Netflix And Chill: The Thursday Murder Club (2025)

Okay, let me state this very clearly from the beginning, books and movies are very different things. You have to accept that they just cannot deliver the same experience. Liberties need to be taken when it comes to adapting something from the page to the screen. Having said that, I believe I made a mistake in rushing to read The Thursday Murder Club, a very successful murder mystery novel that started the lucrative fiction writer phase of Richard Osman's long and healthy career in the world of media and entertainment.

Let's get to the film anyway, and what it gets right. The Thursday Murder Club is set in a fairly luxurious retirement home, in which a few residents work together to see if they can find solutions to various cold cases. The club used to include an ex-PC named Penny (Susan Kirkby), but she is currently barely hanging on to life in the hospice wing. The main members are now Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ron (Pierce Brosnan), Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), and, relative newcomer, Joyce (Celia Imrie). Each brings their own set of skills to the group, but Elizabeth appears to be the one with a past that has her most prepared for anything that can be thrown at them. And what ends up thrown at them is a new murder, a lot of suspects who seem very bleeding obvious, and ties between the past and present that recontextualize friendships and relationships. Oh, and then there's another murder.

Turned into screenplay form by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote, The Thursday Murder Club would seem to be a hard film to get wrong. Chris Columbus is in the director's chair. The cast includes the four leads just mentioned, as well as Naomi Ackie and Daniel Mays as a couple of investigating officers, Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Tom Ellis as younger men who find themselves entangled in the creeping spiderwebs that the murder creates, and Jonathan Pryce, David Tennant, Geoff Bell, Paul Freeman, Ruth Sheen, and Richard E. Grant. It's a real pick 'n' mix of delightful performances.

So why does it feel like such a slog?

The dialogue generally works well, helped by the fact that it's being delivered by people who feel almost perfect in their roles (let's just not mention the accent that Brosnan uses), but the mystery feels half-baked and hard to care about. Having said this, I wonder if I feel that way because I just read the book. While I still stand by my opening statement, there are choices here that feel very odd, including a detail revealed in the very opening scenes that is actually held back in the book until a finale that shows all of the pieces finally falling into place. I can understand some things being omitted, one other plot strand would have required the runtime to have at least 5-10 minutes add on to what already pushes up close to the 2-hour mark, but that just makes it a bizarre experience for those who know the material well enough to know that certain characters and moments are only being hinted at while never being given the time and attention that they deserve.

Both the direction and writing feel trapped by a prison of their own design. They're either too beholden to the book, or they make strange decisions to veer away from elements that could have made the film a much more rewarding experience, for both readers and non-readers alike. And, as much as I complain about it as a new standard, would anyone be bothered if the runtime had been just over, instead of just under, two hours? Those ten extra minutes could have given us a very brief overview of two whole other lives, and those whole other lives feed into the main themes of aging, regret, and the repercussions of different choices made at crucial junctures.

Still, it's easy enough to forget the many mistakes and mis-steps made here when any scene revolves around Imrie having a twinkle in her eye and Mirren having a glint in hers. The cosy and easygoing feel of the whole thing will certainly appeal to those after something that feels like the movie equivalent of a comfortable pair of slippers. I just wish we'd been given nicer slippers. Slippers that stay warm and comfortable for the duration. Not the cheap kind that fall apart after one month of regular use. 

5/10

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Netflix And Chill: Christmas On Mistletoe Farm (2022)

The world may be in a fairly bad state right now, with the shadow of war looming over us all (and directly impacting those actually AT war right now), the gap between the very rich and the very poor ever-widening, and intelligence sometimes seeming like a rarer commodity than painite, but the main thing we all have to do right now is band together to ensure that writer-director Debbie Isitt stops making films. I'm not even sure that her amateurish work should even be referred to in cinematic terms nowadays, but she needs to stop torturing us all with it.

The story revolves around a widow/father (Scott Garnham) who ends up inheriting a small farm from his father. He decides to take his five kids along for a visit, also hoping to get some peace and quiet while he works on a crucial work assignment given to him by his formidable boss (Ashley Jensen), and soon finds himself stressed out by animals, friendly locals who keep interrupting his plans, and a farmhand/manchild named Beano (Scott Paige). There's also an attractive vet in the area (played by Kathryn Drysdale), and plenty of opportunities for the kids to look up with big eyes and remind everyone that they miss their dead mother.

I'm not going to name all of the child actors here. I don't want to be overly rude to them, they're children, but they were obviously picked for their age rather than any major acting talent. I do want to be rude to the adults though, but I believe they are all acting in the way that Isitt wanted them to act. So I will continue to be rude to Isitt, who should STOP MAKING MOVIES. The lack of any grace or decent shot composition, and the overwhelmingly cheap feeling permeating every scene, makes this less cinematic than even the most basic children's TV show. Despite the pain I endured while watching this, I do understand that it wasn't really aimed at me. It's aimed at younger viewers, and parents who may cosy up alongside those younger viewers while they are amused and entertained for the duration. Maybe. That still doesn't excuse the lack of any real effort though, and even younger viewers deserve to be shown movies that allow them to start appreciating the magic of cinema. There's no magic here, no matter what the awful script wants us to believe, and a number of plot points actually feel disappointingly mishandled in a way that undermines whatever morality lesson or cutesiness that Isitt is trying to deliver.

Garnham tries to do a decent job in the lead role, and I'd also begrudgingly say the same of Drysdale and Celia Imrie (who appears in a small role, portraying a local woman who has a passion for knitting, and it's a sad waste of her great talent). The biggest annoyance onscreen is Paige, who embodies the kind of character Isitt seems to think it essential in all of her movies, and I'm going to allow him to shoulder some of the blame for his performance because, well, he's not good with the physical comedy. 

As well as writing and directing this dross, Isitt also has the gall to ruin the soundtrack, alongside Nicky Ager. The manipulative score barges in at random intervals, like a sudden loud fart interrupting the easygoing chatter around a dinner table, and it's genuinely one of the most abrasive audio experiences I've had in some time. 

It got made. That's the only credit I will give it. The ONLY reason it isn't getting the lowest score possible is because, as loathe as I am to admit it, some of the cute animals made me smile. I'm serious. You should avoid this at all costs. And I would implore people . . . please don't inflict it upon your children. There are so many better options for them to spend time with.

2/10

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Prime Time: Nativity Rocks! (2018)

How? How do we now have four of these bloody things? Especially when they keep getting worse. Well, that's not strictly true. The series seems to have bottomed out with the third instalment, making anything else released both as awful and slapdash as anyone still watching deserves. Which includes me, masochist that I am.

After his small part in the previous movie, Simon Lipkin gets to move front and centre here. He is the new Mr. Poppy, Jerry, cousin of the old Mr. Poppy (yes, Marc Wootton finally decided to move on from the series). Turning up at a school, Jerry is allowed to just immediately get himself involved with the Christmas musical that is being planned, a rock opera. Because schools are absolutely able to do that, as has been shown in every previous Nativity! movie. The rock opera needs to be done right, and there are a couple of main sub-plots, one involving a small boy who has parents too busy to take much notice of him, and one involving a child refugee separated from his father.

Okay, I will begrudgingly admit that, despite my harsh words opening this review, this fourth Nativity! movie feels ever so slightly better than the third one. If there was someone better in the lead role, it could have been an actual decent movie. But we get Lipkin in the lead role, a man who decides to perform his role as a cross between Wootton and Jack Black, with the skill of neither.

Writer-director Debbie Isitt seems to have made this her main focus over the past few years (I noticed there is a stage show version now, and I am assuming she will have at least some credit for that). None of these films have been very well-received, critically, but I know that the first two did great business. I can even see the appeal in the first one. And the second, which tries to repeat the main trick while adding in some David Tennant. But I am surprised that enough people saw, and enjoyed, the third to warrant a fourth. Will there be a fifth? Knowing my luck, probably.

I've already complained enough about Lipkin, spending any more time criticising him would feel too much like tripping up a small puppy, but there's a decent supporting cast here to at least partially make up for his central awfulness. Craig Revel Horwood may not be one of the better players, but he has a bit of fun with his role, giving us the main villain this time around. Daniel Boys, Helen George, and Celia Imrie all do well as the main adults caring for the children, Hugh Dennis and Anna Chancellor are good as the parents not paying their child much attention, and Ruth Jones brightens up the second half of the movie with her presence. Brian Bartle (Doru, the refugee) and Rupert Turnbull (Barnaby, the child with "absent" parents) aren't the best in their roles, but they don't do a terrible job, and I've sat through much worse child performances. You also get small roles for Meera Syal and Jessica Hynes, with the latter bursting in near the end with just the right amount of energy and humour to perk things up.

Not the worst, but that's a very low bar set by the previous movie, Nativity Rocks! feels like a return trip to a well that dried out some years ago. I really hope that they don't make another one. But I know I'll end up watching it IF it happens.

3/10

You can buy a set here.

Netflix And Chill: Malevolent (2018)

Malevolent starts off well enough. Set in Scotland in the 1980s, it's the tale of a brother and sister (Jackson and Angela, played by Ben Lloyd-Hughes and Florence Pugh) who, along with a couple of friends, make themselves money by going in to locations that are apparently haunted and conducting a "clearance". It's quite an easy gig, and they have their patter down to a fine art, but it's not long into the movie when things start to become a lot less fake than usual. Things start to get odd for Angela during what should be a regular, easy, gig. Then things go from bad to worse when they are hired by a woman (Celia Imrie) who claims to be plagued by the spirits of noisy children in her home.

It's not that the acting here is bad, not really. Imrie may be the veteran, and she's good fun in her role, but the performances from Lloyd-Hughes and Pugh are decent enough, as is the supporting turn from Scott Chambers (playing the other main member of the group; Georgina Bevan is also onscreen but given so little to do that she barely makes an impression). James Cosmo is as good as ever in his small role, Niall Greig Fulton does okay, and that covers the main characters.

The script isn't really that bad either. Written by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstantopoulos (based on the novel "Hush" by the latter), it mixes in enough melodrama and decent ideas to create a heady brew. You have a dead parent who was apparently insane, claiming to be contacted by spirits. You have the dynamic of the brother and sister relationship, with the male pushing his female sibling into situations that she starts to find increasingly uncomfortable. And you have the character played by Imrie, eccentric and mysterious, perhaps innocent but perhaps not-so-innocent. There are even one or two decent scares in the first half of the film. Then the second half starts up, moving everything along to a third act that is horribly muddled and misjudged, sacrificing any creepy atmosphere for violence and any subtlety for crude simplicity. It becomes embarrassing long before the whole debacle draws to a depressingly dull conclusion.

Director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson (credited as just Olaf De Fleur) doesn't help. His background, a filmography that includes a number of documentary features and standard fictions, seems to have left him ill-prepared for this kind of material. This may explain why he does better in the earlier scenes that feature the strangeness developing in the background of the central relationship dynamics. And if it was his decision to accompany some spooky visuals in the second half of the movie with horribly unnecessary "spooky" voices then he really helped to undermine what could have been a decent little ghost story before that sharp turn to the violence.

I started off this review trying to be kind, as usual, but the more time I spent writing about it, the angrier I got. It's just so bloody annoying. Especially after a solid, if unspectacular, opening act. So much is left unexplored (background of the characters, emotional baggage, even the fact that it is set in the 1980s . . . something I assumed would figure into the plot but it never does) that the viewing experience just becomes more and more frustrating.

Some will be able to watch this and not become as irked as I was. Good for them. I suggest most people skip this and instead pick one of the MANY better horror titles available.

3/10

You can grab some horror movies here.
Americans can get some tricks or treats here.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

I was quite unimpressed when I first saw Mamma Mia! I wasn't exactly the target audience for it, I didn't think the songs were always as well worked into the plot as they could have been, and I found the antics of Meryl Streep and her friends just a little bit cringe-inducing. But it still sits on my shelf, surrounded by many better (and a few worse) movies. Why? Because it was one of the free blu rays that came with my first player, and I rarely throw out a film, especially a freebie.

You can already surmise that I wasn't keen to rush out and see the sequel, but see the sequel I did. I am a married man and that can mean compromising sometimes. My wife was going to join me for the latest Mission: Impossible movie so I could put a brave face on and accompany her to this movie. I did my duty.

The plot this time around sees Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) getting ready to open the hotel that she wants to make a success in honour of her deceased mother, Donna (Meryl Streep). Viewers also get to see the early years of Donna (played by Lily James) and how exactly she got herself in the predicament that eventually led to the events of the first film. There are some new faces, mainly in the scenes showing the younger incarnations of the men and women we already got to know as adults, another mix of ABBA hits, of course, and plenty of sea, sunshine, and sanitised -or-family-viewing sexual shenanigans.

Here's what happened when I watched Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. I had quite a good time. Not only that, I realised that I had been a BIT harsh in my judgement of the first film. I didn't enjoy it when I sat there, watching it in the comfort of my own home, even if I could singalong to the ABBA tunes. But that situation wasn't the best way to view it. It's a shared experience. It's fun for everyone, and the sequel aims for exactly the same end result.

And it achieves it. The songs may be, for the most part, lesser choices but the laughs are more frequent, and simply better. Which makes this a slight improvement over the original. That wasn't clear from the beginning. The first 15 minutes or so had me rolling my eyes on a number of occasions, thanks to the sentimental moments and the poor musical number that feels shoehorned in to the first scenes featuring Lily James (as well as Alexa Davies and Jessica Keenan Wynn, playing her friends). James is good in her role, but things start to pick up when Julie Walters and Christine Baranski come onscreen, and then it's all a surprisingly consistent crowdpleaser as we move back and forth between the past and the present, with lots more fun coming from Hugh Skinner/Colin Firth, Josh Dylan/Stellan Skarsgard, and Jeremy Irvine/Pierce Brosnan. Andy Garcia is also very good, Omid Djalili steals his all-too-brief scenes, and Cher takes the baton from Djalili and almost walks off with the entire film.

Writer-director Ol Parker, helped by Richard Curtis and Catherine Johnson, shows that he knows exactly what the audience wants, and he builds everything to a completely predictable and enjoyable finale that will have even the most cynical viewers grinning. I'm not completely converted, not quite yet, but I WILL rewatch the first film at some point, and I may even let my wife persuade me to endure/enjoy a double-bill one day in the future.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a film that it is easy to turn your nose up at. It is a safe viewing choice, one or two risque lines of dialogue aside, and it suffers from an overabundance of sweetness in almost every character. It will also have you leaving the cinema with a big smile on your face, despite how hard you might fight against it.

6/10

This is the shiny disc version.
Americans can get it here.