CREDIT: NEON

Anatomy of a Fall

Starring: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner, Antoine Renartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth

Director: Justine Triet

Running Time: 152 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: October 13, 2023 (Theaters)

It’s a Wonderful Knife

Starring: Jane Widdop, Joel McHale, Justin Long, Jess McLeod, Aiden Howard, Hana Huggins, Katharine Isabelle, Cassandra Naud, Erin Boyes, William B. Davis, Sean Depner, Zenia Marshall

Director: Tyler MacIntyre

Running Time: 90 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: November 10, 2023 (Theaters)

CREDIT: RLJE Films/Screenshot

Within a few days of each other, I saw a couple very different movies about trying to figure out the mystery of a killer. Well actually, in both cases, it’s really no mystery at all. In the case of Anatomy of a Fall, that’s because it’s fairly obvious that Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) couldn’t have possibly killed her husband, despite what the misogynistic French justice system has to say. And in the case of It’s a Wonderful Knife, that’s because the killer is revealed within the first ten minutes, and the point of the movie is instead for one of the survivors (Winnie Carruthers) to wish that she’d never been born in a slasher-fied riff on It’s a Wonderful Life. Oh what fun it is to find parallels in two otherwise unrelated cinematic experiences! In conclusion, I recommend ’em both.

Grades:
Anatomy of a Fall: Talk Talk Talk Talk out of 5
It’s a Wonderful Knife: Merry Christmas, You Wonderful Old Repressed Trauma!