Death On The Nile (2022)

It took me long enough to get around to this, the second Poirot adventure starring, and directed by, Kenneth Branagh, and I was wondering if I should delay it any long as the earliest scenes played out (a sequence showing Poirot in wartime action that feels far too much like a superhero origin prologue). Things did not bode well. Thankfully, the rest of the film is much better, helped by a sprawling cast that has enough welcome performers to make up for those you may be less inclined to want on your screen.

Everything is basically summed up by the title. Poirot is invited to join the celebrations of a pair of newlyweds (Armie Hammer and Gal Gadot), as well as an assemblage of friends and acquaintances. There's trouble in the air though. An angry ex (Emma Mackey), who may be out for deadly revenge.

With Michael Green back for the job of adapting Agatha Christie's work into movie form, and Branagh very comfortable as the lead, there's very little here that should deter those who enjoyed Murder On The Orient Express. I would say that this is a more showy and beautiful film, helped in no small part by the setting, and Branagh has never been someone who could be accused of lacking confidence or the ability to add multiple cinematic flourishes to very traditional material.

Hammer is fine in his role, Gadot feels very much out of her depth, and Mackey is good fun, but the best moments come from many of the supporting players. Annette Bening and (returning) Tom Bateman are both on great form, a mother and son who both view Poirot in quite different ways. It's always nice to see Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders working alongside one another onscreen again. Rose Leslie does okay with a fairly anaemic role, and Russell Brand appears just often enough to make his inclusion feel unfortunate, but both Letitia Wright and Sophie Okonedo light up the screen with their presence. Branagh remains a lot of fun as Poirot, once the film moves beyond that unwanted opening sequence, and he's allowed, as usual, to showboat and relish his dialogue in the grand finale.

It doesn’t seem right to mention plotting in an adaptation of Agatha Christie, but fans should be pleased that this feels nicely in line with what you would expect from her. I haven’t read the source material (note to self, get back to exploring more Agatha Christie tales), but Christie is such a known institution that it would be very easy to tell when something felt . . . off.

Not great, not exactly cinematic throughout (despite Branagh trying his best), but comforting and enjoyable nonetheless. I may even get around to the next film very shortly, considering that has the bonus of Michelle Yeoh in one of the main roles. Or maybe I will take as long to get around to it as I took to get around to this one. After all, they don’t exactly set my little grey cells on fire with excitement.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Heart Of Stone (2023)

I am often accused of being too kind in my movie ratings and reviews, and that is absolutely fine with me. I go into EVERY movie with optimism, and I always remember that the final result in front of my eyes is the result of people working together to get a clear vision onscreen. Sometimes it is only a handful of people, sweating and struggling to pool resources, and sometimes it's a huge number of people who can get their hands on whatever they need for their glossy blockbuster. Heart Of Stone falls into the latter camp, and it's one of those films that allows me to be unkind. Because it is, undoubtedly, one of the most soulless and unexciting pieces of garbage that I've seen in a long time. 

Gal Gadot stars as Rachel Stone, a woman working as part of a MI6 team. She's a technician, supposed to be able to stay safe and observant while others do the action stuff, but they don't realise that Stone is actually working for a global peacekeeping agency known as The Charter. The Charter has the advantage of being able to feed agents information from a powerful AI device they call The Heart (see? see where the title comes from?), a super-computer that can hack into any digital device and offer fluctuating predictions on the potential success of every possibility for a field agent on a mission. Someone wants to get to The Heart though, and that could allow them to become a very powerful super-villain. There's treachery, changes of alliance, and horribly inept set-pieces all thrown together on the way to a finale that feels as smug as it does predictable.

It has become all too easy lately for people to dismiss a film by saying "it feels as if it was written by A.I.", but that certainly feels like it was a factor here. A Netflix film, and we know that they often design their movies around certain patterns and factor they have seen in their viewing data, the humans actually responsible for this screenplay are Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder. While I wasn't surprised to see that Rucka was used to the Netflix style, having also had a hand in The Old Guard (a film I have yet to muster the enthusiasm to watch), I was very surprised to see Schroeder attached to this, considering her work in recent years on both Hidden Figures and Christopher Robin, as well as being an extra helping hand on the screenplay for Frozen 2. It's equally surprising to see Tom Harper sitting in the director's chair for this. I can only imagine that he either wanted a different kind of challenge, wanted a big payday, or both, considering his past couple of movies were the very different, and apparently much better, The Aeronauts and Wild Rose. What isn't surprising is that neither the writers nor director put any kind of personal stamp on this. Heart Of Stone is a star vehicle. It just doesn't have a good enough star in the lead role.

I like Gal Gadot. I do. She's pretty great in the role of Wonder Woman, even if the films are very often not the best vehicles for the character, and I have enjoyed her in most of her other movie roles. Superhero movies aside though, she's never really been given a lead role, and Heart Of Stone clearly shows why this is the case. She doesn't shine as she should, unable to give the role the mix of humour and charisma needed. It doesn't help that she's surrounded by a cast of equally dull performers, whether that's caused by their own acting or the script is something I'm still debating internally. Jamie Dornan and Alia Bhatt are the wost offenders, but even someone as good as Sophie Okonedo seems to be delivering her lines as if she'd rather be doing anything else instead. Both Jing Kusi and Paul Ready are a bit more enjoyable, and I was most disappointed when their limited screentime came to an end. The other cast member worth mentioning is Matthias Schwieghöfer, who proves himself a highlight once again, having won people over with his turn in Army Of The Dead, leading to his lead role in the spin-off, Army Of Thieves. He works well in his role here, despite having to deliver exposition while portraying "intel guy monitoring and moving around computer data depicted as an augmented reality display surrounding him".

There was one action set-piece I quite enjoyed here, a chase involving cars, bikes, and a chunky van, but I even watched that while wondering whether or not I preferred a similar sequence in the recent action comedy Murder Mystery 2. As for the rest of the film, it moves from one bit of over-edited greenscreen nonsense to the next, keeping you stuck alongside a lead character you don't care about as things wind towards a tiresome conclusion that lets the film end EXACTLY how you think it is going to end. This is the kind of hollow and artless work that ends up on Netflix because it isn't good enough to end up anywhere else. It certainly isn't good enough to end up on your viewing schedule. Treat yourself to something better. It won't be hard.

And, yes, I know many will still think my final rating here is too kind.

3/10

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Prime Time: Catherine Called Birdy (2022)

England in medieval times. It isn’t great fun. Especially if you’re a 14-year-old girl being prepped for marriage. Catherine aka Birdy (Bella Ramsey) is in that exact position. She doesn’t want to get married, especially to the kind of people who come courting, but her parents (particularly her father, played by Andrew Scott) need her to marry someone who will add a substantial amount to the family coffers.

Directed by Lena Dunham, who also adapted the source material, by Karen Cushman, into screenplay form, Catherine Called Birdy is a superb, pointed, comedy that uses the time period and attitudes to make a number of pertinent points alongside many moments that should give most viewers a hearty laugh. It’s a film about the ripples of change that can come from one person holding tight to their feminist ideals, but it is also about bonds of friendship, the good and bad aspects of being part of a family unit, and trying to come up with the most enjoyably florid insults.

If you don’t want to see a period film full of anachronisms (in terms of the film technique, sensibilities and self-awareness, and reappropriated modern music) then you should avoid this altogether, but I would recommend it to everyone else. It has enough of a proper narrative to join together every enjoyable “episode”, it manages to sneak some real drama alongside all of the humour, and the cast is chock full of great people doing great work.

Ramsey is perfect in the lead role, continuing to capitalise on her youthful appearance to convincingly play child characters with adult strength and/or smarts. Scott is also very good, a dad who can make lame jokes one minute and angrily lay down the rules that need to be obeyed in the next, and his scenes with Billie Piper (also excellent, playing the role of Catherine’s mother) show a warmth and love that many people would like to aim for. Paul Kaye is an unpleasant, but very rich, suitor, and is lots of fun, and there are great moments for Lesley Sharp (nanny), Ralph Ineson (a helpful peasant), Sophie Okonedo (a rich woman who marries Catherine’s Uncle George, played by Joe Alwyn), and Isis Hainsworth (Catherine’s BFF).

I haven’t seen a lot of Dunham’s work (and being unimpressed by Tiny Furniture meant that I wouldn’t rush out to check the rest of her C.V.), but this film is good enough to make me much more willing to check out other projects she decides to helm. I might even belatedly watch “Girls” one day, over a decade after everyone else was won over by it.

8/10

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Æon Flux (2005)

There's a small part of me that is glad that Æon Flux isn't all that good, because otherwise I would have to spend a lot more time on the internet shouting (metaphorically) at people who have yet to recognise the greatness of Karyn Kusama. She's the director here, and this is the only movie I have seen from her that I haven't liked. And even with it being such a messy failure, I cannot bring myself to truly hate it.

Charlize Theron is the lead, playing the titular character. It's the future. People tend to generally be happy. But there's something amiss, which is why a group of rebels are trying to overthrow the government. Flux is an assassin in that group of rebels, and she may be the one person with the key to unlock everything. Obviously.

Only the second feature film from Kusama, working with writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (who would both do much better work collaborating on her later movies), Æon Flux feels very much like what it is, a strange vision from a talented artist who then had that vision meddled with by people who had no idea what to really do with it. The main plot is simple enough to allow Kusama to take pleasure in the small details of the world depicted onscreen, but all of that potential pleasure is ruined by the absolute mess elsewhere. It's hard to care about any of the main characters, most of the action scenes are edited clumsily, at best, and none of the quirky humour can land while viewers are distracted by, well, everything else.

Theron is as good here, overall, as she usually is. I mean she's definitely a movie star, and this is a star vehicle, but it's hard to judge her performance while also considering what she's given to work with, and how everything was then edited. Marton Csokas and Jonny Lee Miller are key figures in the government, and Miller at least gets to have some more fun than the majority of the cast. Sophie Okonedo has to stay pretty straight-faced while portraying another rebel who has had hands grafted on to where her feet used to be, and both Frances McDormand and Pete Postlethwaite are given roles that very much waste their talents. Nobody else is worth mentioning, apart from Paterson Joseph, but that's only because I like Paterson Joseph so much.

Having not seen any of the original animated series that first introduced viewers to this character, I cannot say how this compares to that (although I am going to assume that it wouldn't be a favourable comparison). All I can go on is the final result, what we got on our screens. If it wasn't for Theron, it's hard to see how this would appeal to anyone. Look a bit harder, however, and there are fleeting moments that can help to make this more bearable. And it's definitely a film I would love to see in a director's cut form.
4/10

There's a disc available here.
Americans can buy it here.

Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy is the weakest film yet from director Neil Marshall, who has been away from cinema screens for far too long (his last solo project was Centurion, almost a decade ago). But a weak film from Neil Marshall is still something that I'll happily watch ahead of films from many other directors. Because Marshall has consistently provided me with entertainment, thrills, and some of the best moments in modern genre cinema. So, despite the critical and commercial failure of this movie, I was always going to give him my time.

David Harbour is the actor now taking on the main role, and Ian McShane is his father figure, but this will all feel very familiar to fans of the property. All you need to know is that an evil sorceress, a "blood queen" named Vivienne Nimue (Milla Jovovich) is trying to come back and get her revenge, despite having been dismembered and her body parts placed in different locations, and part of her plan involves Hellboy taking charge of Excalibur and unleashing a kind of hell on Earth. Hellboy is helped in this adventure by a young woman who can communicate with the dead (Alice, played by Sasha Lane) and a skilled soldier type (Ben Daimio, played by Daniel Dae Kim).

I could spend just as much time writing about all of the little mis-steps that stop this from being a great movie, but I am choosing instead to try and heap a little praise upon it. Enough people have told you why you should give it a miss. I am going to try and convince you to give it two hours of your time.

First of all, forget the previous Hellboy movies. They are fantastic, and few people have the same attention to detail when it comes to creating cinematic worlds as Guillermo del Toro. So it's important to remember that as you go into this. It's not a Del Toro film, and it's not trying to be. I think too many people gave this a viewing while still holding on to their love (and well-earned love, at that) for those other movies.

Second, this is a good cast. Harbour does well in the main role, and McShane has become a master of stealing scenes while appearing in smaller roles in recent years. Jovovich has a blast as the big baddie, and is especially fun in the roles that have her still waiting for her body to be fully assembled. It's a shame that Lane and Kim aren't as much fun as they could be, let down by a script that doesn't seem to know what to do with them for large sections of the runtime, but that's compensated for by the performances from Sophie Okonedo, Thomas Haden Church (in a brief cameo), and Stephen Graham, voicing a "henchman" creature named Gruagach.

Although the script by Andrew Cosby may not be as strong or interesting as it could be, everything moves along energetically enough, with some fun set-pieces interspersed throughout that allow Marshall to deliver some blood and guts around people who roll their eyes and swear at the monsters attempting to push them off their mortal coil.

The special effects are varying in quality, the score from Benjamin Wallfisch is foot-stampingly good, and the whole thing is just a flawed bundle of messy fun. Which is sometimes the best kind of fun (hey, get your mind out of the gutter). Give it a watch and you may agree.

6/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.