A Haunting In Venice (2023)

Another Poirot film starring, and directed by, Kenneth Branagh, this one based on a novel actually named "Hallowe'en Party", A Haunting In Venice feels a bit different from the previous two instalments in this particular continuity for the detective. It's a moody and atmospheric piece. It also feels disappointingly light on actual Poirot moments though, our hero generally feeling sidelined in favour of the camerawork and building spookiness.

Despite trying to enjoy his retirement, Hercule Poirot has his peace interrupted by a mystery writer friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), who hopes he can expose a medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), as a fraud. She will be putting on a performance at the home of Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a retured opera singer grieving the loss of her daughter, Alicia. Others who will be in attendance are Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and Maxime Gérard (Kyle Allen), the former fiancé of Alicia.

On the one hand, it's commendable to have a Poirot film that feels a step removed from the other recent Poirot films. Branagh, working once again with writer Michael Green, seems intent on showing us that every Poirot tale can both follow a formula and also provide some nice variety, but he seems to struggle with the commitment required for the many scenes that don't focus on the main character.

It should also be said that the cast feels disappointingly lacking in comparison to the previous two features. Fey is a delight, as is Yeoh (the latter sorely underused), but Reilly isn't able to have any fun in her role, Allen is similarly stuck in a solemn mood for the duration, and Dornan is about as bland as he usually is (sorry, he may be a lovely guy, but he rarely works for me onscreen). Riccardo Scamarcio is an enjoyable presence playing Poirot's bodyguard, but you don't get much from the likes of Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Camille Cottin, and the young Jude Hill (playing the son of Dornan's character).

Everything feels as lush and gorgeous, albeit in a very different way, but there's certainly no doubt that the budget is lower than it was for the previous Poirot feature. We don't get to stray too far from the one main location, the cast is undeniably lacking some major star power (aside from the luminous Fey and Yeoh), and it just can't stop feeling, superficially, like an inferior adventure. The spooky fun helps a lot though, and allowed me to put this on a par with its predecessors, despite the shortcomings elsewhere.

Other plus points are the fact that it clocks in at 103 minutes, although it feels a bit longer than that, and a wonderful score from Hildur Guðnadóttir that I recommend, even if you ultimately choose not to watch the film.

Nothing great, nor truly memorable, but enjoyable enough while it's on, which can be said of every one of the Branagh Poirot movies to date. At least the man is consistent when it comes to his attempts to serve up tales of the famous Belgian detective. 

6/10

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Prime Time: Here (2024)

I've said it many times before, and I will undoubtedly say it again, but we definitely lost something when Robert Zemeckis started to become more and more seduced by technology. He was a director once able to use the best special effects to tell wonderful and hugely entertaining stories (having helmed at least two features that could easily be considered absolute classics of the 1980s), but he started to focus more and more on FX-laden movies that just seemed designed to showcase the FX work.

And now we have Here, a film with a couple of gimmicks to attract or repel viewers, depending on your reaction to the main premise. With the camera largely locked off for most of the runtime, Here shows us a house, and the people who have inhabited that house over the decades and centuries. We also see the space as it was before the house was built, sometimes seeing people coming and going from the house across from that space, sometimes seeing people moving through the space when it was just untamed wilderness, and sometimes even seeing a bit of prehistoric action. Although various people come and go, the two main characters are Richard and Margaret, played by Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. They are digitally de-aged for certain scenes, and we get to see most of their lifetime play out in front of us. 

Based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, turned into screenplay fork by Zemeckis and Eric Roth, the visual style here may put many people off, but it's a nice way to keep things moving along and keep jumping in between the various generations. What you see are various panels appearing in different areas of the screen as the image transitions from the present to the past, to the very past, and back towards the present. The visuals sometimes lag behind the audio, but it works to keep viewers engaged in a way that wouldn't otherwise wouldn't be possible with such a static camera set-up.

Hanks and Wright are very enjoyable when they get to be front and centre, but they share a lot of the screentime with Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly (as the parents), Michelle Dockery and Gwilym Lee (a couple who lived in an older incarnation of the house), Ophelia Lovibond and David Fynn (a different couple who also made the place their home at one time), and Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and a handful of others helping to keep the space busy.

The big surprise, however, is how little the film really rests on the shoulders of the cast. They help, and Bettany and Reilly have some particularly effective moments, but this is a film that actually allows Zemeckis to marry the tech to a strong heartbeat in a way that is unexpectedly satisfying. While it's a technical exercise, one that may only appeal to a minority able to tolerate the use of the format, it's actually more interested in sharing a positive message about the shared experience of life. Birth, love, pain, loss, sacrifice, laughter, tears, and, of course, death.

I don't think I'll ever rewatch this, and I cannot think of anyone I would strongly recommend it to, but I enjoyed it while it was on. Everyone involved, on both sides of the camera, is doing very good work, and there's a lot of sweetness, but, unlike the fixtures and furnishings of the house depicted here, there isn't all that much below the surface. 

6/10

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Prime Time: The Take AKA Bastille Day (2016)

If you have seen other films from director James Watkins then you have seen some decent films, particularly if you enjoy horror movies. As of today, The Take is the last film from Watkins, who has moved towards working in TV in the last few years. There may be a good reason for that. The Take (which you may have also seen, or heard of, under the alternate title of Bastille Day) isn’t very good.

Richard Madden plays Michael, a very talented thief, able to work his way through a crowd and dip into pockets to find passports and wallets. Spying an opportunity when he observes Zoe (Charlotte Le Bon) crying on some city steps, a bag unattended by her side. Michael lifts the bag, rifles through it, and then ditches it elsewhere. And that’s when it explodes. Zoe was part of a group aiming to cause tension and anarchy, but she was supposed to plant the bomb somewhere without anybody nearby, and the incident now puts a target on Michael’s back, with everyone assuming that he is part of the same terrorist group. The French authorities want to get their hands on him, but Sean Briar (Idris Elba) hopes to get to him first. He is supposed to apprehend Michael and hand him over in due course, but the situation quickly changes as Briar finds himself just as quickly targeted as the man in his custody. 

Elba and Madden can do good work when given the right material, and I will always give time to anything that the former is involved in, but they cannot do enough to make this worthwhile. There are one or two moments here and there, and there’s fun to be had watching Elba commit to fully to such a cliché-ridden role, but they are weighted down by the dire script and poor execution of the material.

Watkins, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Andrew Baldwin, isn’t suited to action thrillers. This is a film made by someone who has spent a year watching Taken 3 on repeat and reading “Action Movie Tropes For Dummies”. That’s a shame, particularly when the main premise feels like such a tantalizing one. Almost every opportunity is squandered here, from the tension and thrills that could have been created from Elba trying to pursue Madden to the disappointingly predictable real villains of the movie. The only surprise is how much eyeliner they put on Madden.

As for other cast members, they are equally weighted down by a screenplay that puts a pair of concrete boots on them before throwing them into water. Le Bon is left to look sad and vulnerable, Kelly Reilly is given a role that allows you to say “maybe this won’t be so bad, Kelly Reilly’s in it”, and Thierry Godard at least gets one or two decent moments on the way to an underwhelming finale that once again wastes the opportunity to make things more exciting.

I can imagine that many will be able to enjoy this as undemanding fun. It at least has decent pacing and one or two action beats that should entertain anyone after something familiar and comfortingly simplistic. I didn’t actively hate it while it was on. I just never enjoyed it as much as I wanted to.

4/10

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The Cursed AKA Eight For Silver (2021)

The main thing that you may have heard about The Cursed already is that most people preferred the other title for it, Eight For Silver. I actually don’t mind either title, both are equally vague until you see what the film is about. And the film has bigger problems than the title and marketing.

I don’t want to spoil anything about this, you can find details elsewhere if you want to know more, but The Cursed is an attempt to do something a bit more interesting and fresh with a horror archetype. You have a central family in peril, you have a newcomer to town who is armed with guns and vital knowledge, and you have characters on a journey of discovery and growth on the way to a standard final confrontation between forces of good and evil (sort of).

Written and directed by Sean Ellis, who has a small and eclectic filmography I would recommend checking out (I will keep recommending The Broken as something well worth your time), The Cursed is a handsome film that gains some goodwill for the approach it takes to the material. Everything is played straight, there are no sly winks to viewers or attempts to slip some modernity into the period setting, and it generally keeps viewers one step ahead of the main characters. Trying to make this a mystery just wouldn’t have worked, although the film is bookended by a cinematic puzzle and solution (which is, sadly, a big mid-step, considering how it feels anti-climactic).

The cast are all perfectly fine, I suppose, but they are saddled with having to play characters who aren’t really developed enough to make them memorable. I know to mention Boyd Holbrook here (the newcomer to town) because I know Boyd Holbrook, the same goes for both Kelly Reilly and Alistair Petrie. Everyone else, whether adult or child (and it is children who are the main targets of the unfolding horror), feels almost completely interchangeable. They are all potential victims, although some are related to the central adults and some are not.

While Ellis does well with the presentation of his ideas, and while he deserves praise for doing something that nicely blends traditional elements with one or two unique details, The Cursed ends up ultimately failing to be as good as it could be. It just needs a little bit more in the mix, whether that is a little bit more bloodshed, a little bit more work on the character development, or a little bit more complexity to the plot, giving viewers more to care and think about during the quieter moments.

I am sure that some people will like this much more than I did, and I remain happy that Ellis is still helming movies that aren’t as easily pigeon-holed as many, but this won’t be something I rush to revisit. I don’t regret watching it. I just wish the script had been given at least one more pass, and maybe the casting could have been a bit better.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Eli (2019)

The more I think about his filmography, the more surprised I am by the fact that director Ciarán Foy keeps getting opportunities to helm potentially decent horror movies. His debut feature, Citadel, was solid, but nothing since then has shown him to be an assured hand. Eli is a prime example, although he's hindered by a laughably weak script.

Eli (Charlie Shotwell) is a very sick young boy, with an auto-immune disorder that makes him unable to live a normal life. His parents, Rose (Kelly Reilly) and Paul (Max Martini), pin all of their hope on one last treatment, headed up by Dr. Horn (Lili Taylor). But all is not well in the facility that they end up in, as Eli sees spirits around him, and starts to wonder if those treating him really have his best interests at heart. Perhaps he'll just end up being the latest victim of their experimental approach.

Eli just isn't all that interesting, I'm afraid to say. The way in which the main character is shown to be affected by the world around him isn't set up well enough, doesn't feel consistent, and will simply remind many viewers of one or two much better movies (such as The Others, for example). It doesn't help that you feel no sympathy, or care, for the other characters, a mix of the writing and poor casting.

Reilly can be good in the right role, and I have enjoyed her work in a number of movies, but this isn't the right role for her, especially when she's required to both turn some things around and provide some exposition in the final reel. I'm not too familiar with Max Martini, and his turn here doesn't make me want to rush to refresh my memory with his roles in other movies I have seen. Taylor is a highlight, doing her best with weak material, and almost managing to overcome it by simply being Lili Taylor. Shotwell actually does a good job, and his relationship with a young girl, Haley (Sadie Sink), who visits to talk to him from the other side of his window is another highlight, thanks to the performances of both young actors.

The cast might have fared better with a better script though. We'll never know. David Chirchirillo, Ian Goldberg, and Richard Naing have worked together to craft something absolutely risible. Not only is it a silly premise, once all becomes clear, it makes no sense and treats viewers like idiots by assuming they will just accept everything without questioning the logic of the film (important reminder, questioning the logic of a movie on the terms it is delivering material is not the same as expecting real-world logic from every movie you watch). Eli makes no sense throughout, and everything falls apart during a time when the writers obviously think they are being clever and creative.

Foy is no help. He admittedly does okay with individual scare moments, but fails to do enough to distract viewers from the failings of the script. If you're going to utilise cliches then you need to try to make other elements feel fresh. If you're going to journey into silliness then you need to either lay the groundwork from the earliest scenes or do a better job with the tone. Foy just goes along with a script that he really should have been aiming to constantly improve.

I am sure that some people will enjoy Eli. I have no idea who those people are, and I don't think many of the horror fans I know will think this one worth their time.

3/10

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Calvary (2014)

Writer-director John Michael McDonagh made a pretty good impression, to say the least, with his first feature film, The Guard. A film mixing character study with Irish charm with police thriller elements, it was rightfully held up by many as one of the best from its year of release. Well, come the end of 2014, I expect Calvary to be in any such list.

Teaming up once again with Brendan Gleeson, McDonagh this time mixes entertainment with a scathing condemnation of the Catholic Church and a commentary on the state of Ireland as it is today, and the people who took it to that position. Yet, for all of the anger and cynicism in the script, everything is also offset, and beautifully so, by a message of positivity and forgiveness.

Let me actually get to the plot. Gleeson plays Father James Lavelle, a priest who hears a man in confession say that he’s going to kill him. But he’ll give the priest about a week to get his affairs in order. Killing a bad priest wouldn’t make much of an impact, but killing a good priest, that’s something. Such is the reasoning of the killer. Does this prompt Father Lavelle to rush to the police or flee? No. Instead, he goes about his duties in much the same way as before, all the while trying to help members of his parish (including the person that he knows is due to kill him). Father Lavelle is a good man. That much is made clear from the very beginning of the movie. He’s also a deeply flawed man, having battled with the demon drink through the years, but events in his past have made him what he is today, and that becomes obvious when he receives a visit from his daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly).

While I'd like to praise the entire cast here in a way that shows just how great everyone is onscreen, this is Gleeson's movie. As with The Guard, he takes a main character and makes him riveting to watch, even when there seems to be nothing happening. The fact that he's once again given such great support - this time by the likes of Reilly, Chris O'Dowd, David Wilmot, Killian Scott, Aidan Gillen, Orla O'Rourke, M. Emmet Walsh, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankole and Domhnall Gleeson (and one or two I have missed out, apologies) - is just a testament to the ability of McDonagh, or whoever he employs, to put together the perfect cast for his work.

While McDonagh also does a very good job with the direction, his strength lies in his writing. If Calvary was JUST an angry rant, using such great actors and providing such great entertainment, then I would still be praising the movie and writing a positive review. But it's so much more than that, and the realisation of the journey that the film has just taken you on will perhaps leave you stunned and moved as the end credits rolled. I can't stop getting a lump in my throat when I think about the film now, and I'm writing this review a day after seeing it. I can't recall the last time a movie affected me so profoundly.

It's not actually a masterpiece, and it may prove to be a very divisive film (when the central message seems to angry and skewed), but for me it's so close to perfect that it's getting the highest rating possible. I am keen to rewatch it soon, I am keen to own it, and I am keen for other people to give it a chance. And for anyone who does go along to view Calvary and finds it somewhat underwhelming, all I ask is that you don't give up on it until the whole tale has unfolded. Then decide how you feel about it.

10/10

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