"It’s a pleasure to write this particular piece about Rian Johnson as over the last 10 years or so, he’s become one of my best friends in Hollywood; the perfect person to talk to at 8 a.m. over coffee or at 2 a.m. over some other brown liquid. He’s terribly clever (but never annoyingly so), a good listener, and a generous laugher. He’s also always dressed like a cool college professor, which makes him both easy to draw and dress up as for Halloween. In the interest of full disclosure, I did make a cameo in his “Star Wars” episode and my last movie, “Baby Driver,” is alluded to in his new one. So you’d be forgiven for assuming all this chumminess would result in Rian’s movie getting a glowing review from me no matter what. But here’s the thing. Not only do I genuinely LOVE this film, but it’s exactly the type of movie that Hollywood needs and audiences are crying out for. “Knives Out” is superb entertainment that proves you can please a crowd without ever talking down to them. It’s endlessly smart, fiendishly plotted, and populated with a cast clearly loving every acid-soaked line flung their way. So much cinema is divided into just two food categories these days. There’s the empty calories of the bloated green-screen pantomimes that clog up every auditorium at your local multiplex. Then there’s what I call broccoli films; those worthy, good-for-you productions that can be very nourishing, but sometimes (whisper it) a little dull. Rian’s murder mystery straddles the line perfectly; an entertainment for grown-ups that nods to classic studio thrillers but with an invigorating 21st century overhaul. Rian is making the brainy, big screen crowd pleasers we truly deserve. For that alone, give him all the awards."

"I’m going to end this list with a request that you also seek out Kurosawa’s Dreams after you see this movie. Dreams is my absolute favorite film of all time, and when you bookend it with Ikiru, the experience is quite amazing. Ikiru is the story of a long-tenured public servant who discovers he only has a year to live. He makes a last-ditch effort to bring meaning to his existence by working tirelessly to build a children’s playground. It is the work of an artist feeling he has not done enough substantive work in his life—a romanticized notion that our daily routine is often meaningless save for a few charitable acts. It is our fears as a young mind. Over the years, Kurosawa would endure a tumultuous career that nearly ended in an act of attempted suicide. Now consider Dreams, a film coproduced by Steven Spielberg and featuring Martin Scorsese in a cameo as Vincent Van Gogh. These filmmakers, along with George Lucas, would rally behind Kurosawa in the ’80s and help him make a comeback with Kagemusha and Ran (both on Criterion), winning him a Palme d’Or and an Academy Award nomination while also bringing back to light his incomparable portfolio of works (Lucas would very often recount how The Hidden Fortress was the narrative inspiration for Star Wars). Dreams, to me, feels a bit like a representation of the playground that Kurosawa built through his works, and the children he inspired coming out to thank him for it. I can watch this movie again and again forever. Criterion has an amazing collection of twenty-five films by Kurosawa. I cannot recommend watching his entire body of work highly enough, as it is perhaps the best documentation of a commercial artist in the modern age."