See if you can discover the rest of the plot.

Tumbledown is a 2015 film. A New York writer attempts to contact a grieving woman and questions her about her late husband’s ambiguous death. As Hannah reluctantly opens up to Andrew, the pair slowly grow romantic feelings for one another.

We can always use a relatable film about writing. Tumbledown interweaves themes about grief and second chances. The film is great for what it is, but its central focus should have been on its main characters and its themes of building new stories.

I have come to love Rebecca Hall. She is an incredible actress with versatile talents. Her character, Hannah, reminded me of Beth in The Night House, but Hall has a knack for playing roles differently. Hannah could have been your average grieving character, but Hall breathes more depth into the role, especially in her countenance. She uses humor as a defense shield.

Jason Sudeikis plays Andrew, the reporter pursuing Hannah for her story. I like how Sudeikis plays the role, adding comical touches and his character’s empathy. He was also chosen for the role for his emotional depth.

Hall and Sudeikis are the sarcasm duo who work on putting a story on the pages. Andrew and Hannah have a fascinating dynamic, slowly understanding that they both have hidden layers.

Tumbledown was already a strong story with its acting duo, but the film had to add more characters. The supporting characters are not as strong. That doesn’t go for Blythe Danner, who plays Hannah’s nagging mother. Credits include Richard Masur, Joe Manganiello, Dianna Agron, Griffin Dunne, and Maggie Castle.

Other characters pad the runtime. Save for Hannah’s adorable dogs, however. Dogs always make the best companions. Hannah’s dogs follow her around or threaten anybody who looks suspicious. I enjoyed when Hannah read to them

In Sean Mewshaw’s directorial debut, the film’s tone reflects a quiet sadness. He also inserts moments of comedy. Tumbledown is not your typical grief film, though it has relatable lessons. Grief has several stages. As the town’s bookshop owner said, it’s okay to ask for help.

The film was a collaborative project between Mewshaw and his wife, Desiree Van Til, who wrote the film. Tumbledown spent a decade before being developed. The story of Tumebledown all started when Van Til experienced homesickness for her home state, Maine. She wrote the story as a celebration of her hometown and as a grief method film.

Tumbledown is also a writing film, my favorite subject. This film is an example of journalism, a job that has steadily grown for me in the last year. Andrew and Hannah have different approaches to writing. While Hannah sees no point in telling the story, Andrew describes a book as someone’s legacy.

The cinematography is beautiful, capturing nature’s beauty. The cliffside viewing of the sunset was an incredible shot. I love sunsets so much that I pull over when driving to take a picture.

Although the film takes place in Maine, unfortunately, filmmakers could not film there because it was too expensive. Instead, different locations in Massachusetts filled in for it. Filmmakers accommodated nice interior settings, like Hannah’s home and the town bookstore.

Second chances are a gift. As I was saying, Tumbledown should have focused more on its central characters and their revelation about second chances.

The film was received in a positive light by audiences when it premiered at film festivals. Take a look at Tumbledown. It makes a nice romance movie, a film for writers, and a grief-healing story.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is the third installment in the popular Knives Out franchise with Daniel Craig reprising his role as Detective Benoit Blanc

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is the third installment in Rian Johnson’s blockbuster Knives Out franchise, reuniting viewers with Daniel Craig’s beloved Kentucky Fried detective character Benoit Blanc.

The film features an A-list ensemble cast and tells the story of a priest and former boxer named Jud Duplenticy, played by Josh O’Connor, who is transferred to a new church run by Josh Brolin’s Monsignor Jefferson Wick, the cult-of-personality preacher with a flock of faithful followers at the center of the film’s mystery.

While Wake Up Dead Man is beautifully shot, the plot, inspired by the locked-room mystery subgenre of crime fiction, takes so many twists and turns that, at 2 hours and 20 minutes, it starts to feel redundant and, well, preachy.

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Wake Up Dead man had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on September 6. I happened to catch the film in a beautiful 35mm print at the Paris Theater in New York City, which is owned by Netflix. Following a limited theatrical run, Wake Up Dead Man will premiere on Netflix on December 12.

Along with Craig, O’Connor, and Brolin, the film also stars Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Hayden Church.

Overall, the mystery at hand is a fresh take on the genre that incorporates heavy commentary on religion and capitalism, while exploring themes such as faith versus logic and greed versus sacrifice, among others.

The acting is fantastic, as expected with such a stellar cast, but there may be one too many characters, which means the audience only gets a surface-level understanding of who they are and what potential motives they may have as suspects.

The push and pull between Detective Blanc’s logical sensibility and Father Jud’s more faith-based ethos is a welcome contrast that keeps the story moving along. What the film lacks, however, is some of the silliness of the first two films. There are some lighthearted and cheeky moments, but part of what makes the Knives Out franchise such a great blend of good old-fashioned mystery and timely social commentary is the use of humor as parody.

There are some good zingers here and there, but an overall sense of heaviness looms over the film, which could be alleviated by more moments of levity.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the movie and the franchise as a whole is how it both leans into and subverts the genre’s tropes. There’s a Scooby Doo reference, Benoit using a magnifying glass, an overt reference to the 1935 novel The Hollow Man, and so many bait-and-switch moments that are what make the Knives Out movies so satisfying to watch unravel.

While “Wake Up Dead Man” is a fun watch, it does not quite live up to the first film. The story is a bit convoluted at times, and takes so many twists and turns it’ll leave you feeling whiplashed, not to mention how heavy-handed the commentary and metaphor are when you’re being hit over the head with it. Even the bible had editors.

While it’s not as good as the first installment, Wake Up Dead Man is definitely worth watching, especially for mystery lovers.

We caught up with the franchise’s star, Daniel Craig, on the red carpet at the world premiere of the film at TIFF and asked him how many times he planned to play Benoit Blanc after starring as James Bond in five films. Playing coy, she shrugged and answered, “Five! I don’t know!” So, it’s possible that we may see more of Benoit Blanc in the future.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is now playing in select theaters and premieres on Netflix on December 12.

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The first, or maybe the second thing to be said about “The Artist,” a six-part comedy written and directed by Aram Rappaport, is that it streams from the Network, a free ad-supported streaming service Rappaport created to release his previous series, “The Green Veil.” The first three episodes premiere Thursday; the concluding three are due at Christmastime.

The second, or maybe the first thing to say about it is that it comes pulling a tramload of heavy talent — including Mandy Patinkin, Janet McTeer, Danny Huston, Hank Azaria, Patty Lupone, Zachary Quinto — which begs for it to be taken seriously, though that might not be the best way to take it.

Set in 1906, peopled with ahistorical versions of historical figures, the series is set largely in and around the Rhode Island “country home” of Norman Henry (Patinkin), identified by a title card as “an eccentric robber baron,” and seemingly what we’d call a venture capitalist today. (And one seemingly in need of capital.) Norman begins the series dead, carried out rolled in a carpet and set on fire like a Viking, before we skip back in time, meeting his wife, Marian (McTeer), who narrates from her journal and advises “the reader” that it is only on the final page that “you might be well enough equipped to tell fact from fiction, hero from villain.” I’ve seen only the first three episodes, so I have no idea, apart from where the story misrepresents its real-life characters. But that’s just poetic license and, of course, perfectly acceptable.

The staff, for no evident reason, apart perhaps from the house lacking “a working kitchen,” lives in tents on the front lawn. They’re called inside by bells, attached to cords running out the windows, labeled the Maid, the Ballerina, the Boxer, the Doctor. The ballerina, Lilith (Ana Mulvoy Ten), is a sort of protege to Henry; she believes he’ll arrange for her to dance “Coppelia” back home in Paris, the fool. (Their scenes together are creepy.) Sometimes we see her naked (though tastefully arranged) in a metal tub. Her dance instructor, Marius (David Pittu), is waspish, bitter and insulting. The boxer is a sparring partner for Marian, who works out her aggression in the ring. She’s told us that she loathes her husband, and he her (though he professes his love in a backhanded way).

And then there’s the eponymous artist (Huston), eventually identified as Edgar Degas, real-life French Impressionist, who was not, in fact, literally stumbling around Rhode Island in 1906, and certainly not accepting a commission to paint French poodles. (So much French!) You are free to make the connection between the show’s ballerina and those he famously painted, and her nude in the tub with his masterpiece pastels of bathing women. But apart from bad eyesight, a hint of antisemitism and Huston muttering in French, there’s no substantial resemblance to the genuine article. Here, he seems half out of his mind, or half sober. He is quite concerned with getting paid, and I don’t blame him.

The news of the day is that another person from history, Thomas Edison (Azaria) is coming to the house, looking for an investor for his new invention, a Kinetophone, a peep show with sound, like a turn-of-the-century take on a virtual reality headset. (There was such a thing; it was not a success.) This sets up a long flashback in which we learn that Marian and Edison knew each other in college, and that he betrayed her. Next up are Evelyn Nesbit (Ever Anderson) and her mother (Jill Hennessy), who have booked it out of New York after Evelyn’s unstable husband, Harry K. Thaw (Clark Gregg), shot architect Stanford White in the rooftop restaurant of White’s Madison Square Garden. That happened.

It’s a loud show, with much shouting and some brief violence, which, in its suddenness, verges on slapstick, and some less brief violence which is not funny at all. There is a superfluity of gratuitous profanity; F words and the less usual C word fly about like bats at twilight, clutter up sentences, along with many rude sexual and anatomical imprecations. Most everyone is pent up, ready to pop. At the beginning of the series, setting the table for what’s to come, Marian declares, “This is not a story in the conventional sense”; it’s “a cautionary tale,” but “not a tale of murder. This is a story of rebirth,” presumably hers. There’s a feminist current to the narrative: The men are patronizing and possessive, the women — taken advantage of in more than one sense — find ways to accommodate, manipulate or fight them, while holding on to themselves.

One can see why Rappaport might have had trouble landing this series elsewhere, or preferred to avoid notes from above. Aesthetically and textually, it’s the sort of absurdist comedy that used to turn up in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, something like the works of Robert Downey Sr. or William Klein, or maybe an ambitious film student’s senior thesis, given a big budget and access to talent; in its very lack, or perhaps avoidance, of subtlety it feels very old-fashioned. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it bad, or for that matter good, but it seems to me the perfect realization of the creator’s idea, and there is something in that. And there are those three concluding episodes, which will bring in Lupone and Quinto, their characters yet unknown, and may move the needle one way or the other. In any case, it’s not something you see every day.