Jonathan Lynn
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Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is mystery writer whose immense success has subsidized the lives of his several children and grandchildren, all of whom have gathered at his ornate mansion which, as one notes, evokes the board game “Clue.”
Those words have paid for his mansion – “The guy practically lives in a Clue board,” notes Lakeith Stanfield’s police detective – and have bankrolled the activities of his three children, and their children.
In the same flavor as Clue, Murder on the Orient Express, and Deathtrap, you have a murder, a collection of characters, each of whom has a reason to have done it, and a sleuth investigation on the job.
Even better, he has an all-star cast eager to veritably feast on the scenery of his cinematic game of "Clue."
Cinematically located between Sleuth and Clue, it owes a great deal to both, though it's substantially less impressive than the former and noticeably better than the latter.
It’s like Johnson has mashed-up The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie with Ten Little Indians and added a dash of Clue for good measure, doing so with such likeably confident aplomb I can’t help but be impressed.
With their mix of upper-class pomposity and casual bloodshed, the Le Domas family calls to mind a rich tradition of blackhearted drawing room farces, from Kind Hearts and Coronets to Clue.
Rather than delivering on the promise of the premise, “Ready or Not” lurches unevenly and a bit smugly through the twisty halls of the Le Domases’ “Clue”-like mansion, with little of the 1985 murder-comedy’s boundless charm.
Ready or Not, as a friend so pointedly put it, is Clue if it took place during The Purge.
The underloved Clue is in the DNA of Ready or Not, in which a bunch of people who think they’re smarter than they actually are bumble through a sprawling Gothic mansion.
Instead, they’re like the cast of an ultraviolent remake of Clue, and if that’s not a glowing recommendation what is?
Ready of Not takes the best and most crowd pleasing elements of The Most Dangerous Game, Your’re Next, The Purge, and Clue and blends them into a tasty, bloody smoothie.
Directed by Kyle Newacheck (Workaholics, Adam Devine’s House Party), Murder Mystery is basically Clue, but not really because Clue would never.
Unfortunately, production value and marquee names are all we get in Kyle Newacheck's Murder Mystery , a film whose script offers less enjoyment than the average game of Clue .
Far less enjoyable than other crime-inspired comedies like 2001’s Gosford Park, 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and even something as silly as 1985’s Clue, Murder Mystery is annoying and lazily written by James Vanderbilt (Independence Day: Resurgence).
For anyone who mourns those days, the mere idea of a daffy, spoofy “Clue” knockoff, with two popular American stars heading up a large international cast, might sound like a reasonably enticing prospect.
The film brings to mind broad comedy murder mysteries like Clue.
Creemos que Murder by Death (1976) y Clue (1985) son dos comedias noir y grotescas en las que los autores probablemente se inspiraron, pero desafortunadamente no lograron ninguna similitud.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
influenced by Clue (1985)
Themes Plot
For a moment, the movie seems to be going for a daffy vibe, in the vein of “Clue.”
Heck, the board game “Clue” is essentially this story combined with Christie’s 1939 murderous whodunit And Then There Were None, all of it broken down into intuitive investigative basics fit for the whole family to gleefully enjoy.
I couldn't help but wonder how Tim Curry might have handled this scene as the detective at the end of the comic murder-mystery "Clue."
Sidney Lumet's 1974 Murder on the Orient Express was — like Clue , which in some ways parodied it — both sumptuous and understated, cozy and threatening, equal parts thrilling and dry and absurd.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
Directed by Rian Johnson
influenced by Clue (1985)
Plot Visuals
Its pacing races, then slows to swell around a dynamic new turn; it's as if Blanc's strong grip has us by the hand, confidently guiding us through betrayal, greed, and murder at a clip that brings to mind the fantastic final acts of Clue .
There’s a casual confidence to Craig’s turn that makes him the marquee attraction even when others are stealing (or he’s allowing them to assume) the spotlight, and moreover, he’s just plain funnier this time around—all of which ultimately comes to a head in the film’s most astonishing and illuminating bombshell regarding its hero: his fervent disgust of Clue.
The shambling cadre of overexcited lunatics who make up the remainder of the core cast are equally goofy, each acting as if they’re cartoonishly auditioning for a part in a remake of 1985’s slapstick classic Clue .
Add to that it’s elaborately staged, Clue-esque production and costume design, and Knives Out not only became a quick autumn favorite, but the best kind of phenomenon: one that quietly earned its sizable reputation through word-of-mouth with impressive box-office results still intact, and all without flaunting the kind of open-endedness that would immediately tease a sequel.
Knives Out played to our desire for light and pleasant fare and gave us a taste of Clue-like murder mysteries, priming us for Only Murders in the Building and even Bodies, Bodies, Bodies.
For those keeping score at home, more than the nominal number of characters come and go in “The Hateful Eight,” which evokes the hermetic atmosphere and taut psychological underpinnings of such classics as “Stagecoach” and “The Petrified Forest,” but eventually winds up feeling more like a hysterically pitched live-action version of “Clue.”
Jackson manages to outshine his performance as Stephen in Django Unchained with a role that calls for experience, wits, and the best sleuthing this side of Tim Curry’s butler in Clue .
You know not everyone who walks into Minnie's is walking out, of course, and watching them cross-examine one another is like the claustrophobic guessing-game aspect of Clue and The Thing filtered through Tarantino's curatorial sensibility.
Fortunately, there’s plenty of good moments thanks to the stellar cast assembled and Tarantino’s intriguing Clue meets Unforgiven hybrid western mystery.
Ruth is convinced at least one of them is in cahoots with Daisy, and the next 90 minutes or so feels surprisingly similar to a vulgar, contemporary, post-Civil War version of Clue .
It basically takes a Clue-style mystery and places it in an amoral, post-Civil War Old West, where a bunch of scoundrels on both sides of the law are holed up in an inn during a blizzard.
“Clue,” “Knives Out” and the new Apple TV+ show “The Afterparty” allow for inventive filmmaking that combines humor with danger and true character development that make audiences care about the investigation as much as the resolution.
The best ensemble mysteries, and I’m including the likes of Knives Out (2019), Clue (1985), and Murder on the Orient Express here, thrive on the presence and engagement of their suspects.
However with a sequel already contracted and in the works, one could only hope that returning director and star Kenneth Branagh may have taken a “ Clue ” from his past murder mystery mistakes into filming Death on the Nile.
The formula which Christie practically invented, in which a clever detective identifies a murderer from a group of suspects who have equally legitimate motives, has been replicated for decades in popular culture, in everything from the boardgame Clue to the popular television show Murder, She Wrote to the recent box office smash Knives Out .
When watching earlier eras of similar films, it’s easier to let those particular writing styles have a pass, but now that the bar has been moved by films like “ Memento “, “ Knives Out “, and even “ Clue ,” any fans of the genre will be able to spot the all-too glaring clues along the way.
The film has a lot more in common with Knives Out (2019) or Clue (1985) than with the slasher genre.
The murder mystery and social dynamics call to the intersection of Clue and Mean Girls , but it doesn’t lack its own unique voice.
If "Clue," "April Fool's Day," and "Heathers" were all in a text chain together, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” would be the biting, fiercely entertaining result, a slasher-style murder mystery that roasts the entitled TikTok generation to a mean, bloody crisp.
The premise for Bodies Bodies Bodies is simple: What if Clue was made with Gen Z?
1985's "Clue" is stripped of its giddy absurdist humor and replaced by a deadly, unsparing seriousness in "Would You Rather," a gripping horror-drama that's far more ruminative than " Saw ," but destined to draw a comparison because of its onscreen game of wits and violence.
The results are a gorgeous, tension-filled thriller that feels a bit like Clue meets Saw meets House on Haunted Hill with an engaging and eclectic cast that makes it almost impossible to look away during the film's many cringe-inducing moments.
It's easy to root for semi-horror movies of this sort when they're clearly made on a dime by a writer-director with as much of an aversion toward needless gore and cheap scares as most moviegoers, but it doesn't help that the premise—in which a mansion full of archetypes agree to play a game without realizing its life-or-death stakes—brings to mind everything from And Then There Were None to Clue.
Mark Wahlberg, as a feisty, obscenity-spewing detective, bites into his scenes with the gusto of a man enjoying a good lobster; Alec Baldwin, as one of his superiors, takes similar relish with a role that recalls Joe Pesci -- not the homicidal psychopath of "Goodfellas," but the fast-talking sharpie of "My Cousin Vinny."
Instead, he drugs their food and plays a psychological game that makes “Clue” look like a slumber party.
More like a drawing room game of Clue than the twisty puzzle it presents itself as…
…her heavy Brooklyn accent possibly sourced from Goodfellas (1990), or maybe My Cousin Vinny (1992).
Last year Adam Wingard (Pop Skull) showed a smart and mature side with A Horrible Way to Die, and this year he delivers the horror fan's answer to the widely-adored Clue comedy from 1985.
The King of Staten Island (2020)
Directed by Judd Apatow
influenced by My Cousin Vinny (1992)
Characters
At 24-years-old, Scott Carlin (Davidson) stills lives with his mom, Marge (Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinny ) an ER nurse, hangs out in the basement with his homeboys Oscar (Ricky Velez, The Night Show with Larry Wilmore ), Igor (Moises Arias, Nacho Libre ) and Ritchie (Lou Wilson, TV’s The Coop ) and smokes spliff after spliff.
Scott’s disturbingly arrested development is hardest on his mother, luminously acted by the My Cousin Vinny Oscar winner Tomei.
There’s certainly a parallel in how Ray talks to his mother and the way Scott talks with his sometimes-girlfriend/sometimes FWB Kelsey (an excellent Bel Powley, channeling a bit of Tomei in My Cousin Vinny ).
Tomei reminds us all that her My Cousin Vinny Oscar (and additional nominations for In the Bedroom and The Wrestler ) was hardly a fluke.
The King of Staten Island, an uneven but poignant comedy-drama, includes a lovely performance by Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny) as a nurse and widowed mother who does her best trying to deal with Scott, a mid-twenties son (Pete Davidson) whose only goal involves being a tattoo artist.
When he illegally starts to tattoo a 9 year- old boy, Harold (Luke David Blumm; The Sinner), Harold's father, Ray (Bill Burr; Breaking Bad) shows up at Scott's house and yells at his mother, Margie (Marisa Tomei; My Cousin Vinny).
By the time the movie got to the scene where Bullock couldn’t understand McCarthy’s Boston-accented family (see also Fred Gwynne trying to decipher Joe Pesci in 1992’s My Cousin Vinny), I was ready to go.
It’s Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians” — or the 1985 film “Clue,” if you prefer — by way of “Seven” (because, you see, these FBI profilers are being profiled by the murderer and dispatched according to their individual strengths and weaknesses).
The film appears to be a labor of love for producer Colleen Camp, the veteran Clue and Police Academy actor who optioned its source material—a 1993 nonfiction book by Joe Sharkey—two decades ago.
Much like the 1985 film “Clue,” there's always something going on, whether it's the electricity randomly going out, the nurse running to prevent an incident, or someone getting killed.
Perhaps the most discussed aspect of Unfriended: Dark Web is extratextual: its distributor, Blumhouse (or to be exact, BH Tilt, its sub-distributor) put the film out with two distinct endings (previously unbeknownst to cast and crew, reportedly): Ending A and Ending B. To my knowledge, this is the first time a major motion picture has done such a thing since Clue in 1985, which, in a meta-textual stroke, was released into cinemas by Paramount Pictures with one of three different endings attached to each print.
Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn makes the deepest impression, chewing the scenery (or licking it, rather) with deranged flirtatiousness and a fake Long Island accent that registers a 10 on the Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny Scale.