Biscuits Brisket & Beer

 

Located at 275 North Elm Street inside the Stock + Grain Assembly food hall, Biscuits Brisket & Beer offers smoked meats, homemade biscuits, toppings, and sauces, and beer on tap. It is open daily from 11 a.m. until food runs out.

 

Biscuits Brisket & Beer offers a great concept (gotta love the name) and food quality to match but there are a few caveats to eating here.

 

My wife and I stopped by not long past opening on a Saturday (a good time to avoid Stock + Grain’s crowds). We opted for the Big Gull Platter, a sampler than included a quarter pound of brisket, turkey, and sausage plus a biscuit and topping (options included everything from gravy to honey to fried green tomatoes to the pimento we went with). Our food came out surprisingly quickly, and we were given a choice of sauces (sweet, mustard, or garlic).

 

While not the best BBQ in the area, Biscuits Brisket & Beer can hold its own. The brisket was tender and paired well with the sweet sauce. The turkey was nicely peppered though the garlicky sausage was, unexpectedly, the star of the plate. The biscuit was good but not particularly memorable.

 

However, Biscuits Brisket & Beer shares the same high price/small portion problem that plagues at least one of its Stock + Grain neighbors. The lunch specials (brisket or turkey with fries, for $10 or $9, respectively) do seem like a considerably better deal, but the $24 Big Gull delivered little value.

 

I’ve learned to temper my expectations somewhat when it comes to Stock + Grain, but it hasn’t earned a spot on my avoid list. If nothing else, Biscuits Brisket & Beer has enough quality smoked meats to merit an eventual return.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

 

Tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) invites his close friends to his private island for a birthday celebration and a murder mystery. The group includes his company’s lead scientist Lionel Touissant (Leslie Odom Jr.), Connecticut governor Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), fashion model-turned-designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) and her beleaguered assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick), men’s rights streamer Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) and his girlfriend/assistant Whiskey (Madelyn Cline), and embittered former business partner Andi Brand (Janelle Monae). Also joining the fray is renowned detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). But when Blanc learns that Bron never invited him, he suspects the eccentric host’s game might give way to a real murder, especially when Andi brings the guest’s entanglements with Bron’s shady dealings to light.

 

Rian Johnson’s 2019 hit Knives Out was an uproarious take on the Agatha Christie-style murder-in-a-manor. This sequel, connected only by Blanc’s appearance, takes more cues from “destination” murder mysteries such as Death on the Nile (with a touch of Murder by Death thrown in). It isn’t nearly as tightly constructed or clever as the first film, but it’s still plenty entertaining.

 

As with its predecessor, Glass Onion boasts a cast of A-listers spinning characters that range from hypocritical to over-the-top horrible into comedic gold. Hudson’s unfiltered, witless Birdie Jay makes the Jersey Shore cast seem urbane, Bautista’s perpetually gun-toting Duke is a Tucker Carlson Tonight reject whose vileness is tempered by pathetic desperation. The usually excellent Hahn isn’t given nearly as much to work with, but her (presumably Democratic) climate warrior politician funded by corporate cash extends Johnson’s penchant for skewering everyone.

 

The three juiciest parts, however, are also the best acted. Craig continues to thrive as a Southern-fried Poirot, alternating between embarrassing discomfort, brilliant (if pompously delivered) deduction, and sheer annoyance at the stupidity of others. The multitalented Monet makes the most of what turns out to be a dual role, playing each with distinction and conviction. Norton, is, on the surface, a transparent riff on Elon Musk, which would make him, a hyper-ambitious glory hog with no sense of restraint. His moments of affability and abject cowardice round the character, and there’s an interesting meta-layer to the casting (Norton being both highly intelligent and talented and very difficult to work with).

 

Despite the cast’s charisma, the striking island setting, and Nate Johnson’s (the director’s cousin) exciting score, Glass Onion’s plot is powered, to an alarming extent on contrivance, the mid-movie reveal being the most egregious example. For every hint that Rian Johnson is able to slip under the radar, there also seems to be one that is an obvious tell. This makes for a movie that is not nearly as narratively gripping as the first Knives Out, and the ending’s attempt at catharsis feels forced.

 

Netflix is due at least one more Knives Out film, and so we may see Blanc interact with even more impeccably cast deplorables before long. Their ability to make us laugh seems a given, but the ingenuity of the murder that engulfs them seems considerably less certain.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

 

Following the death of T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), Wakanda’s king and protector, the nation falls into despair as his mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), faces a world hungry for the country’s rare metal, vibranium. The pursuit of an alternate vibranium source leads Americans to the secretive underwater kingdom of Talokan, whose ruler Namor (Tenoch Huerta) urges Wakanda to ally against outside threats or else face devastation. However, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) instead decamps to the U.S. with General Okoye (Danai Guirira) on a mission to locate and rescue the teen genius (Dominique Thorne) behind the government’s vibranium detector before Namor’s forces can do her harm.

 

While writer/director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther was a culturally resonant hit in 2018, lead actor Boseman’s 2020 death from colon cancer cast a long shadow over the second installment. The film tastefully honors his passing, but it also makes Wakanda Forever, at times, a very heavy affair. There is still plenty of visual spectacle to behold here along with several strong performances, but this cannot help but feel like a too-long (161 minutes) film that tries to do too much.

 

While Thorne’s Riri Williams seems rushed and shoehorned into her Iron Man successor role, the film’s character development is otherwise an asset with acting to match. Those (James Cameron the latest among them) who are quick to dismiss Marvel movies as emotionally stunted juvenilia should pay close attention to Bassett’s powerhouse performance here as a strong leader and grieving mother whose best intentions have catastrophic consequences. Namor, Marvel’s first antihero (dating back to the 1930s!), is usually depicted in the source material as ambiguously East Asian, so the switch to a Mesoamerican background (he’s synthesized with the Mayan god Kukulkan here) may be less about representation and more about separating him from his DC equivalent, Aquaman. At any rate, Huerta is both disarmingly genial and coldly and ruthlessly dedicated to protecting his people, a complexity that frees him from the generic megalomania that has plagued many a villain and that engenders sympathy. Wright, who shifts from smart-aleck sidekick/foil to a guilt-ridden leadership role, is outshined, but she does give her character more dimensionality, and the same can be said for Lupita Nyong’o as T’Challa’s friend and lover Nakia, an ex-spy living abroad. And for those who enjoyed his trollish performance the last time around, Winston Duke's M'Baku returns to do more scene-stealing as well.

 

Visually, Wakanda Forever combines the silly and the sublime. The warriors of Talokan appear blue when on land, which invites unfortunate Avatar comparisons. Whereas the first Black Panther suffered from decidedly dodgy CGI animals, the fauna don’t look as bad here; they are just used in ridiculous ways (whales as troop transports, anyone?). That said, Talokan’s first appearance is grippingly suspenseful, and the movie’s grand battles are gripping and majestic. There is, however, a sense that they could be shaved by a few minutes to speed the movie along as by the 150 minute-mark, Wakanda Forever feels as if it will go on….you get the idea.

 

Between Boseman’s death, COVID-related production delays, and the taint of Wright’s anti-vax activism, Coogler faced an extraordinarily difficult path in bringing Wakanda Forever to the screen. What he was able to achieve is commendable even if this film lacks some of its predecessor’s vibrance and cachet.