The final 45 minutes or so of Glass Onion lands what’s maybe the biggest backend recovery I’ve seen a movie of its kind clinch in a long, long time. It’s a dazzling feat of acrobatic loop-closing that broke my neck after Rian Johnson had me second-guessing his ability to steer such an unwieldy cruise for the first 95 minutes of it’s voyage. And honestly I’m still rattled by how close he was to letting his worst instincts sink it (his inelegant rhythm, his counterintuitive story structure, his nerdy sense of referenced-based humor, his blunt political dialogue) but how it was a lot of those same instincts (namely his counterintuitive story structure) that makes it and allows it to be what it is.

Thinking back, I realize that it’s in many ways the same reaction I had to the first Knives Out, but at an exponentiated scale. In fact this whole endeavor is Knives Out but at an exponentiated scale, so let that prepare you for what to expect.

Also, are we not going to talk about how they dressed Ed Norton up as Tom Cruise in Magnolia for discernibly no reason? This movie is insane.