Pun Salad

Why yes, this is the first movie I've watched in 2023.

It's pretty good. I liked it, anyway. Daniel Craig reprises his role as Benoit Blanc, the World's Greatest Detective. I see at IMDB that he's signed up for a third movie in the "Knives Out" series, and I'm game for that.

Blanc attends a weekend gathering on a private Greek island, hosted by Miles Bron, an eccentric tech billionaire. There's a gimmick: Bron has designed an intricate "murder mystery" game, where he's the victim, and the guests are supposed to spend the weekend unravelling the crime.

Those guests are all erstwhile friends of Bron; now they are potential suspects. Their relationships with Bron, and each other, have become tattered and corrupt over the years. When an actual, non-game murder occurs, Blanc gets on the case.

But not all is as it seems. As befits the movie title, there are layers to the plot that need to be peeled back.

Like Knives Out, it's a very Christie-like plot. Also like Knives Out, the moviemakers have wangled one of the world's most beautiful women to act as Blanc's plucky co-protagonist: Janelle Monáe. In Knives Out, it was Ana de Armas.

Come to think of it, both movies had roles played by older women who were once very hot, but are still pretty hot: here, Kate Hudson; in Knives Out, Jamie Lee Curtis.

There are a lot of blink-or-you'll-miss cameos. (I did miss a bunch; what would I do without IMDB.)