With 'Knives Out,' writer-director Rian Johnson recasts Agatha Christie for the MAGA age

Rian Johnson is 45 and, according to Michael Shannon, one of many well-known actors in Johnson's droll new whodunit "Knives Out," a "lovely guy. I'd work with him again in a heartbeat."

Writer-director Johnson's relatives on his mother's side live in Mundelein, Ill., northwest of Chicago. Johnson directed "Brick" (Raymond Chandler goes to high school), "The Brothers Bloom" ('30s screwball with a melancholic air) and "Looper" (Johnson's first big hit). Most recently and controversially, he wrote and directed the "Star Wars" movie "The Last Jedi," that impudent destroyer of so many fragile middle-aged memories of older, whiter, maler "Star Wars" pictures.

Johnson used to visit the Chicago area in the summers, traveling with his family from Orange County, California, or, earlier, from Colorado. Johnson remembers going to Great America