You know a movie about terminal illness is in trouble when it asks you to spend more time feeling sorry for the dying person's caregiver than it does for the person who's doing the dying. That, I'm afraid, was my chief hindrance in enjoying Spoiler Alert, director Michael Showalter's friendly, irritating dramedy about long-term life partners that keeps putting the emotional emphasis on the wrong partner.

As you may recall from 2019's comedic whodunit Knives Out, the soon-to-be-deceased Harlan Thrombey and his soon-to-be-accused caregiver Marta Cabrera ended every evening with a friendly round of the board game Go. I mention this because, after seeing Rian Johnson's continuation Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, I've realized that reviews of this burgeoning franchise for Daniel Craig's Southern-dandy detective Benoit Blanc have been completely superfluous. The only critical analysis these films really require is a simple directive: “Go.”

Ingenious, unsettling, and oftentimes riotously funny, director Mark Mylod's The Menu has been prepared exactly the way I most enjoy my satire: blackened to a crisp. While its thematic and presentational inspirations are unhidden and encompass everything from Hell's Kitchen to Midsommar to Fantasy Island, what this savage comedy chiefly reminded me of was Don't Look Up, last year's end-of-days spoof that ended on the bleakest of all possible notes.

As familiar as I am with the oeuvre of Martin McDonagh, I couldn't necessarily teach a course on the playwright/filmmaker's darkly comedic stage and screen works. But if I could, I would likely start with The Banshees of Inisherin, an absolutely delightful (if slightly grim) reunion for In Bruges co-stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, and one that seems to boil its creator's signature style down to its absolute essence – yet in unexpectedly tender fashion.