Okay first off, if you haven't seen any version of Murder On The Orient Express before, Kenneth Branagh's new presentation will be ideal for you. Seriously. The performances, sets, costumes, lighting, sound-design and soundtrack are all exquisite, and the photography will tick the boxes for all those whose first reaction to a sunset is to fire up Instagram. While the production certainly never strays far from the precedent set by previous outings, lensmaster Haris Zambarloukos's approach is inherently cinematic.
The rest of us, however, spend the best part of two hours asking why another retelling of Agatha Christie's most famous story is necessary; a question which the film fails to convincingly answer.
In a bid add a fresh lick of paint to an old carriage, this iteration borrows rather heavy-handedly from other icons of intrigue. The style of the opening sequence, which sees Hercule Poirot wrapping up his previous case, is a clear nod to the James Bond / Indiana Jones in medias res approach, while our hero's on-the-spot deductions in the first act owe more to Baker Street's most famous resident than even Agatha herself would care to admit. There's the feeling with these inserts that the Belgian sleuth is perhaps being pushed toward a more active cinematic presence, and a couple of sequences later in the film shore up this suspicion, despite feeling uncomfortably out of place themselves.
Speaking of incongruities, I'm happy to report than Mr Branagh's moustache and accent combination-set are thankfully nowhere as... awkward as they were in the reveal-trailer*1. Both take some time to get used to, but at least they're not too problematic. Branagh is a fine actor of course, and an even better director. But he's slightly lacklustre as Poirot, somehow.
Back at the coalface however, Orient Express itself is the very essence of character-driven storytelling, an approach which is borderline impossible when this many familiar faces are in the room. Harking back to the golden age of ensemble-dramas, the all-star cast is impressive but frankly too big. It's relatively easy to hide one guest star in a movie like this, but here you'll never forget that you're watching Johnny Depp*2 and Kenneth Branagh and Michelle Pfeiffer and Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi and Willem Dafoe and Josh Gad and Daisy Ridley. Despite the tried and tested structure of the oft-adapted tale, the film sags in the middle and never quite regains its pace, even with a thoroughly sincere denouement.
But all-in-all, Branagh's Murder on The orient Express is a perfectly acceptable re-telling of the story. If a largely unnecessary one. I certainly can't resent the creative team for trying to put their own stamp on a classic, but this will always be Dame Agatha's, first and foremost…
If we get nothing else from this, we can be at least take comfort from new audiences being introduced to Poirot's (Christie's) serene wisdom:
"Every day we meet people the world could do without, yet we do not kill them. We must be better than the beasts..."
Oh, and this loses a point for the Death On The Nile setup-line in the final moments. It's cheap, it's cack-handed and it's canonically illiterate*3.
Other screen versions of this same story, I shouldn't wonder, or Agatha Christie adaptations in general.
Well, it's a testament to the enduring legacy of Christie that a Wednesday evening screening in the second week of its run was over two thirds full (and with a story which, once you know 'whodunnit', you tend not to forget). The film's also scheduled to run next week, too, so it's clearly pulling in the punters across the board. Smashing work, folks.
Well, ish. The film achieves enough to justify its existence (as a one-off entry, at any rate), but in the grand scheme of things, perhaps the interpretative net should have been thrown wider?.
With a cast of this pedigree? Of course not.
Nope.
There isn't.
Level 1: Rey's in this, also there's a 'stepping in poo in a sun-bleached environment' joke three minutes into the film which I'm taking to be a clear homage to The Phantom Menace.
*1 Upon viewing the first trailer in the cinema (I'd avoided it at home), it appeared that Poirot's 'new' moustache and windswept hair made him look like he'd been sleeping in a doorway, while the snippets of the accent we heard made it seem like that doorway was somewhere in Gateshead. Mrs Blackout was appalled to the point where she (an ardent fan of Agatha Christie) didn't come to see the film.
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*3 It's no spoiler to say that in the closing scene of the film, Poirot meets a representative form the British Consulate who informs him that there's been a murder in Egypt ("and only on the Nile!") . The reason Death On The Nile works from a plot-mechanics perspective is that all the characters are established and introduced to Poirot before the murder takes place - while Poirot is also on the boat - so the murderer has to be present in his company and known to him. If the Karnak is going to shore up to let the detective onboard then there's nothing stopping the murderer escaping, before or during his arrival. There's also no reason for the British Consulate to be involved at that point, unless 20th Century Fox are planning to completely retool the story from the ground-up. It's that sort of haphazard reinvention which threatens to derail The Orient Express on more than one occasion...
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DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Now the main thing to bear in mind for the duration of this review is, Salazar's Revenge*1 wasn't going to be 'for' me. And I'm fine with that. I've never really found Disney's PotC series any more than quite good at best, and my recent live-tweeting of installments one-to-four was knocked on the head after the first two, as I was becoming bogged down by the rapid succession of the things I didn't like about them.
So, we're now approximately nineteen years down the line from the end of At World's End, and young Henry Turner (Brendon Thwaites) thinks he's figured out a way to free his father Will (Orlando Bloom) from his 'Being The Captain Of The Flying Dutchman' curse. This will involve tracking down Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Meanwhile elsewhere, young scientist and scholar Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) is on the verge of being executed by her townsfolk for witchcraft, and is determined to discover the identity of her long-lost father. This will involve a chance meeting with Jack Sparrow (Spoiler: he's not her dad). Old faces from movies past return for the outing (although there are more than a few notable by their absence), and despite having a superb villain in the form of Javier Bardem's Salazar (think: a livid, Spanish Darth Vader), the inevitable violence is kept within 12A-certificate levels. For a family thrill-ride, you could do a lot worse.
I just didn't find the finished product particularly interesting. And it's not as if there's an absence of plot mechanics or pacing issues slow that plot down at all; action set-pieces are delivered, swashes are buckled and timbers are shivered with watch-setting regularity. I just couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen all of this before, and barely even in a different order.
Outside of the aforementioned scene-stealing by Sr. Bardem, Kaya Scodelario, Brendan Thwaites and Geoffrey Rush are all aching for a better screenplay, their obvious talent largely wasted. But I may as well join the choir in saying that the real problem here is Johnny Depp, not even mustering his usual lacklustre levels of performance. By this point, Jack Sparrow*2 feels like he should be an incidental character in 'Allo 'Allo, wheeled out once a week with his worn-out schtick in the hope that audience-familiarity will be enough to pad over the gaps in the script. It won't. If anything, the one-note seafarer is just getting in the way now, the very agent holding the series back rather than pushing it boldly forward. Ironically, the character has become more of an anchor than Disney ever intended.
All that said, I don't feel able to lay out the beating that many critics are currently getting off their chests, if only because I don't feel the film's put in enough effort to really warrant one. There are good things in PotC5, but nowhere near enough of them and for nowhere near as long as they need to be.
However, it's also important to note that I actually fell asleep during the multi-million dollar, climactic battle of Salazar's Revenge. I mean only to the point where I jolted myself awake, but still. What can I tell you? By that point I was all out of fucks to give, and the murky*3, fast-cut action/mayhem shaky-cam, coupled with what can only be described as overwhelming symphony of grey-noise from the orchestra, audio-effects department and indeed the cast, basically just said to my brain 'you can't actually concentrate on any of what's meant to be happening here. Just sleep and pick it all up from the ending you know is in the post anyway'.
And with the exception of Bardem, the after-credits sequence made me happier than anything in the preceding one hundred and twenty eight minutes.
*1 No you're right, Ian Disney, giving a different episode-title just for the UK release makes absolute sense. I'm assuming this is so you can tell how many cam-jobs are originating from our shores, given that it's not like "Dead Men Tell No Tales" is a phrase us Brits would look at and think 'hey hang on, how is that pirate-related?'. [ BACK ]
*2 Sorry, 'Captain' Jack Sparrow. Hahaha, yeah, that never gets old… [ BACK ]
*3 And given that the final half hour is way too dark (visually) in 2D, my heart goes out to the poor saps who watched this in 3D and had to put up with the associated light-loss… [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Who waits six years to release a sequel? That's way too long for a movie to seem like a much-needed follow up piece*1, but far to short a time to be intended as a revival of any sort. Not to worry, The House Of Mouse luckily managed to get Alice Through The Looking Glass in the can while the inimitable Mr Rickman was still with us, and even I'll admit that my eyes became more moist than usual at his first scene in this movie.
Where the 2010's Wonderland adaptation always seemed to be a faltering balancing act between the visions of Disney, Burton and Carroll, this part-sequel/part-prequel is a lot more focussed, building on what's come before with a brand new screenplay by Linda Woolverton (rather than trying to visually re-invent a world which didn't really need it). The production design is a lot more sure-footed this time around, and the established characters and settings are now the pieces for what is essentially a time-travel adventure movie. And while I'm certainly no expert on Carroll's original stories, that's handled in a way which fits seamlessly into the newly Burtonised Wonderland.
What will also raise eyebrows among the purists is the number of action sequences in the film that feel like levels from a video-game adaptation. Not necessarily what I'd expect from a piece with such literary origins, but there are also much more subtle hat-tips to both Back To The Future and Blade Runner (which I'm always up for).
The performers are on solid form (a pleasantly surprising range for Mr Depp, and Mia Wasikowska is great as usual), even if a lot of the secondary characters seem shoehorned in for the sake of perceived continuity. And while Sacha Baron Cohen sticks largely to playing Sacha Baron Cohen™, his part itself as the personification of time is as intricate as the clockwork mechanism he's made of. Unfortunately as the film nears its climax, the plot tries to become more complex but only succeeds in being louder and more chaotic as a result.
I'm not entirely sure if Looking Glass is a 'better' film than Alice in Wonderland but I definitely found it more interesting, which counts for a lot. That said, the final fifteen minutes or so are needlessly, horrifically mawkish; the sort of thing I thought Disney had left behind now. In screenwriting terms, it all appears to be the satisfying finale which wraps up the audience's hopes and expectations, but in the cinema, it comes off more as a self-congratulatory group hug for a relatively well-executed idea.
Ultimately, Alice Through The Looking Glass wasn't aimed at me. While I was neither bored nor annoyed, I'll have pretty much forgotten about it tomorrow. Make of that what you will…
Well, Alice in Wonderland, let's be honest.
Only if you're a fan. In which case, you probably already will have.
Just about.
Sadly not.
Probably not.
Pretty sure there's not.
Level 1: This movie stars none other than Lindsay 'TC-14' Duncan and Richard 'Bravo Six' Armitage, both from The Phantom Menace.
And while I'm on the subject, an honourable mention has to go to this fella on the right-hand side in the church scene (I think it's Frederick Warder playing Poomally, but please correct me if I'm wrong), for inadvertently pulling off the best Doctor-Who-era Peter 'Tarkin' Cushing I've ever seen:
*1 Not least since the events of the film (before all the time-travelling, at any rate) take place three years after the previous one, suggesting the screenplay had been in development-limbo for some considerable time.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
So, this is my third Jesse Plemons film this month; the cinema staff are beginning to talk. Everyone's favourite grump-faced young Texan is just one supporting pillar of many in the fantastically cast Black Mass, the true/dramatised story of Massachusetts crime-kingpin James 'Whitey' Bulger and his 20 year grip over Boston, all of which was in fact aided and abetted by his state-senator brother, and their childhood friend who became a crooked FBI agent.
First and foremost, Johnny Depp is on blistering form as Bulger. It's great to finally have Johnny back in a role which gives him something to do, boldly striding down the line between charismatic and repellent (and often being both). As Black Mass progresses though, it becomes as much Joel Edgerton's film as Depp's, and he's shaping up to be a classic character-actor in playing the FBI's John Connolly. Backed by understated performances from the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Corey Stoll, Rory Cochrane and Juno Temple (okay, and Jesse Plemons), director Scott Cooper isn't afraid to use some quiet restraint with his cast, opting for lengthy, scathing glances rather than Tarantino-esque shoot-outs (although rest assured, there's a not-insignificant bullet-count in here as well).
In other hands, the film could easily have been a straight-to-DVD thriller starring Russell Crowe, but Cooper's unflinching treatment of his subject matter (this is a hard 15 Cert), Junkie XL's melodically imposing score, and the fantastic sets, make-up and costumes make Black Mass far more than the sum of its parts…
…although it's duly noted that Mr Cumberbatch seems to have mastered his Massachusetts accent by studying Peter Griffin, Depp's criminal mastermind barely ages between 1975 and 1995, and his accompanying semi-receded hairline doesn't seem to budge at all;)
If you're in the mood for unrelenting grimness on a large screen, yes.
It'll be one to buy, but maybe once the price has dropped.
Almost certainly.
Almost certainly.
Maybe a bit.
There isn't.
Black Mass stars none other than young Owen Lars himself, Joel Edgerton.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Okay, the biggest problem? How do his hands work? "Because they do"? Really?
You could fuse a whisk onto your Radius bone, that wouldn't make the rotation system self-operating. Without any external mechanics or power source, the moving blades (it's not one Kruger-esque blade per-finger, remember, Edward has fully operational pivoted scissors) would require a musculature system which would make his hands far larger and more unsightly than those in the film, and result in a series of 'open wounds' where the flesh and bone joins to the metal, resulting in the need for constant cleansing and antiseptic treatments (neither likely nor practical considering the squalor he was living in at the mansion). At least it appears that The Inventor used stainless steel, otherwise the rusting of the blades under the skin would lead to blood poisoning in no-time, not to mention the Tetanus risk from all that gardening he's doing.
Most of the above would suggest that Edward isn't biological in the classic sense, but his adoptive family give him food to eat on a regular basis. So what was he eating when he lived in the mansion, how does his digestive-system work, and how is he expected to wipe his arse? If he wasn't inherently organic then he wouldn't have the scar-tissue on his face which isn't in his flashback scenes. And why is Edward so clumsy with day-to-day dexterity when he's never known anything other than his scissor-hands? When the town is such a clear homage to 1960s America, why does Kim's boyfriend Jim say he wishes he was taping the TV show they're watching, since VCRs didn't exist at that time? (Joyce's use of a cassette-deck is equally suspect; not the cassette itself, but the player)
How come Edward not only trims the neighbourhood's scraggy bushes, but also makes them taller and more densely foliated than they were before, too, even on the inside where the leaves and fronds don't grow? Where does he get the blocks of ice for his sculptures?
Why does Kim's father Bill say "You don't know anything about the wonderful world of teenage girls… they reach a certain age, they develop these gland things, their bodies swell up." referring to his own daughter?. Why is Vincent Price being played by Bruce Forsyth?
Who's in charge, here?
And Edward's wearing that leather outfit for the entire film. He's going to stink...
Really. Haven't been avoiding it, it's just never crossed my path.
Absolutely. Burton's always good value for money, even when his films are as archetypal and patronising as this.
Sure, but not to massive cynics who worry about the bio-engineering aspects of fairytales ;)
I didn't hear one, what's up with that?
Edward Scissorhands features Vincent Price (of course), who starred in 1970's Scream and Scream Again (of course) alongside Peter 'Tarkin' Cushing (of course).
Oh, of course I enjoyed it.
That doesn't mean I didn't find it massively troublesome.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
