Movie Review Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) 

Directed by Kenneth Branagh 

Written by Michael Green 

Starring Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Josh Gad, Johnny Depp 

Release Date November 10th, 2017 

Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is the most famous detective in the world. It is 1935 and Poirot is leaving Israel, having solved a crime that likely prevented a religious genocide. His work is that important, apparently. Poirot hopes for some rest and relaxation but unfortunately, he’s been called back to London on a matter of grave importance. The fastest way to travel in 1934 is the train known as the Orient Express, a bullet train from Istanbul all the way to Paris.

Misfortune follows the great detective, however, as he meets Mr. Ratchett (Johnny Depp) on the train and quickly deduces his criminality. Ratchett wants to hire Poirot to watch his back on the train ride but Poirot declines as he knows Mr. Ratchett is not who he claims to be. The true identity of Mr. Ratchett becomes the hook on which the rest of the plot of Murder on the Orient Express hangs. A murder occurs the night after Poirot and Ratchett’s tete a tete and Poirot is pressed into action to deduce the killer.

The list of suspects is long but as luck would have it, the train has been felled by an avalanche, leaving Poirot plenty of time for chatty snooping. Among the suspects are Ratchett’s cheating accountant MacQueen (Josh Gad), Ratchett’s servant Masterman (Derek Jacobi), a wealthy Princess (Dame Judi Dench), her maid (Olivia Colman), a German scientist (Willem Dafoe), a doctor (Leslie Odom Jr.), a governess (Daisy Ridley), a missionary (Penelope Cruz), a dancer and his ailing wife, and a husband-seeking missile named Miss Hubbard (Michele Pfeiffer).

Complicating matters further for Detective Poirot is that each and every one of the passengers I just mentioned are lying. Agatha Christie was a master of this sort of plot, navigating it with tantalizing detail. She, some have claimed, perfected the red herring and in Murder on the Orient Express, she brilliantly navigated a full sea of red herring. That director Kenneth Branagh evokes Christie’s legend is the true charm of the new film version of the legendary novel.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Written by Hampton Fancher, Michael Green 

Starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Dave Bautista, Ana De Armas, Mackenzie Davis 

Release Date October 6th, 2017

 “Sometimes, to love someone, you have to be a stranger.”

Out of context, the above line of dialogue from Blade Runner 2049 doesn’t seem so profound. But when it lands in the context of the story being told by director Denis Villeneuve, the line plays as remarkably poignant. I won’t spoil the context in this review. Indeed, I will venture to avoid any spoilers whatsoever. What I can tell you about Blade Runner 2049 is that it has all of the atmosphere of cool that the 1982, Ridley Scott-helmed original had but with even better characters and deeper meanings, and yes, genuinely poignant moments.

K (Ryan Gosling) is a Blade Runner in Los Angeles circa 2049, 30 years after the time of the original movie. K is tracking down a new generation of Replicants and on his latest job, retiring a hulking replicant played by Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista, K stumbles into a long-running conspiracy with implications that could rock the foundations of society as he knows it. The secret involves a body, and you will get no more than that from me.

Blade Runner 2049 is rich with questions that the film takes its time to reveal the answers to—not that director Villeneuve is screwing around and playing keep away with the truth. Rather, the story of Blade Runner 2049 is a classic noir mystery ala the original Blade Runner and that kind of story requires patience. The big difference between the new Blade Runner and the original is that this time the questions are bigger and more destructive when answered. There is a remarkable power in steadily unraveling each layer of Blade Runner 2049 and while some might have a hard time with the film’s leisurely pace, I found it riveting.

The key to Blade Runner 2049 is cinematographer Roger Deakins and the way he and Denis Villeneuve have expanded upon the smoky, grimy, and constantly wet streets of Los Angeles of 2049. Noir is best made in the dark with light dancing in puddles and Blade Runner 2049 evokes the old masters of noir while still allowing the movie to look sleek and modern. The noir comes from the atmosphere, as much as the look and the languid pace of the film is matched by Deakins’ visual style which posits a world encased in fog and doused in implacable rain.

Even a trip to the desert is fraught with smoggy gray that blocks out what should be a bright, unyielding sun. The lighting of the desert is remarkably logical and expands on the original movie’s thoughts on the future of the environment, a bleak, ever-worsening landscape of soot and sogginess. It’s dreary and yet a marvel to look at. The look of Blade Runner 2049 is easily as evocative and eye-catching as the original, a film that was tragically overlooked when it came to awarding the Oscar for Cinematography back in 1982. Here’s hoping the sequel doesn’t get the same mistreatment.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Logan

Logan (2017) 

Directed by James Mangold

Written by Scott Frank, James Mangold, Michael Green 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Hal Holbrook, Stephen Merchant 

Release Date March 3rd, 2017 

When I first saw Logan, the latest spin-off of the X-Men franchise, I was not impressed. There was so much hype, so much discussion about how the R-Rating would finally allow Wolverine to be Wolverine. Then I saw the film and found it to be as conventional as any of the other X-Men movies with a little bit of gore tacked on for fan service. So, what’s changed for me since March of this year? Why was watching Logan at home on a DVD screener from the studio so different from watching the film in theaters earlier this year?

Logan once again stars Hugh Jackman in the role of Logan aka Wolverine. When we see him, he’s sleeping in the back of a fancy stretch limousine and gang members are trying to steal the tires. Logan tries to convince the men to leave peacefully but they prefer to attack him. In defense of his expensive vehicle, and with little care for his own well-being, Logan launches into a grisly battle and leaves several of the thieves’ dead.

From there we travel across the border to Mexico where Logan is hiding the debilitated Professor X (Patrick Stewart). With the help of another mutant named Kaliban (Stephen Merchant), Logan cares for Professor X by doping him up with medication to keep his powers neutralized and to keep him from remembering that he was responsible for killing a lot of people when he suffered a seizure several years ago that led the government to consider his mind a weapon of mass destruction.

The tiny, insular world that Logan has built for himself is upended when he meets Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez). Gabriella wants to hire Logan to drive her and a girl she claims is her daughter, Laura, (Daphne Keen) to North Dakota where a group of fellow mutants is expected to help them cross the border to a place they call Eden. Unfortunately, Gabriella is being hunted by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), the low-life leader of a group called The Reavers. It’s Pierce’s job to eradicate mutants that won’t fight for the evil Transigen corporation.

The plotting of Logan is simple and straight forward and I failed to give the film credit for that simplicity in my original review. Keeping things clear and easy to follow in the complex and desperately crowded super-hero genre is surely something to be praised. Logan has a clear and simple goal, get out of the country alive at all costs and if unable, make sure you die, and take as many Reavers with you as possible. The motivation is clear, and all the action is linked strongly to that motivation.

Find my full length revie in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review A Haunting in Venice

A Haunting in Venice (2023) 

Directed by Kenneth Branagh 

Written by Michael Green 

Starring Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Michelle Yeoh, Jude Hill 

Release Date September 15th, 2023 

Published 

I want to like A Haunting in Venice, but I just can't. I've written and rewritten this review several times, each with a different take on the movie. I tried to find what I liked about the movie and leaned into that for a while. Then I went hard on the movie and tore it up and erased that. I don't know why I am struggling with a movie that is not really so complicated as to require such mental machinations. But here we are with a film critic having seen a movie and still trying to decide if he liked it or not. Do I like A Haunting in Venice? Yes or No?  

A Haunting in Venice returns Kenneth Branagh behind the camera into the role of famed detective Hercule Poirot. In this adventure, Poirot is several years retired from his experience in Death on the Nile. Now living in Venice, Poirot has hired a former police detective, Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio), to keep away those that would draw him back into the detective role he's trying to leave behind. And yet, Vitale makes way for one of Poirot's old friends, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) to get in to see him. Oliver is the author who created the legend of Poirot by basing her bestsellers on his cases. 

Naturally, she has an interest in getting her friend back to solving murders and she's got just the thing for him. On this night, Halloween night in Venice, she's attending a seance. She intrigues Poirot by admitting that though she's a skeptic, she can't seem to figure out how famed psychic Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) does what she does. Oliver wants Poirot to help her debunk Reynolds or confirm that there is something real to her and thus a confirmation of something beyond life. Poirot dismisses her notions of the fantastic and agrees to debunk the psychic. 

Attending the seance alongside Oliver, Poirot, and Poirot's security man, are a rogue's gallery of potential murder suspects, per usual for a Poirot mystery. First, there is the host of the event. a former opera singer and celebrity, Roweena Drake (Kelly Reilly). Roweena set up this event on the notion that Reynolds could contact her late daughter, Alicia, who died under mysterious circumstances a year before. She's invited her family doctor, Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dorner) and he has brought his young son, Leopold (Jude Hill). Already on hand is Roweena's maid and caretaker, Olga (Camille Coltin), and uninvited but arriving regardless is Alicia's former fiancee, Maxime (Kyle Allen). 

Though Leopold is excluded, for obvious reasons, the rest will gather in Alicia's bedroom as Reynolds attempts to contact Alicia. In the process, Poirot will expose Reynolds as a fraud, survive an attempt on his life, and then Reynolds will end up dead. Her death is the true catalyst for the film's central mystery, one that will grow to encompass at least one more body and connect back to Alicia's death, tying everything up in a neat little bow. It's all very clean and efficient and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that except, if you're like me, and you guess the plot at hand early on, the fun drains out of the proceedings quickly. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Clones

The Clones (1973) 

Directed by Lamar Card, Paul Hunt 

Written by Steve Fisher

Starring Michael Greene, Gregory Sierra, Otis Young 

Release Date August 1973 

Published January 9th, 2019

With the new movie Replicas starring Keanu Reeves opening this weekend I thought a themed entry regarding cloning would be a good idea. Replicas is about a man repeatedly attempting to clone his dead family members and it put me in the mind of how movies have dealt with the issue of cloning. It turns out, aside from several classy documentaries on the issue, narrative fiction has mostly steered clear. 

For the most part, cloning has been relegated to the dregs of the sci-fi genre with few serious looks at the issue and plenty of schlocky nonsense. This brought me to the 1973 sci-fi flick The Clones, directed by Lamar Card and Paul Hunt and starring Michael Greene and Gregory Sierra. Why The Clones? Mostly because it was available on Amazon Prime but also because it had a strikingly surreal poster that you can see here, on the film’s IMDB page. 

The Clones stars Michael Greene as scientist Dr Gerard Appleby, Gerry to his friends and colleagues. We meet Gerry as someone is watching him work in his nondescript lab on something vaguely scientific that the film doesn’t bother to describe. Something goes wrong and Gerry is forced to flee for his life. The film is so clumsy about what has taken place that it only occurred to me as I write this that someone intended for Gerry to die in this lab accident. 

When Gerry does escape he sees some leaving in his car. When he makes it to the nearby security office for his lab facility, the guard is surprised to see him… again. According to the security guard, Gerry had just left driving Gerry’s car. When Gerry arrives back at his office on the campus of the Pacific Institute of Technology, his assistant tells him that he’d just been there and that he’d just called campus security before he’d left. She appears convinced that Gerry has sudden onset Alzheimer's. 

Finally, Gerry returns to the home of his girlfriend, Karen (Barbara Bergdorf), and has his most unusual encounter yet. In Karen’s kitchen is Gerry, or at least, a perfect copy of Gerry who has Gerry’s wallet, ID, memories and personality. Our Gerry flees the scene, recovering his car and wallet only to be stopped by police and taken to the campus security office where a pair of FBI agents are waiting to take him into custody for a crime they refuse to reveal. Gerry manages to escape and thus begins one of The Clones’ interminably long chase scenes. 

The Clones packs its 97 minute runtime with a great deal more running, jumping and chasing than anything to do with cloning. If you are thinking that you are going to watch The Clones and find out why the government suddenly wanted Gerry dead and replaced with a clone you can forget it. The filmmakers apparently believe that being as vague as possible is a substitute for drama. Unfortunately, the clumsy scripting makes it appear that they simply never had a clue how this story was to play out. 

Michael Greene isn’t exactly your classically handsome and charismatic leading man. He’s wiry and being forced to run for most of the movie, he looks kind of odd. We never really get a chance to connect with Gerry because the silly plot, rather than being about sci-fi and cloning, is more about action movie chases that are desperately overlong and silly. One has Gerry being chased through a swamp and has him slip his captors by hiding in a tree in plain sight. 

The final chase scene and shootout is set in an amusement park for reasons that only the filmmakers understand. This leads to an amazingly dumb payoff wherein the lead government good, played by future Hill Street Blues supporting cast member, Gregory Sierra, attempts to hunt Gerry down and avoid Gerry at the same time by boarding a rollercoaster. The director then shows us a sign that says ‘No Standing on the Ride’ but fails to pay off the scene with a clever decapitation. 

Then again, everything about The Clones is disappointing so why should that ending be anything other than a disappointment. Am I glad I spent time watching The Clones? Eh, it’s bad but in a somewhat enjoyable fashion. I was certainly laughing at the movie and not with it but I did have kind of a good time. I don’t recommend it but if you are, for some reason, looking for movies about cloning, The Clones is a movie that has clones in it. So there’s that. 

At the very least, The Clones is available at no extra charge to Amazon Prime members.