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Mark Halpern (153 KP) rated Murder on the Orient Express (2017) in Movies
Jan 26, 2018
Exceptional remake
Based on the famous book written by Agatha Christie Novel Murder On The Orient Express. The story of thirteen different strangers and one famous Detective are on one of the most luxurious trains in the eastern hemisphere. One man gets murdered and it is up to famous detective Hercule Poirot to solve the case. The train passengers contain a mixture of classes from a Princess, to countess, a Doctor, a Dancer, The valet, The professor, the gold digger a antiquities dealer and a nurse, a governess, a Count, the Italian fan and the Conductor. They are the suspects in this cold blooded murder. During the murder the an avalanche knocks the train off the tracks and during this is when the body is discovered. It is this stoppage of time that allows our Hero to question the suspects and try to make sense of all the evidence what ever there maybe.
I can't divulge more because there are so many different plot points that it would ruin the chance for you to see the movie and enjoy it.
The Book can never be beat, The first movie was ok but, the remake was fantastic. Stars Melanie Griffith, Judi Dench, William Dafoe, Daisy Ridley, Johnny Deep, Josh Gad, Penople Cruz and Kenneth Branagh. This is an excellent cast for this movie and it is amazing. I do suggest you read the book first but, that is just a suggestion
I can't divulge more because there are so many different plot points that it would ruin the chance for you to see the movie and enjoy it.
The Book can never be beat, The first movie was ok but, the remake was fantastic. Stars Melanie Griffith, Judi Dench, William Dafoe, Daisy Ridley, Johnny Deep, Josh Gad, Penople Cruz and Kenneth Branagh. This is an excellent cast for this movie and it is amazing. I do suggest you read the book first but, that is just a suggestion
Finishing the Hat: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim (volume 1) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes
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The winner of seven Tonys, seven Grammys, an Oscar, and a Pulitzer Prize, Stephen Sondheim has...
Gareth von Kallenbach (971 KP) rated The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) in Movies
Aug 6, 2019
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has a cast including Judi Dench (Evelyn), Maggie Smith (Muriel), Bill Nighy (Douglas), Dev Patel (Sonny), and Richard Gere (Guy Chambers).
It is a sequel to the 2011 film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, which I never saw, nor even knew existed.
The idea is that a hotel in India becomes a permanent residence for elderly retirees at their last stopping point before their journey to ‘the great beyond’.
We follow their relationships and interactions, all wrapped up in the hotel proprietors (Sonny) desire to expand his hotel into another additional location, and his pitch to the (supposedly) undercover Hotel evaluator (Guy Chambers).
Sonny is willing to go to almost any length, up to and including sending his mother as an ‘offering’ to Chambers, in an attempt to secure the financing for the expansion.
In the meantime Sonny sacrifices a bit of his relationship with his fiancé,
Sunaina (played by Tena Desae), because she is wanting him to focus more on their upcoming wedding, than his business plans.
I thought the movie was ok, it had some funny parts. My husband almost fell asleep twice during it because it moved along pretty slowly.
It wouldn’t have been my pick to see ‘on the big screen’, to me, it just doesn’t need a movie screen to tell its story.
My guess is folks in the older generation will appreciate it and enjoy it much more than we did.
It certainly wasn’t ‘horrible’, it was just slow and rambling, without enough funny parts to hold our interest.
It is a sequel to the 2011 film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, which I never saw, nor even knew existed.
The idea is that a hotel in India becomes a permanent residence for elderly retirees at their last stopping point before their journey to ‘the great beyond’.
We follow their relationships and interactions, all wrapped up in the hotel proprietors (Sonny) desire to expand his hotel into another additional location, and his pitch to the (supposedly) undercover Hotel evaluator (Guy Chambers).
Sonny is willing to go to almost any length, up to and including sending his mother as an ‘offering’ to Chambers, in an attempt to secure the financing for the expansion.
In the meantime Sonny sacrifices a bit of his relationship with his fiancé,
Sunaina (played by Tena Desae), because she is wanting him to focus more on their upcoming wedding, than his business plans.
I thought the movie was ok, it had some funny parts. My husband almost fell asleep twice during it because it moved along pretty slowly.
It wouldn’t have been my pick to see ‘on the big screen’, to me, it just doesn’t need a movie screen to tell its story.
My guess is folks in the older generation will appreciate it and enjoy it much more than we did.
It certainly wasn’t ‘horrible’, it was just slow and rambling, without enough funny parts to hold our interest.
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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated Belfast (2021) in Movies
Jan 14, 2022
In short, Belfast is a very human and truly wonderful piece of cinema.
It's visual style is both stunning and simple, and is brimming with plenty of striking imagery.
It's themes are rich. The setting explores the civil unrest between Protestants and Catholics in 1960s Belfast. This turbulent moment in time is a constant presence for sure, but the main bulk of the narrative deals with a working class family who are struggling with debt, and are looking to potentially relocate to England in light of the city wide violence. The very heart of the story though is found in Buddy, the young son of the family who is dealing with growing up and not wanting to leave. Buddy's actor, Jude Hill, is excellent. He embodies innocent childhood and the adventure that comes with it. He's an 11 year old actor, holding his own against screen veterans such as Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench (both fantastic as always).
Other than Buddy, most of the heavy lifting is undertaken by the mother, played by Caitriona Balfe, who really deserves an Academy Nomination for her role here. Jamie Dornan also stars, who proved to be a pleasant surprise for me, only knowing him from the obvious, and is a welcome addition to an all round stellar cast. Throughout this, the narrative touches upon loss and loneliness, and the moments of life that manage to be bittersweet.
Belfast is a sometimes heartwarming, powerful, occasionally funny, and often melancholy tale told with a lot of love and care. Kenneth Branagh has delivered a slice of cinematic gold.
It's visual style is both stunning and simple, and is brimming with plenty of striking imagery.
It's themes are rich. The setting explores the civil unrest between Protestants and Catholics in 1960s Belfast. This turbulent moment in time is a constant presence for sure, but the main bulk of the narrative deals with a working class family who are struggling with debt, and are looking to potentially relocate to England in light of the city wide violence. The very heart of the story though is found in Buddy, the young son of the family who is dealing with growing up and not wanting to leave. Buddy's actor, Jude Hill, is excellent. He embodies innocent childhood and the adventure that comes with it. He's an 11 year old actor, holding his own against screen veterans such as Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench (both fantastic as always).
Other than Buddy, most of the heavy lifting is undertaken by the mother, played by Caitriona Balfe, who really deserves an Academy Nomination for her role here. Jamie Dornan also stars, who proved to be a pleasant surprise for me, only knowing him from the obvious, and is a welcome addition to an all round stellar cast. Throughout this, the narrative touches upon loss and loneliness, and the moments of life that manage to be bittersweet.
Belfast is a sometimes heartwarming, powerful, occasionally funny, and often melancholy tale told with a lot of love and care. Kenneth Branagh has delivered a slice of cinematic gold.
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Six Minutes to Midnight (2021) in Movies
Apr 4, 2021 (Updated Apr 4, 2021)
Historical story (Potential for a great film) (1 more)
Judi Dench
B-grade spy caper antics (1 more)
Some ridiculous plot-points
A "39 Steps-esque" thriller that doesn't match its potential
In "Six Minutes to Midnight", it's the summer of 1939 (so we are in a parallel time-flow here with the events of "The Dig"). A private girl's school - the Augusta Victoria College in Bexhill-on-Sea - is run with loving care by the spinster Miss Rocholl (Judi Dench). But the 'finishing school' is unusual, in that all its teenage students are German. Indeed, they are the offspring of prominent Nazis.
When half-German English teacher Thomas Miller (Eddie Izzard) applies for a suddenly vacant position, he is taken on to share the teaching duties with Rocholl and Ilse (Carla Juri). But in snooping into the activities going on there, he finds mystery and danger.
Positives:
This is a fascinating premise for a movie that will appeal to an older generation, along the lines of "They don't make them like this anymore". It has elements of the 'good guy on the run' that struck parallels with "The 39 Steps" for me.
It's great that the school is all based on historical fact. Miss Rochol did indeed run the school, as a part of a plan to infiltrate British high-society with pro-Nazi sympathies ahead of an invasion. In real-life, one of the pupils was the god-daughter of Heinrich Himmler and one - Bettina von Ribbentrop - was the daughter of the German foreign minister.
After a comic "Family Guy"-style set of production logos to kick off with (for a full one and a half minutes!!), the pre-title sequence is a superb scene-setter. What exactly is going on here? A frantic scrabbling in a bookcase. A pier-end disappearance. The school badge (a genuine reproduction!) with its Union flag and Nazi Swastika insignia. The girls performing a ballet-like ritual on the beach with batons. (This looks to be a cracker, I thought).
Judi Dench. Superb as always.
Chris Seager does the cinematography, and impressively so. Most of Seager's CV has been TV work, so it must be delightful to be given the breadth of a cinema screen to capture landscapes like this.
I like the clever title: "Six Minutes to Midnight". I assumed it was intended solely to reflect the imminence of war. But it actually has another meaning entirely.
Negatives:
For me, was a highly frustrating film. All of the great credibility and atmosphere it builds up in the first 30 minutes, it then squanders by diving off into sub-Hitchcock spy capers.
Izzard becomes a 'man on the run', and doesn't seem credible at that. (I appreciate the irony of this statement given that this is the man who ran 32 marathons in 31 days for charity!) But Izzard is built for distance and not for speed, and some of the police chase scenes in the movie strain credibility to breaking point. Another actor might have been able to pull this off better.
There's a lack of continuity in the film: was it perhaps cut down from a much longer running time? At one point, Miller is a wanted murderer with his face plastered on the front pages. The next, kindly bus driver Charlie (Jim Broadbent) is unaccountably aiding him and Rochol seems to have assumed his innocence in later scenes.
Various spy caper clichés are mined to extreme - including those old classics 'swerve to avoid bullets'; 'gun shot but different gun'; and 'shot guy seems to live forever'. And there are double-agent 'twists' occurring that are utterly predictable.
A very specific continuity irritation for me was in an 'aircraft landing' scene. Markers are separated by nine paces (I went back and counted them!) yet a view from a plane shows them a 'runway-width' apart. This might have escaped scrutiny were it shown just once. But no... we have ground shot; air shot; ground shot; air shot..... repeatedly!
Summary thoughts: This was one of the cinema trailers that most appealed to me over a year ago, in those heady days in the sunlit-uplands of life before Covid-19. It's a movie that showed a great deal of promise, since the history is fascinating. And there is probably a really great TV serial in here: showing the 'alternate history' consequences of these high-society German girls penetrating British society and steering the war in a different direction (screenplay idea (C) RJ Mann!) But the potential is squandered with a non-credible spy caper bolted onto the side.
So with "Six Minutes to Midnight", Downton-director Andy Goddard has made a perfectly watchable 'rainy Sunday afternoon' film, that I enjoyed in part for its 'old-school' quirkiness. But it's frustrating that all the promise couldn't be transitioned into a more satisfying movie.
(For the full graphical review, please check out the One Mann's Movies review here https://bob-the-movie-man.com/2021/04/04/six-minutes-to-midnight-a-39-steps-esque-thriller-but-not-quite-pulling-it-off/. Thanks).
When half-German English teacher Thomas Miller (Eddie Izzard) applies for a suddenly vacant position, he is taken on to share the teaching duties with Rocholl and Ilse (Carla Juri). But in snooping into the activities going on there, he finds mystery and danger.
Positives:
This is a fascinating premise for a movie that will appeal to an older generation, along the lines of "They don't make them like this anymore". It has elements of the 'good guy on the run' that struck parallels with "The 39 Steps" for me.
It's great that the school is all based on historical fact. Miss Rochol did indeed run the school, as a part of a plan to infiltrate British high-society with pro-Nazi sympathies ahead of an invasion. In real-life, one of the pupils was the god-daughter of Heinrich Himmler and one - Bettina von Ribbentrop - was the daughter of the German foreign minister.
After a comic "Family Guy"-style set of production logos to kick off with (for a full one and a half minutes!!), the pre-title sequence is a superb scene-setter. What exactly is going on here? A frantic scrabbling in a bookcase. A pier-end disappearance. The school badge (a genuine reproduction!) with its Union flag and Nazi Swastika insignia. The girls performing a ballet-like ritual on the beach with batons. (This looks to be a cracker, I thought).
Judi Dench. Superb as always.
Chris Seager does the cinematography, and impressively so. Most of Seager's CV has been TV work, so it must be delightful to be given the breadth of a cinema screen to capture landscapes like this.
I like the clever title: "Six Minutes to Midnight". I assumed it was intended solely to reflect the imminence of war. But it actually has another meaning entirely.
Negatives:
For me, was a highly frustrating film. All of the great credibility and atmosphere it builds up in the first 30 minutes, it then squanders by diving off into sub-Hitchcock spy capers.
Izzard becomes a 'man on the run', and doesn't seem credible at that. (I appreciate the irony of this statement given that this is the man who ran 32 marathons in 31 days for charity!) But Izzard is built for distance and not for speed, and some of the police chase scenes in the movie strain credibility to breaking point. Another actor might have been able to pull this off better.
There's a lack of continuity in the film: was it perhaps cut down from a much longer running time? At one point, Miller is a wanted murderer with his face plastered on the front pages. The next, kindly bus driver Charlie (Jim Broadbent) is unaccountably aiding him and Rochol seems to have assumed his innocence in later scenes.
Various spy caper clichés are mined to extreme - including those old classics 'swerve to avoid bullets'; 'gun shot but different gun'; and 'shot guy seems to live forever'. And there are double-agent 'twists' occurring that are utterly predictable.
A very specific continuity irritation for me was in an 'aircraft landing' scene. Markers are separated by nine paces (I went back and counted them!) yet a view from a plane shows them a 'runway-width' apart. This might have escaped scrutiny were it shown just once. But no... we have ground shot; air shot; ground shot; air shot..... repeatedly!
Summary thoughts: This was one of the cinema trailers that most appealed to me over a year ago, in those heady days in the sunlit-uplands of life before Covid-19. It's a movie that showed a great deal of promise, since the history is fascinating. And there is probably a really great TV serial in here: showing the 'alternate history' consequences of these high-society German girls penetrating British society and steering the war in a different direction (screenplay idea (C) RJ Mann!) But the potential is squandered with a non-credible spy caper bolted onto the side.
So with "Six Minutes to Midnight", Downton-director Andy Goddard has made a perfectly watchable 'rainy Sunday afternoon' film, that I enjoyed in part for its 'old-school' quirkiness. But it's frustrating that all the promise couldn't be transitioned into a more satisfying movie.
(For the full graphical review, please check out the One Mann's Movies review here https://bob-the-movie-man.com/2021/04/04/six-minutes-to-midnight-a-39-steps-esque-thriller-but-not-quite-pulling-it-off/. Thanks).
Is There Life Outside the Box: An Actor Despairs
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Despite displaying unspectacular scientific aptitude at school - he even managed to fail CSE...