure their undying loyalty. The incel behaviour is played for laughs, but it's also a sobering moment of ah, fuck these were just normal people before. They weren't rich. They weren't powerful. They were vulnerable. And easily manipulated.

Oh my god

jud duplenticy writes some fantastic lines in his account of the murder like "The darkness of that story was the bedrock of this place" or "Testing tolerances, tapping deep poisoned wells, hardening, binding with complicity" or "Because in the part of my soul that cannot lie to Christ, or myself, or you…" but he did also write "Young, dumb, and full of Christ" which doesn't necessarily undermine his skill as a storyteller or anything but what an insane thing that is to say to benoit at this point in the story

oh, Wake Up Dead Man the messages you carry. "Religion is used to radicalize spread hate by preying on the vulnerable" and "religion can be used to uplift others by giving them a community and offering them acceptance and a second chance if they're willing to take it." and "it doesn't matter if your belief is no belief you should still love others" and "those puritanical women you see where raised in an environment where they were told to hate others and that they had to follow and serve a man for their entire lives"

Love that Benoit Blanc loves both Sondheim and Webber. Abolishing the boundaries of musical theater fandom as gracefully as he evangelizes the sanctity of justice

The fact that Father Wicks died because he was so consumed by the need to punish his daughter for her "sins" that he literally swallowed 'Eve's Apple' is maddening to me, literally named it for original sin but was so caught up in attaching that sin to femininity that he killed himself over it. Literally named his daughter Grace and never gave her a single spec of it. Literally ate the apple too. Literally.

Benoit Blance, born to be a theater kid, forced to become a detective

Mind you half of the time he spends trying them not to turn themselves in for crimes they didn't commit.