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Lenard (726 KP) rated Murder Mystery (2019) in Movies

Jun 18, 2019

Murder Mystery (2019)

2019 | Comedy, Crime, Mystery

7.0

(42 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Who Knew High School Latin Would Come In Handy?

Does anyone remember the movie "Manhattan Murder Mystery," the Woody Allen movie where Woody Allen and Dane Keaton play a older married couple who try to solve the murder of their neighbor in an homage to Rear Window? "Murder Mystery" is a Happy Madison production that pays homage to Agatha Christie and Blake Edwards and several Hitchcock films. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston play Nick and Nora (I mean Audrey) Spitz, a NYPD Sergeant and hairdresser, celebrating 15 years of marriage. In an attempt to save his failing marriage, Nick buys the trip to Europe he promised Audrey at their wedding. On the plane to France, they meet a rich debonair rake Charles Cavendish who invites them to his family yacht. During an elaborate ceremony, the family patriarch is murdered and the sole heir seemingly commits suicide. Nick and Audrey become the prime suspects and as bodies of the other family members start to pile up while being questioned by the couple the list of suspects shrinks.
The movie has some light moments to balance the thrills. But overall for a movie that is fond of pointing out that cliches of the genre are fictitious it contains many of those cliches.

Kudos

Deborah (162 KP) rated Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death in Books

Dec 19, 2018

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death

James Runcie | 2012 | Fiction & Poetry, Religion

6.3

(4 Ratings)

Book Rating

First off, I expected this to be a novel, so when I got about 70 pages in and it seemed to be winding up the mystery, I was a bit confused. It's actually a series of 6 stories which are different mysteries that Cannon Sidney Chambers finds himself getting involved in. Also, except for the division into stories, there are no chapter breaks.

Of the six stories here, I thought that some worked better than others. The first ones were a little more genteel whereas the later ones, particularly perhaps the penultimate story, were a little more dark and disturbing.

I'm too young to remember this period, so I can't comment on how accurate it is, but I didn't feel that I got a really strong sense of the period. The geographical setting is mainly around Cambridge, with several jaunts up to London. Perhaps the author thought this was just the sort of thing to appeal to those readers of Agatha Christie, because the solutions to no less than three of her books are revealed here - good job I'd read them already....

Altogether, there's enough going on to sustain the interest and I see that the author is proposing a total of six volumes, taking us right up to the early 1980s.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Dracula in TV

Jan 4, 2020

Dracula

2020 | Drama, Horror

6.1

(14 Ratings)

TV Show Rating

Somewhat predictably, the Sherlock team's take on Dracula proves to be a studied piece of unfaithfulness - although, given just how well-known and iconic this particular story is, it's hard to see quite what else they could have done. It starts off looking deceptively faithful, turns into a bizarre inversion of an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery, and then really goes for broke with a third-act twist the likes of which have not been seen since AD 1972. Guaranteed to upset purists, but hey - at least they were still allowed to cast a man as Dracula.

Claes Bang is indisputably very good as the Count, mixing cool flippancy with genuine menace. The rest of it is a bit of a curate's egg, with brilliant moments mixed thoroughly with things that don't quite work. If you like Moffat and Gatiss' approach to scripting - sketch show and conjuring performance in equal measures, with big set pieces and reveals taking precedence over logic and cohesion - then you will obviously enjoy this. Otherwise, then the sound of Dracula is not so much the music of the children of the night, as that of the writers winking at the audience non-stop for four and a half hours.