{"id":33692,"date":"2023-01-07T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2023-01-07T06:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=33692"},"modified":"2023-01-06T10:14:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T16:14:12","slug":"streaming-review-the-glass-onion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/streaming-review-the-glass-onion\/","title":{"rendered":"Streaming Review: The Glass Onion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A multi-billionaire (Edward Norton) throws a murder mystery party for his closest associates (played by an all-star cast of Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Leslie Odom,Jr.). Everyone is surprised when his estranged business partner (Janelle Monae) shows up, along with the world&#8217;s greatest detective, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who also starred in the previous film (<em>Knives Out).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The setting, location, and all-star cast are evocative of the great Agatha Christie adaptation films starring Peter Ustinov, particularly\u00a0<em>Evil Under the Sun.\u00a0<\/em>There are some really solid performances, most notably Craig, who really shines in every moment on-screen. Also, the film features welcome cameos by the late Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim, which are sadly brief, but relevant to the plot.<\/p>\n<p>The film is not the equal of its predecessor for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n<p>As a matter of personal taste, I didn&#8217;t find setting the story in the midst of the pandemic to be in good taste. It has minor relevance to the plot but wasn&#8217;t essential. There&#8217;s a reason why the flu pandemic of 1918 was practically forgotten in the public consciousness until COVID-19 hit. It wasn&#8217;t a great time to live through and people would rather forget it. This isn&#8217;t to say that the pandemic should never be on film, but this is a classic case of &#8220;too soon&#8221;, particularly for a mystery movie that should have an escapist feel to it. Featuring masks and even having a scene on CNN with mounting death tolls and cases cuts against that.<\/p>\n<p>The movie has a twist that&#8217;s revealed more than an hour in that leads the story to cut back and recontextualize some previous scenes. I&#8217;ve seen this technique used before but not in a mystery film. I&#8217;m not opposed to it, but I think it takes too long in this film and hurts the pacing. It&#8217;s also a case where the new context leads to scenes that are less entertaining and interesting than the ones in the original context.<\/p>\n<p>The film also has a problem with its characterization. I blame social media and the illusion it creates, that we &#8220;know&#8221; people, including famous people, from their Instagram posts and Twitter accounts. In <em>The\u00a0<\/em><em>Glass Onion, <\/em>it feels less like human beings are getting together and more like social media profiles are. This surface-level characterization shows up in a well-worn plot element being introduced, and again with an even more tired method of saving one character&#8217;s life, a method that had been debunked on <em>Mythbusters<\/em> more than a decade ago. The plot would make this a fitting subject for a YouTube series such as\u00a0<em>How It Should Have Ended\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0<em>Pitch Meeting<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Add to that an ending that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I really left with a less-than-stellar viewing experience, despite some high points. I loved\u00a0<em>Knives Out (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/streaming-review-knives-out\/\">review here<\/a>) <\/em>but I have mixed feeling about <em>The\u00a0<\/em><em>Glass Onion.\u00a0<\/em>It left me pessimistic about getting good detective movies in the 2020s .<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 3 out of 5<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>The Glass Onion is available to streem for free on Netllix.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A multi-billionaire (Edward Norton) throws a murder mystery party for his closest associates (played by an all-star cast of Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Leslie Odom,Jr.). Everyone is surprised when his estranged business partner (Janelle Monae) shows up, along with the world&#8217;s greatest detective, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who also starred in the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[298,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd-review","category-golden-age-article"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-8Lq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33692"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33714,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33692\/revisions\/33714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}