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Poirot: Death on the Nile (2004)
Looks great but the fire's not there
This adaptation left me completely cold. The production values are marvelous, but the characterization and performance of nearly every single character is off.
Rosalie Otterbourne, for example, daughter of the alcoholic, failing novelist. The book describes a young woman devoted to her mother no matter what, fighting to thwart her mother's drinking while struggling to hide her pain and humiliation at her mother's highly public demise. But this adaptation gives us a daughter who's more annoyed than anything else. We get no sense she loves her mother at all, so we don't sympathize with her plight.
Likewise, Tim Allerton, in the book a charming, overall decent bloke with a terrific mother he both loves and likes. Here he's sleazy, affected and generally weird with a mother who acts more like we'd expect Mrs. Otterbourne to behave. We see no attraction between Rosalie and Tim at all; it's bizarre when she kisses him out of the blue near the end.
Mrs. Van Schuyler isn't snooty enough, Mrs. Otterbourne not nearly boozy enough.
Yet even these problems pale next to Linnet and Jackie. Emily Blunt has given fantastic performances in other projects, but she doesn't capture Linnet's elitism and inborn arrogance, her deep-rooted assumption that she will always, always get what she wants. Nor is she glamorous enough, "big" enough like Lois Chiles in the 1970s version. Her presence is strangely weak, so much so that her murder makes little to no impact on the audience.
And Jackie, well, she's bland too. This character must be like a tightly coiled panther, sleek, intense and fiery. She's far too meh here, too vanilla. You really can't imagine her chasing a former lover and his new wife all over the globe.
Lady for a Day (1933)
Delightful!
The basic premise of this movie is wonderfully ridiculous: A young girl is raised in a Spanish convent, told all her life that her mother is a wealthy New York society matron who sends her letters on stationery from a luxury hotel. The young girl not only believes this, she apparently doesn't question why her supposedly rich mother never brings her home for the holidays, or ever comes to see her in Europe. Or put her in a boarding school closer to home (America's got prestigious ones, too.)
But none of that matters in this charming Cinderella tale. The acting is terrific, especially from May Robson as Apple Annie, the poor apple seller who's managed to keep up this ruse for years and is thrown into a panic when her daughter suddenly announces she's coming to New York with her fiance and soon-to-be father-in-law. Another treat is Ned Sparks as the constantly dour gangster "Happy" McGuire, who helps Annie pretend to be a "Lady for a Day" to ensure that her daughter's marriage isn't called off.
Even at the end (happy, of course), we're left with the question of what Annie will do in the future -- somehow finagle to not see the daughter for another 20-plus years? Stage another big charade when her daughter shows up with a grandkid?
But it doesn't matter, because this charming fairy tale has thoroughly won our hearts. Still a great film, still a great watch almost 90 (!) years later.
Coming 2 America (2021)
Totally lifeless
Full confession: I only watched the first 20 minutes. But when you watch the first 20 minutes of a "comedy" and don't laugh one single time, you know what you need to know.
Seriously. Not one single laugh. This is flat-out awful.
Bridgerton (2020)
Embrace the fantasy and you'll have a grand time
Folks, this is fantasy. Shonda Rhimes and company are presenting an alternative universe version of Britain's Regency period, in which (yay!) hotties of all races gleefully ripped each other's bodices. All the while dressed in absolutely fantastic clothes.
Overall, this is escapist, guilty pleasure fun. Yet the series also finds time for some historical truths amid the fantasy, most of all the way young women were herded ignorant and unsuspecting into marriage back then, given no choices in life except to marry as well as possible and spend their lives as baby machines. Also the way a whiff of scandal, one innocent mistake could destroy an entire family's reputation.
Come on, guys and gals, loosen your corsets and have some fun. Though for heaven's sake, don't watch this with your parents!
The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan (1979)
Fun idea poorly executed
I love a time travel romance, and dearly wish the execution on this one was better. The biggest problem (which this film shares with the original book) is the instantaneous romance. The hero and heroine literally fall in love in two days. I know they're going for "soulmates," but it doesn't convince.
It would have been better to show them meeting over several months or so (perhaps a montage to show the passing of time?), and thereby make the romance more believable.
Some of the actors are also distressingly wooden -- though to be fair, they're trying to sell some excruciating dialogue and situations.
The 19th-century father-in-law fares worst of all; the actor reads all his lines in a dull monotone, and at one point actually cracks a horsewhip at the hero! The elderly actor is so slow wielding the whip, it makes no sense that his much younger son-in-law can't disarm him in about two seconds.
Linda Gray of "Dallas" fame runs a close second in the awful acting department -- she also delivers nearly every single line of dialogue the same way, though her voice is a chirpy sing-song instead of a monotone. But again, she's trying to sell a ridiculous character: a woman who's chasing after her sister's widower when the sister has only been dead for a few months at most!
Lindsay Wagner and Alan Feinstein (as the heroine and her estranged husband) come off best, the latter providing an intriguing time capsule of the cheating husband who doesn't think he did anything that bad. Oh, he pays lip service to "I'm sorry I hurt you, I was wrong, etc." but is clearly frustrated when his wife doesn't respond to his shirtless advances. "Don't do this to me," he complains. To you?!? Oy.
Wagner's character too reflects the time -- nearly every scene in which she justifiably berates her husband ends with her apologizing. Clearly this is a woman under a lot of social pressure to just "get over it."
It's a queer situation when the scenes I like best in a time travel romance -- are the scenes of the hero and her estranged husband fighting over whether her 19th-century love interest is real or not! :-)
Marriage Story (2019)
Be prepared
If you've been through a divorce, as a spouse or a child, be prepared. This movie will get you right in the gut. It will almost certainly dredge up highly painful memories -- I'm a now-grown child of divorce and I've been alternating between sadness and downright rage ever since I watched it. And my parents split 40 years ago. It's so good I almost wish I hadn't watched it.
The film is evenhanded overall, but I agree with those who, if they have to choose a side, go with Adam Driver's Charlie. Scarlett Johanssen's Nicole has felt like second fiddle in her marriage for years and once she moves to LA with their boy, she's clearly relishing being in control of the situation. She's continually deceiving Charlie and springing things on him: from hiring an aggressive divorce lawyer, for example, when they'd agreed not to use lawyers, to barring him from planned family activities with their son.
Nicole herself would probably argue that Charlie insensitively disregarded her wants for years, but that bad behavior would not justify hers. Two wrongs do not make a right, and his behavior was not in the service of separating a parent from their child.
A League of Their Own (1992)
Lori Petty is just too whiny
I love almost everything about this film; the only problem is that the thing I most dislike is a BIG part of the story. Specifically, the Kit character played by Lori Petty. The character spends far too much time whining and complaining about how life constantly does her wrong.
And it's very hard to shake the impression at the end that Geena Davis' character Dottie lets Kit have the win in the "big game." Perhaps that wasn't the film's intention (we do see Dottie telling the pitcher what kind of throws Kit isn't good at hitting), but when Dottie had earlier executed the same kind of play successfully, I just can't believe that she legitimately dropped the ball when Kit rammed into her at home plate.
No, I think Dottie lost the game on purpose, and that's a betrayal of her teammates.
The movie is still well worth watching though, especially for Tom Hanks' delightfully crude manager, Madonna's unrestrained energy (much better than Evita) and the great sight of sisters doin' it for themselves.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Many of the new ideas are good, but film doesn't coalesce as a whole
Many say "those who dislike the film don't say why." Well, briefly:
1) Too much jumping from place to place; we were never allowed to take in a setting, feel the characters *living* in it
2) Over-the-top slapstick humor, especially the "milking" scene on the island
3) Ridiculous idea that young Jedi/Sith need no training, can just become masters in about 10 minutes
4) Enormous amount of time wasted on meaningless casino scene that could have been spent on character growth and interaction (Luke and Chewbacca mourning Han together; giving Phasma *something* to do, etc.)
5) Leia using the Force is one thing; space walking back from death? oh for heaven's sake
6) Making Poe a stupid, sexist jerk when he was such a noble hero in TFA
7) Snoke dying *that* easily
8) Laura Dern's admiral wearing an evening dress? Not to mention telling *no one* of her plan for no good reason.
And so on. I liked some of the film's ideas: Rey not having famous parents, Luke guilt-ridden over his failure with Kylo, but the film didn't come together as a whole. I was never swept away, never felt the old thrill that made me want to seize a lightsaber and join the fight.
Sully (2016)
Should have stuck more to the real story
The crash/rescue scenes were very moving, but the rest of the film wasted too much time on repetitive depictions of Sully's feelings in the aftermath (just one scene would have been enough to tell us that he's uncomfortable with the attention) and the completely made-up witch hunt by the authorities.
There was a lot of actual heroism among the passengers, and it would have been much better to depict that. One young man, for example, went back down the aisle to help the woman with a baby, and he pretty much carried them to the exit when she fainted in his arms.
Plus Laura Linney was utterly wasted as Sully's wife. She's far too good an actress to just perform endless variations of "Oh my darling, you did everything you could."
My Father the Hero (1994)
Some things are always wrong...
and parading around a 14-year-old girl in a thong swimsuit is one of them. To fans of this movie, I'd like to ask: would you allow your daughter to walk around a resort dressed like that? And would your 14-year-old be able to handle the reaction she'd get from men? If yes, I'd like to know why, on both counts. A suit like that is a clear invitation to men; it's hypocritical to suggest that's not.
And on another point, what teenage girl would ever claim her father was her lover, without the excuse of severe mental problems? That's almost as disgusting as the swimsuit.
Simply put, some things are just not funny or appropriate, and they never will be.