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Death on the Nile (2022)
Oh, okay - Agatha Christie Fanfic
This is a remake of the 1978 film of the same name. That movie was well-done, though critics at the time preferred the prior production of "Murder on the Orient Express" (also recently remade). The prior film had a delicious cast, with Peter Ustinov playing the titular detective, Mia Farrow as the jilted ingenue, Bette Davis as a bitter and covetous old rich lady and Maggie Smith as her long-suffering nurse. One of the actresses even had an eponymous handbag named after her. It had gorgeous visuals and a wonderful and stirring soundtrack, then won an Oscar for the costumes.
The newest version has exquisite cinematography and striking visuals, such as an overhead view of Jacqueline's blood-red dress flowing up stairs as she crashes her ex-fiancé's and former BFF's wedding reception. It's a nice foreshadowing. But while the prior film felt expansive and romantic for a murder mystery, and made you wish to travel back to the time and place, this film feels like an Instagram opportunity on the Nile, and not much beyond that.
It still has an all-star cast, and the casting choices are - interesting. Armie Hammer is simply too hard to watch now. He struggles to find a third dimension to add to the first two, and frankly his presence has a sky-high creep factor. It's just ick. Gal Gadot plays nice with him anyway. The rest of the cast does fairly well, with a special shout-out to Russell Brand playing a solemn and heartbroken doctor. I think everyone did the best they could with the material they were given - and it strays very far from the book and the prior film. Whole characters are missing, several others are invented, and while their names may be the same, their traits and personalities are entirely rewritten. Were the writers under orders to include as much diversity as possible to tick off the all-inclusiveness boxes? Well, there wasn't anyone Latinx, disabled or trans, so they missed a couple.
The anachronisms are painful. This is Egypt just before Europe plunged into another terrible world war, while the film seems fixated on the last war, two decades in the past. And the boat itself has a pre-COVID Royal Caribbean cruise staff in shorts. Wouldn't Egyptians of that period have been the crew instead, and wouldn't they have dressed, you know, more formal and Muslim? There are a number of items that haven't been invented yet along with cultural references to things that don't exist in 1937, and that's jarring. And the backstory veers so far from literature-version Poirot, I kind of think it might be his brother Pierre instead. The backstory is just - say what?
Kind of wish they'd just stuck to the story instead of creating a whole series of plot holes you could drive through. It's pretty to look at, yet none of it is particularly memorable in a good way. For a murder mystery, it comes down to a pile of dead bodies in the freezer with the ham. That's more slasher film than Masterpiece Theatre. Maybe Branagh should try to take an Agatha Christie novel that hasn't been filmed already, and try something original instead?
365 dni (2020)
The film that redeems Pornhub
Apparently Netflix picked the month of June to do their own "Really Unwatchable Film Festival" (see "Last Days of American Crime" for another cringeworthy entry). Or maybe with the current worldwide shutdown of all film and television productions, they're searching for anything, anywhere to post as a new release before resorting to pirating stuff off of YouTube.
This brings us to "365 dni," the film that would premiere on Lifetime Entertainment Service's porn channel if they had a porn channel. It's - oh, boy. I understand it's based on a Polish novelist's work, and there might be more books in the series. This is unfortunate. It's terrible to hope that the production company responsible for this dreck goes bankrupt or that every showrunner involved dies of food poisoning. Many of us are still hoping for this anyway.
There's two pretty hetero people destined to fall in love/boink a lot, the female being Polish ("Laura") and the male being Italian ("Massimo"). They mostly communicate in English, so maybe the producers hoped it would have broad appeal to a U.S./UK/Australian audience, especially the types of watchers who hate reading subtitles. The pretty people have a lot of explicit sex, but while you will see breasts and rear ends, it does not feature anything but implied genitalia. Is that a plus? Does it keep it from crossing a line into being an actual porn? Is anybody else a little worried about what they're not quite seeing? The one redeemable factor in this film is at least the female character doesn't have fake boobs. Oh, and the fact that you'll learn to swear in Polish, always a plus.
You will read plenty of descriptions of this movie being similar to "Fifty Shades of Grey." That's not a compliment, by the way. "Fifty Shades" is a committee-written fanfic retelling of "Twilight" without the vampires and werewolves or any of the redeeming literary value of the original. Uh-huh. And as they say, it goes downhill from there.
There is a kidnapping. There is a cringe-inducing caricature of Italian men, reductively labeling all of them as being Mafia-involved, overbearing, hopelessly romantic, kinda' neanderthal and a bit dumb. If not for the film's positive spin on Stockholm Syndrome, that would be the greatest criticism of this movie. The female character is being given a full year to fall in love with her kidnapper, but gets it done, all the way to being engaged, in around two months. Because that happens. All the time. There's sexual tension, sure, but wait - is she that immune to trauma or do both of these characters have the emotional depth of a potato? And what's with her portrait? He saw her allegedly ONCE, when his dad was killed - no pictures on his phone, no police sketch artist, and no access to her social media. So from memory he has a huge portrait of this woman he's obsessed with hanging in his living room? Um, okaaayyy.
Around the first thirty minutes of this film, I thought it should be retitled "Massimo Gets A Lot of Head." If you're masochistic enough to watch this far, you'll see why. I should also point out that the soundtrack, which is mostly old-school-porn forgettable, features the actor playing Massimo doing a lot of the lyrics and the vocals. Yup. Didn't see that coming, did you? The female character has a supposed heart condition which is referred to several times, then seemingly evaporates. There's a whole "Pretty Woman" montage, played for - laughs? pain? a commentary on conspicuous consumption? Maybe every Lifetime porn film as a rule somehow has to feature such a lavish shopping scene along with required attendance - for no discernible reason - at the compulsory Masked Cinderella Ball. Is this really what hetero women fantasize about? I feel like I'm missing something. Then the character playing Laura, after being sent home by Massimo, somehow decides this is now the right time for her to get the asymmetrical blond bob known as the "Karen." It's topical, but the meme doesn't really work with the theme of the film, or in this story, or even as extremely bad satire. It makes just as much sense as any of the characters suddenly mastering the accordion, or adopting a deaf camel.
At least this movie ends in a good place - the deaths of both a main and supporting character. Of course, given what I know now, that may be too much to hope for. The best that can be said is you'll watch a fairly entertaining film if you fast-forward to all the sex scenes and skip all the other parts, especially the dialogue. You were warned. There's not even a good drinking game in here.
The Last Days of American Crime (2020)
Painfully, Regrettably, Unnecessarily Awful
There's the adage that once you've hit bottom, you should stop digging. This movie hits bottom, and then goes down another few hundred feet, and then sinks lower. Seriously. This one film may hasten the invention of eye bleach. If you've read all the online reviews from every available cinematic media source, you'll find a level of negativity for this film usually reserved for environmental contamination disasters and presidential elections. Don't believe me? Go ahead and check - I'll wait.
This movie is an exercise in brutally-executed tropes, toxic masculinity and audience masochism, with no redeeming quality whatsoever. It manages the impossible, both in leaving gaping plot holes while at the same time being entirely too long. There's no sense of continuity, logic, a cohesive structure, and not a single character is remotely well-developed or explained. But wait - it gets worse.
One caveat: I have an all-consuming thing for Édgar Ramírez, intense enough that if he knew about it, he'd reasonably seek a restraining order. I've tried to watch every film he's been in a couple or, you know, fifty times. I'd watch him sorting his socks. He is a gifted actor whose greatest strength lies in playing people who have actually existed: Bolívar, Carlos the Jackal, Versace At the start of his career, he was sadly typecast as either "Priest" or "Operative With Gun." Trust me, he is a versatile talent - you just can't tell at all from this one movie. You can practically sense Ramírez struggling with this script, trying to channel - something, anything. It's painful to watch. I just want to snatch him out of this film, take him home and give him some soup. Don't worry, I'd gently reassure him, "Wasp Network" comes out soon, and others will be distracted when they see you in "Jungle Cruise," should that ever be released, plus your attorney called about that protective order - would you like some more soup?
He is not alone in his struggle. There is a regrettable love triangle - oh, so regrettable - and it involves Michael Pitt, who is desperately trying to channel someone himself. I'm not sure who, though. Is he Jack Nicholson in "The Shining"? Is he Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas," or maybe Christian Slater in "True Romance"? Is he Mel Gibson at a DUI stop? I'm still not certain - someone please throw in here, I need some references. Is he Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker? Or is he River Phoenix decrying the use of any animal products whatsoever while quietly supporting drug dealers all over L.A.? Throw me a bone - I'm open to any and all suggestions.
The third member of the love triangle is Anna Brewster, in a hybridized role as Manic Pixie Demon Girl, Official Online Hacker Chick, and Probably Mostly Likely Femme Fatale-Ish (Maybe). I get for the sake of the plot line that they had to squish a whole bunch of characters into one role, but that doesn't mean it worked. For someone with this many facets to her personality, she is surprisingly two-dimensional, and is barely holding onto that second dimension with acting this flat. She doesn't really - yeah, her sexy is questionable, her tech genius is implied rather than apparent, and she's most reminiscent of a PMSing Asia Argento crossed with a rabid squirrel. Got to hand it to Ramírez, though - they're both covered in blood and stink, she's puking her guts out, and they still manage to kiss one another deeply before sex. Yuck. Maybe that's cool if you're into that sort of thing.
Rounding out the main cast is Sharlto Copley. I'm still not sure why he's in this, or what his character did to advance the plot. I'm not sure he knows, either. I think there's an unwritten law: When shooting a film featuring an urban dystopia, you have to use South Africa. And if you're filming anything in South Africa, you have to employ Sharlto Copley. Doesn't matter if it's based on an Edith Wharton novel or if it's a corporate training film, if it's anywhere near Jo-Berg, you'll see Copley in it.
Other people have pointed out all the obvious flaws in this film, yet I still think they missed a couple. The bad timing in terms of current events and police brutality is probably the biggest gaffe mentioned - and it's several steps over the line of cringeworthy. Maybe the filmmakers or Netflix should have agreed to bury this for a few more months. There's a death ray being deployed by the U.S. government that is some sort of synaptic blocker to prevent all crime by making it neurologically impossible to do anything "bad," but I guarantee that anything that pervasive would prevent pretty much anything business-related, from insider trading to the next WeWork. The economy as we know it would come crashing down, which is the opposite of the stability the government seeks by eliminating crime. This prospective mind-controlling dystopia makes Gilead look positively bucolic. And messing with brain chemistry like that seems like a lawsuit, between the risk of aneurysm, brain lesions or the rapid onset of disorders like multiple sclerosis or Lewy body dementia. Of course, good luck finding any competent attorney to bring a lawsuit with anyone being unable to think or do anything "bad."
The one theme that still hasn't been explained has been the sibling attachment that seems so prevalent in this movie. Ramírez's character cares deeply about his brother and is devastated by his brother's apparent suicide. Brewster's character betrays both Pitt and Ramírez for her own sister's wellbeing. Yet, there's no similar attachment to parents or children or even longterm romantic partners. That leaves Pitt's character's family as the most vile and dysfunctional of all, since he happily bumps off both his father and his sister, as his sociopathic father offed both Pitt's mother and stepmother (after Pitt had both introduced his dad to Wife No. 2 as well as having slept with her). It's very Oedipal, this whole dynamic, and I'd suggest therapy, though Pitt seems to have a fairly perceptive knowledge of the psychological machinations at play. If he was already in therapy, apparently he wasn't in it long enough. Or it didn't take.
It is thoroughly difficult to adapt novels, graphic novels and comic books to the screen. There's a lot that's lost in the transition, and some adaptations are a lot better than others. This film seems like it wants to be "Sin City," with a heist that's sort of "Ocean's Eleven" (or "Twelve" or "Thirteen") with a little bit of exposition like "Children of Men" - so maybe someone should have watched those films instead of just reading their descriptions on Amazon. This isn't even a fun bad movie, it's just a sad bad movie. The whole progression of the underlying story is pointless, a blind alley ending in a brick wall. The best that can be hoped for with this hot mess is that there won't be a sequel, since two of the main characters are pretty much dead. I think. Given that the writer/director worked on the sequels to other action movies, that's not a for-sure thing - we can only hope and pray.
Echoes in the Darkness (1987)
Not bad for movie-of-the-week
Not familiar with the actual incident this movie is based upon, so cannot comment as to the accuracy of the facts and portrayals presented, but give this movie credit for holding a viewer's attention without being overly sensationalistic. The performances are stellar, and the tone of the movie is realistic and gritty - it feels like Pennsylvania, and it could be the town where you live.
I was delighted by a small inside joke. Gary Cole, who plays an investigator in this movie, is sitting in the courtroom while one of the defendants is being questioned. Reference is being made to the books the defendant owned and used as references, including the book "Fatal Vision," upon which another television movie based on fact was made. The camera swings slyly to Gary Cole, who did, in fact, play the infamous defendant, Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, in the movie "Fatal Vision." Very cute.
This movie was being broadcast on Lifetime, which I normally tune to when I want to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I was drawn in far enough I never took that nap.