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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Sure, except I found the characters in the first Knives Out to be compelling. Atleast significantly more so than in this one. So there is room for improvement there, and it is indeed why I went to watch this movie.

Also having no characters be sympathetic is really not compelling.

Well, it depends on the movie. Were there any particularly sympathetic characters in The Death of Stalin?

Besides, you are now saying something different: Whether a film with no sympathetic characters can be compelling is a different question than whether a character who is unsympathetic can nevertheless be compelling. I don’t really recall any of the characters from the first film (again, given the nature of the film, why would I?) but they might well have been more interesting, regardless of whether they were sympathetic or not.