There's an episode of "That 70's Show", Luke Wilson plays Kelso's super-cool older brother that everyone loves (except Kelso, and a jealous Eric). The Foreman's are having a barbeque, Wilson's character arrives wearing a large bowie knife in a sheath hanging from his belt. Red struggles to open a pack of hot dogs, Wilson says "Here, use my knife" and hands him the bowie. Red happily accepts the knife and thanks Wilson.
Seeing a knife, particularly a large bowie knife, in a network tv show, not as a weapon, and not causing anyone to freak out, but instead portrayed as a useful and innocent tool, struck me as particularly cool.
When it comes to knives in the movies, some movies come easily to mind (Stallone, Arnold, John Wick, action movies, etc), but I like the more obscure.
Did you know that there is a knife fight in "The Cider house Rules". Not some slick heavily choreographed "Hollywood" knife fight, but an "old school" knife fight. Delroy Lindo is great in the movie "What business am I in Jack?", "I'm in the
KNIFE BUSINESS!" "And you don't want to be in any kind of knife business with me!".
Another obscure mention, the presence of Navajas in the family drama "To Sleep With Anger" (below).
As far as a movie where the knife is like a character unto itself, "Eye of the Needle", with Donald Sutherland as a German spy in WW2 who repeatedly uses a large switchblade-spike type of weapon (hence his moniker "the Needle") with expert efficiency to dispatch threats and get himself out of trouble.