CineCrossroads: “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” “The Remains of the Day,” and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”

Movie of the Week — Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)

The third chapter of Rian Johnson’s acclaimed detective series brings Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) into a world of gothic intrigue. Reverend Judd is transferred to an old church in upstate New York, where he serves under Monsignor Jefferson Weeks. Their relationship quickly becomes strained — and soon after a Sunday sermon, Weeks is found dead.

Among the witnesses are Martha Delacroix, Dr. Nate Sharp, lawyer Vera Draven, and writer Lee Ross. Untangling the web of motives, buried grievances, and conflicting temperaments once again falls to private detective Benoit Blanc.

Wake Up Dead Man is a sharp, intelligent, and elegantly witty mystery that confidently maintains the standard set by the original Knives Out. Johnson boldly plays with genre conventions: gothic atmosphere, religious imagery, and the classic Agatha Christie spirit merge with surprising harmony.

Classic Pick — The Remains of the Day (1993)

James Ivory crafted one of the most delicate cinematic reflections on duty, dignity, and the feelings that never find their voice. At the center of the story is butler Stevens, portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, whose life is wholly devoted to the strict order of Darlington Hall.

The arrival of the new housekeeper, Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), quietly disrupts that order. A warm, subtle connection grows between them — a connection that, in another life, might have become love. But in Stevens’s world, emotions are suppressed in favor of unwavering loyalty to his employer and to the impeccable image of a perfect butler.

Set in the 1930s, against the backdrop of political misjudgments within the British aristocracy, the film follows Stevens decades later as he embarks on a journey and recalls the past. Only then does he understand: his own restraint cost him the very thing that matters most — human closeness.

Hopkins conveys complexity through the subtlest of details: pauses, glances, barely perceptible shifts in his voice. Thompson responds with warmth and vitality, gently underscoring the fragility of the happiness that slipped away.

The Remains of the Day is a story about how easily one can spend a lifetime mistaking self-denial for devotion — and how late clarity sometimes arrives.

Family Choice — Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Flint Lockwood is an unrecognized young inventor living in a small town whose only industry is sardines. Dreaming of changing people’s lives, he creates a machine that turns water into food. But when the device accidentally launches into the sky, the town is suddenly showered with culinary weather: meatballs, ice cream, hamburgers.

At first the townspeople are thrilled, but soon the delicious “meteorology” becomes dangerous. Flint and his friends must stop the food-storm catastrophe caused by his own invention.

The film combines vibrant animation, sharp humor, playful parodies, and an irresistibly appetizing visual style — rarely has so much beautifully rendered food filled a single frame. It’s a funny story about self-acceptance.

Earlier, CineCrossroads highlighted Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Robert Wiene’s expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Genndy Tartakovsky’s warm family animation Hotel Transylvania.