Murder On The Orient Express

Get Christie Love

Murder On The Orient Express
Malta/USA 2017 Directed by Kenneth Branagh
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

So here we go again with another movie version continuing the exploits of famed crime writer Agatha Christie’s “world’s greatest detective”... no, not Batman... Hercule Poirot. I remember seeing the old Albert Finney version of Murder On The Orient Express back in the mid 1970s (possibly on a re-release) and I kinda half liked it at the time. I remember the solution to the mystery being somewhat unexpected (well, I would only have been 6 or 7 years old, maybe) and it interested me enough that I went on to see the Peter Ustinov Poirot movies at my local cinema when they were released.

Kenneth Branagh is here with this new reboot and, honestly, it’s not a terrible film although it’s not quite as 'refreshed' as I was expecting it to be. There are, however, some brave attempts to liven things up throughout the film. To be honest, one of the reasons I didn’t bother with this one at the cinema last year is because I couldn’t imagine it translating that well for the younger generation of movie goers the film needed to set in its sights to guarantee a bankable interest. Especially since, once you know the final solution to the whodunnit at the heart of the story, you probably don’t need to see another version of it.

Branagh puts himself front and centre here as Christie’s much loved (except by her) character and, when I say ‘front and centre’, I really do mean it. It’s a film which seems to be top loaded with medium/long shots except for quite a number of close ups on the directing/acting force of nature who is top lining the film. To be fair, though, he does have quite entrancing blue eyes and it doesn’t seem too out of place to expect that kind of camera attention given to Poirot.

Like the 1974 version, Murder On The Orient Express boasts a star studded cast with the likes of Johnny Depp as the murder victim (who seems to have fallen out of favour with audiences at the moment, for some reason but allow me to still make that Poirots Of The Caribbean pun), Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Daisy Ridley and Derek Jacobi. However, as I said, a lot of the film is medium and long shots and though a few characters do get to shine for a few minutes at a time, the ensemble of these people sharing screen time is what’s more important here and Branagh doesn’t let himself be intimidated by the number of famous film stars who have climbed aboard for the journey.

There are a few attempts to liven up the story with a sense of dynamism... the opening ‘end of mission’ scene were Poirot’s perfectly placed walking stick ends up to be the undoing of the villain of the hour, the punch up after Poirot has been shot, the chase outside the train in the snow after it has been derailed by an avalanche... but these things don’t really make much difference to the general scheme of things, it has to be said.

What does make a huge difference to the tone and watchability of the film is the beautiful way in which Branagh, with his director’s head on, composes the shots with his cinematographer and there’s some truly stunning stuff here where he uses the 65mm format film to highlight some great designs (which is now making me regret not seeing this one at the cinema). He expertly uses various chunks of different texture such as the walls of a carriage against the glass windows, for instance, to section his actors off and highlight their place in the screen space. Indeed, he quite often replaces the naturally occurring verticals found in a variety of situations with various actors standing in front of them. So, for instance, the two vertical strips separating train carriage windows would have various characters standing or sitting in front of them with their positions on screen allowing the composition to still work without it jarring.

One of my favourite instances of these kinds of set ups in the film is where he has a shot of Branagh aligned against a vertical wall with the landscape to his right but with him firmly positioned in the vertical block. When the camera cuts to a closer shot of him from a different angle, he is still placed within the same vertical block (presumably he’s moved position slightly to accommodate this flow from one shot to the next) and I was impressed by this.

Another thing the director uses is a lot of those kind of Hitchcockian overhead shots where various characters can be seen from above and where you may, or may not, wish that some of the actors had a larger cleavage. Hitchcock used it maybe only once or twice in a film (if that) but Branagh really likes cutting to these kinds of views at various points in the story.

One other thing which was kind of interesting but possibly just a little distracting was the use of different glass planes next to each other to create a deliberately double image of this or that character. He does this fairly regularly (although I think Poirot himself is only seen as a single image) and I suspect it comes at points when the great detective realises that the particular person (or persons) are lying to him (although I’d have to check it again to see if I’m right). Thus, their duplicity is revealed on a less conscious level in the visual design of certain shots.

Not much more to say about this one, I think. A nice score by Branagh's regular collaborator Patrick Doyle in no way goes the same route as the famous Richard Rodney Bennet music for the 1974 version but it’s a nice one full of interesting orchestration and I might give this one a go as a stand alone listen if it’s available as a proper CD (rather than a stupid download).

Sure, there are some errors in the movie like the section of track where the train is derailed by an avalanche not actually having any mountains on it in real life but, on the whole, I quite enjoyed Branagh’s very self aware revitalisation of the character’s exploits. The end of this one kinda half contradicts Poirot’s original reason for being on the train in the first place, as he is met by someone who needs him to look into a murder on the Nile. So, yeah, the next movie along, if they get the green light to make one, will be Death On The Nile, I guess. I would quite like to see that if Branagh is still on board because I think what he’s done here is take a quite old school story and made it, not exactly relevant but certainly something which has a place in the pantheon of modern cinema. So maybe give Murder On The Orient Express a go if you’re not too precious about the way in which Christie’s famous character is handled.

To Rome With Love

Rome, Sweet Rome

To Rome With Love
USA/Italy/Spain 2012
Written & Directed by Woody Allen
Playing at UK cinemas now

Well I’ve been watching this writer/director/performer’s work for most of my life now and I’d have to say that, although I’ve had some bumpy times with a few of his movies over the last couple of decades, this gentleman never fails to make interesting, quirky and quality works of art. Last year’s Midnight In Paris (reviewed here) was an absolutely brilliant film and To Rome With Love is no less an absorbing, and sometimes funny, experience... especially if you’re willing to accept the film on its own terms.

By that I mean it’s Woody being more experimental with his writing again. He’s always had quite strong flashes of surrealism throughout his work, starting with his early stand-up routines and then progressing into plays and films, but lately he seems to be much better about letting these elements of his work, when he chooses to go down this kind of route, creep up more subtly on the viewer and take the audience by stealth. The writing techniques he uses to do this are quite masterful and one wonders why a few more “Hollywood”, or at least “US” directors can’t study this man’s works more and understand how to misdirect the audience with a bit of style... rather than just hit them around the face with a big wet fish of obvious intentions.

I’m trying to write this review fairly spoiler free but there are two kinds of surrealism going on in this movie. One is the quirky dream-like surrealism of films like Play It Again, Sam and Annie Hall, and a similar kind of objective narrative stance from a major character on the actions of the past is visited directly in one of the story threads of To Rome With Love... which are woven in parallel, rather than together, to give the audience a sense of the city (although, I’m not sure a love letter to Rome would be so narrative heavy). The other, more dominant but less easy to detect strand of distinct surrealism is woven into the fabric of the movie itself and is presented in the way the different narrative sections fail to interact with each other.

To explain the first... when Alec Baldwin, who plays a famous architect by the name of John, leaves his friends for the afternoon to explore where he used to live in Rome back in the 80s, he can’t find his old place. But a teenager called Jack, played by Jesse Eisenberg, recognises him as he’s a fan of his work and offers to take him back to his place which is near where the architect used to live. However, as a short period of time passes with these characters and Jack’s girlfriend, it becomes obvious that there’s something else happening here. Because of the way it was written, though, the initial encounter between these two characters, to me at least, was of a completely different nature and it’s set up by the script, beautifully acted of course, to sucker punch you five or ten minutes later.

Other flights of fancy are similar to the Robin Williams character in Deconstructing Harry (a man who suddenly becomes out of focus) and start from similarly absurd premises which are then explored on their own terms. These include Roberto Benigni as an average man who suddenly achieves an instant fame for no apparent reason... and this is obviously a platform to explore both the effects of fame and success on the average man and, also, the effects of the loss of fame in someone’s life. This is, presumably, Woody’s exploration of the real trials of fame which I guess he knows very well, transplanted onto the life of someone who has done nothing to provoke that kind of attention.

Another similarly surreal story thread tells of Woody Allen’s character’s discovery that his daughter’s new fiance’s father has a strong opera voice and Woody’s attempts to market this in the classical music industry. Of course, the ultimate starting point for this thread is that people sound better singing in the shower than they do in real life... however, once Woody’s character realises this, the boundaries of credibility are slowly stretched as we are presented with a full-on solution to this most basic of dilemmas.

As for the second, less noticeable surrealistic device showcased througout the film... Well, for a while there you are expecting all the threads to weave themselves together and culminate in a series of scenes where all the myriad characters connect in some way, but this is not the case. A beautiful lady I was talking to on twitter about the movie the other night (@LauraFigas follow her here) said that the tone of the film seemed uneven to her and there were indeed some instances where my mind was grappling to tie the story strands together in a linear narrative due to expectations of the same. However, I’ve now remembered/realised that the time streams between each of the many intercut stories are inhabiting their own, individual time scales and Allen uses the fact that one story which may be set over a number of hours is being intercut with several stories which transpire over a much greater length of time, to dislocate our engagement with the temporal mechanics of the piece, which in one story inhabits two different points in time simultaneously anyway, and allows the audience to stop trying to decode the stories as one, unifying, single unit... which it certainly isn’t. For me it worked fine and my brain decided to accept that the juxtaposition of certain scenes weren’t making sense, which allowed me to enjoy the absurdity of many of the situations arising in the movie. For the lady I talked to on twitter, this manifested itself in a less satisfying manner but I can see how this movie could maintain a sense of unease within the viewer.

As usual for Mr. Allen’s movies, there’s a strong cast on hand to really make the dialogue and situations sing... including the great modern actress Penelope Cruz (glad her career has survived the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean movie) who has less to do in this movie than she did in, say, Allen’s extraordinary work Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but who certainly has great presence playing a prostitute clothed in red (hey, I’m a red blooded male... so cut me some slack here) and gets some of the best comic lines in the movie.

And also, as you’d expect, the movie is well shot and edited and really rolls along quite quickly, even though this is one of Woody Allen’s longer movies, clocking in at almost 2 hours. The vague experimental nature of the format isn’t something you should let put you off, unless you really are somebody who prefers the closure of several cross-cut stories to be tied up in a neat, little bow. The stories each have their own, individual conclusions and this works for me, at least. My one grumble, if I had to have one, would be that the Penelope Cruz character leaves the story without any warning while all the other characters have their own ending scenes. Then again, her character is the one in the film who has less at stake, so maybe that’s why Allen chose not to leave us with one final scene of her to remember the character by (and at this point I can only hope that Mr. Allen gets hit with some kind of Fellini complex and goes the way of The White Sheik... towards his own Nights Of Cabiria project with Ms. Cruz).

To Rome With Love is another great triumph from everyone’s favourite Brooklyn neurotic... and if you are a fan of this director, you won’t want to miss out on another of his masterworks. Enjoy it for what it is... and on its own terms.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Bough’s N’ Sparrows

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides US 2011

Directed by Rob Marshall

Playing at cinemas now.

Ahoy there me hearties. There be slight spoilers among these waters. Steer clear if ye want to live true...

I’ve had something of a chequered history when it comes to my appreciation of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I’ve never been to Disneyland myself but I had a Donald Duck book which made mention of it and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride when I was a kid... a book which gets handed down through the family when a new toddler is born... this one was written in the 50s I believe. Occasional cultural references plagued me my entire life and then even Jeff Goldblum got in on the act when I went to the cinema to see Jurassic Park... I’d had enough.

By the time the first movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, arrived on our screens... I was far from chomping at the bit to see it. That being said, Johnny Depp was in it and he usually has something special to bring to the acting table so I spliced my mainbrace and got in line to see it and was genuinely and pleasantly surprised at what an entertaining movie this was... and a mainstream movie at that. Didn’t see that one coming.

After seeing a return of many gold pieces at the box office, however, the producers, crew and actors all returned to make the second and third installments in the newly launched “franchise” back-to-back so we could all be entertained some more while throwing our hard earned cash into their corporate coffers with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End... or to put it another way, after I’d gone to see them... the producers, crew and actors all returned to make two movies which were absolutely bloated travesties of all that was good about the first movie and flog the proverbial dead horse into the ground by squeezing out anything that was charming and entertaining about the original work... a work which they’d all helped to create in the first place. Literally, the only thing about the second and third installments (apart from comparable but by no means “as good” musical scores) was the superb acting of Johnny Depp which managed to lift these two carcasses of sequels and elevate them to that sad but common status... “yeah, it was watchable but I wouldn’t want to be forced to look at it again.”

So pardon me if I didn’t get excited at the prospect of another Pirates of the Caribbean movie sailing on course for our shores... especially since said saucy plunder would be “enhanced” (aka have the extra irritation factor) by being in 3-D. However, Johnny Depp is almost always able to carry a movie on his back (the one exception being, in my humble opinion, Secret Window... where he proved that even his fantastic acting skills are not quite able to be a saving grace in a movie quite that bad), the initial teaser trailer (from last year) was quite cute and... well it had one new asset which I always have a weakness for (or should that be two?)... Penelope Cruz was in it and, if the trailers were anything to go by... yeah, she was bringing her cleavage to the party. Arrrr! In 3-D... arrrr harrrrrr arrrrr!

So, for the absolute best reasons for going to see a modern Hollywoodland movie that I could think of, I set sail for my local cinema to take a gander at the latest installment in the franchise, On Stranger Tides, which thankfully had nothing to do with the last two installments... throughout which I was thoroughly confused as to what was going on with the story at any given time and still am to this day.

Well... what can I say about the newest monstrosity in this series? Um... okay... lets have a think. Was it any good? Gut reaction? No, it was mostly pretty awful, although I have to say that it was certainly a lot better than the last two installments... it’s just not an eye-patch on the first movie and that’s really a shame. Disney are really having a hard time trying to get lightning to strike twice in the same spot... at least critical and artistic lightning. The films are pretty much built in box office cash whales so they really aren’t going to be worried that people like myself are finding the sequels less than inspiring. There’s gold in that thar Jack Sparrow and Depp seems to enjoy playing the role so no worries there for securing his services for another couple of movies in the series methinks. It’s a shame though because that first movie they did was really something special.

So what went wrong with this one then... well a bit hard to pin-point really. Just a bit uninspiring and hum drum I think... that’s the worst that could be said about it. Maybe lazy writing “in committee” to make sure all the boxes are ticked on what makes a fun movie? Almost as though it’s been written by a galleon full of piratey script-doctors... although I’m sure that’s not the case.

There are certainly some plus points. Hanz Zimmer’s score made a little better use of the main Jack Sparrow action statement from Klaus Badelt’s score from the first movie... that’d be the one which Badelt seemed to “acquire” from the action sequences in Zimmer’s score for Gladiator (the parts of that Gladiator battle music which weren’t an... um... cough, cough... “homage” to Gustav Holst’s Mars: Bringer of War that is)... and a whole load of Zimmer’s own themes from the initial trilogy have been pitted against each other in a musical stew which isn’t a far cry from the tone of the first three movies.

Then there’s the more than competent Penelope Cruz herself (with piratey bosom in tow), coming off of the starboard bough and initially introduced masquerading as Jack Sparrow himself (gosh... I’m so relieved I got that sentence in there... now my review title pun works!) and delivering a performance that is a pleasure to behold. She could have done with a little more exposure in the movie perhaps (and so could her... oh, alright, I’ll stop it now) but the chemistry with both Depp and Ian McShane was pretty good and having her in it made for some good risqué humour which you wouldn’t expect to find in a Disney movie aimed at a family audience (comments about missionary positions and such like).

And what about Ian McShane in this one, eh? Geoffrey Rush is back as Barbossa but Disney picked the wrong villain to kill off because McShane’s Blackbeard is truly a pleasure to behold. He plays it really well and to the hilt!

But there are some huge minuses on this one. While Johnny Depp's opening stunt scenes are fairly okay... they really are just okay. They are not hilarious or particularly exciting to watch and I was reminded at one point of a similar set-piece in the much maligned and frankly underrated Cutthroat Island, which did it all so much better (although, the greatest pirate film ever is obviously... The Crimson Pirate!) and this film failed to deliver very big on the action sequences and even the less showy scenes of swordplay could not capture the original charm of, say, Jack Sparrow’s initial duel with Will Turner in the first movie. Which is a shame.

And Jack Sparrow himself seems to be a bit of a changed person in this one too, it has to be said. The performance seems to be quite a bit toned down with Depp hardly acting as drunk as the Jack we knew from the first three films (maybe he’s holding back on that stuff so he can re-use it to good effect in his new version of The Thin Man, which I understand he’ll be remaking soon) and, even worse, the witty dialogue seems a bit less sharp and a little forced. Maybe it’s just me but... although his performance was still absolutely excellent... it didn’t really seem to gel for me with the Jack Sparrow of old.

The film has some nice ideas including a romance with a mermaid... one of many vampiric mermaids... but the film is so long and somewhat busy that it really does feel its two and a bit hours in length. They tend to take their toll on the old bones if ye be as old as me shipmates. But I know it wasn’t just me because kids in the audience were starting to get bored too.

And as for stranger tides? Well, believe me... there was nothing nearly as strange in this movie as there were in any of the other three. Think the marketing people got a bit carried away with themselves again on this one. First rule of advertising mates... don’t advertise the qualities of a specific product when it turns out you don’t actually have a product which would live up to your claims. On Stranger Tides my shiny doubloon!

At the end of the day I’d have to turn in my verdict and say that this fourth venture into the world of Jack Sparrow was an okay watch and nothing more. Not completely disappointing but not the film I’d have liked to have seen either. I’d really like them to make another in the hopes that we can get something as good as the original movie again but I think they’re missing a trick or two when it comes to analysing just why that original movie worked. As it is though, this one’s not that great and I doubt I’ll watch it again anytime soon. Which is a pity but that’s the way the grog grumbles!