Playback: Rian Johnson, Twists and Turns, from BRICK to WAKE UP DEAD MAN

Rian Johnson wants you on the edge of your seat. The American director delights in twisting beloved genres into razor-sharp puzzles, from slick noir capers to sci-fi paradoxes. His films are (mostly) clever, without condescension. In Brick (2005), he drops a hard-boiled detective story into the halls of a California high school, letting teenage angst play out like a Raymond Chandler novel. A decade later, Knives Out (2019) revived the classic whodunit as a class satire, where privilege becomes the most suspicious motive of all. Johnson shows us that the pleasure of the mystery isn't just the answer, but all the mischief leading up to the final reveal. The third installment of Johnson's "Knives Out" series, Wake Up Dead Man (2025), hit theaters on November...

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