A very good story,including in a quite faithful way,some of the Labours Of Hercules,in a claustrophobic mix,full of anguish,sadness and thrills.THe prologue is quite Scream-like without the gore.The death of Lucinda is perhaps the most thrilling in the entire series,a good set-up for a slasher without the on-screen slashing.THe hotel in Switzerland, with cable-car annexed,is wonderfully rendered...in England,and it gives a sense of Mousetrap and Orient express combined.THe stories quite faithfully developed are Birds,Cerberus ,Deer and ,of course,Boar,the principal source of this story who can be considered half a pastiche of Christie and half a faithful adaptation of some of her tales.Very curiously,it's more faithful than Appointment ,and the solution is basically the same of the tales with no change of culprits,but instead a blending of different culprits from different tales.The love story of the chauffeur is beautifully rendered,and the final solution is pleasant,not so chaotic,and it can give to us a glimpse of what it could have been Bertram (hidden paintings included) if it could have been made well.Among the best actors,apart from colossal,herculean Hercule,an excellent Eleanor Tomlinson,MCDade and Christie as two well understated Stymphalean Birds and Rupert Evans as a dashing hero. It's a pity that many of the other Labours and Lemesurier inheritance were not been adapted as promised,and I will wait forever for a new series with Suchet even if it's hopeless.But as an ending of a monumental series,season 13 has been really a masterpiece ,one of the best of the whole series!!!!
Reviews
24 Reviews
Elephants will Remember it!With some spoilers ,I'm afraid
20 June 2013
Warning: Spoilers
A good start for the ,alas,final Poirot's outings.An atmospheric tragedy with a very creepy lunatic asylum,a beautifully shot Gothic mansion over a cliff with anxious Vanessa Kirby as a modern Gothic heroine searching for her own past,a double suicide ,a tormented shrink wonderfully played by Glen,a mysterious,malicious secretary played with a mischievous,treacherous smile by promising Alexandra Dowling ,the powerfully domineering Wanamaker as an overwhelming,unstoppable Ariadne Oliver and a big bunch of elephants played by a delicious helping of old actresses like Hazel Douglas and the formidable Caroline Blakiston. My only reservation is for Kingsley,too bland and solid for playing the tormented artist,Tom Riley would have been perfect for the part.But above all,wonderful Elsa Mollien as a dark,secretive Au Pair,matching in acting skills even the colossal Poirot played by Suchet.If you want hope against hope itself that Curtain will be shelved for two or three years giving space to another couple of seasons of Poirot,please,watch the confrontation among Mollien and Suchet in Paris.This is Poirot with all its beauty,its grace, its drama played with effortless,elegant understatement .Time Out can close like News of the World.How they can't understand that this and not Boring Broadchurch is British (and,I'm afraid,Universal) TV at its own possible best? I have of course my objections,but they are not so important:personally I would have given more space to the flashback story,having very interesting dramatic possibilities,cleverly hinted but not entirely developed.The murder in the present is not seamlessly patched with the older story(the presence of the young girl at Overcliffe in the tragic momentum of the crisis is sheer lunacy ,a singular blunder in a wonderful construction).But writing ,directing,acting,everything is so splendid that nothing can destroy its magic,its enchantment,its tragedy.Good work,Poirot.You rendered to us a sterling service,as general Ravenscroft would say.Elephants will remember forever wistfully this wonderful British series.
A good Marple with zombies!
20 June 2013
Warning: Spoilers
A really excellent episode opens this new Mackenzie season! The tropical atmosphere ,with hurricanes,voodoo and a very stuffy jungle is used perfectly for the creation of a compelling story,very faithful and with some clever new tricks added to the original. I liked particularly the accident about the murdered maid and her own zombie,used by Higson in a very clever way for giving an alibi to the murderer. I think it's the first time that zombies are used in a whodunit as a part of the murdering plot,and they have done it in a very subtle way,simple and particular in its own way. The directing is wonderful,the research of the murdered maid,the death of poor major Palgrave,the final discovery of the guilty party are particularly effective,as Bethany Cox has pointed out. Personally,I liked very much Webb as a caring husband,overwhelmed by his wife's madness. Charles Mesure was an excellent Dyson(I would have preferred it to Barnes-Worrell for Etienne De Sousa ,in Dead Man's Folly),and I liked too the smitten canon played by Rigby with a surprising romantic part at the very happy end. Of course Sher is the best of the lot, gruff,amusing and endearing,and he has a wonderful chemistry with Great Julia (the only reproach I could made to the Hickson version was the absolute lack of chemistry among Great Joan and Great Pleasence,two wonderful actors but in some way having in the movie no mutual empathy at all,I don't know why!) .Ford Davies is a sympathetic major and Norris a wife so strong,determined and highly dramatic that in some way wipes away completely her husband,poor Alastair Mackenzie,a good actor but in this case singularly bland and opaque. Higson is really a good new entry for the series. I hope he will pens other scripts with the same cleverness. Marple must not let us orphans too after Poirot's untimely death. We can't lose them both,someone must remain alive for carrying the holy torch of Agatha on ITV channel! New Marple seasons,please,it's mandatory! We want to see Julia in the Idol House of Astarte and in the Crooked House,under the Postern of Fate ,chasing N or M in a flashback prequel and tasting a swig of Sparkling Cyanide!
Not vintage wine,indeed!
21 May 2012
Warning: Spoilers
One of the worst short episodes of a great and excellent series:the plot is awfully changed,transforming a classic whodunit with a good surprise ending in a half-baked espionage story with a randomly chosen culprit (the least interesting and developed character,by the way):the Lemon-as-an hypnotist gag is childish and frankly quite embarrassing and even great character actor Denis Lill as a tyrannical tycoon is badly used,being his part absolutely one-dimensional and stereotypical.The result is a mix among an old Mister Moto flick and a new Perry Mason TV movie:substitute the Astoprene rubber with a new cosmetic face-cream,Bill Wallis with David Warner and Denis Lill with....Morgan Fairchild,and,changing the ingredients,the resulting formula will be the same!!!!For Poirot completists only ; if you search the best try instead with COOK or THEFT or BOND or DAVENHEIM or MANOR,not with this undistinguished entry of an usually reliable and highly interesting series(well,MISSING WILL is even worse,alas!!!)
A solid and faithful episode
30 January 2011
A very faithful adaptation of the Clocks,with brilliant interpretations by Anna Massey as a very menacing,if sweet blind woman,Phil Daniels as a cockney cop in the Philip Jackson mold and Lesley Sharp as a snobbish and haughty secretary,is as usual wonderfully directed and written.The story is rich of hilarious characters(the Cat lady,the middle-aged couple à la George & Mildred) ,and it adds to the novel a spy subplot not too surprising and perhaps a bit old-fashioned,as if a spy melodrama from the 40s (say,The Spy in Black) would have been sewed together with a very modern and highly original whodunit.But the prologue in the Dover Castle underground HQ is so beautifully shot that it saves the too predictable solution of this minor part of the mystery (the mole discovered in the second half of the movie is so suspicious and conspicuous that even Hastings would have guessed the truth on first glance !).Nothing to complain instead with the major mystery,adapted and explained with a deft touch.(The clocks scene with the discovery of the murdered man is a joy in itself,a real masterpiece).Not the best outing of the season(the laurels go to the marvelous Tragedy) and not diabolically clever as the Mark Gatiss adaptations,but a sound,highly amusing adaptation of one of Dame Agatha's minor works
A flat and uninspired version
30 January 2011
Reviewing after many years the movie,it's quite easy to understand why the last episodes of the older Suchets drove to a complete makeover of the series:the direction is flat and uninspired,sometimes over theatrical and exceedingly slow,the butler's escape-cum-death quite goofy,and the actors'choice quite absurd.Dominic guard as a very bland leading actor (his part would have requested someone more flamboyant like late Nicholas Clay), Tom Beard as an exceedingly jolly and gullible Merton(in the book he was a sort of religious fanatic or zealot),Fiona Allen as the worst impressionist I have ever seen:her impersonations are so bad that they are quite embarrassing and it's impossible to understand why a murderer could have decided to risk his neck on her so-called acting skills.And Hannah Yelland is exceedingly irate for her role,and Lesley Nightingale is a very absurd Miss Carroll.Only Helen Grace and John Castle (apart for the always endearing fixed team of partners in crime) save the day,but very curiously the very maligned Ustinov version is far better acted and directed ,and its pace is far swifter,even if it was shot fifteen years before.No,it's not the worst Poirot (Will or Ackroyd are certainly worst)but it lacks the luster of older episodes like Christmas or Links or Shoe and it seems quite tired,a dinosaur on the edge of extinction: you have the feeling in some way that the joyful but draconian changes of the new part of the series are slowly but inescapably coming.
Harcourt is the best!!!!
12 July 2010
A frightfully good adaptation of a Marple short story,uncannily creepy and faithful to the source,despite the very huge padding.Harcourt is becoming the better writer of the series,and his match of wits with Kevin Elyot is more interesting than a football cup. Personally,I consider this Geranium and A Murder is Announced the two better episodes of the whole series,but Geranium is a more successful task,and a more difficult one,because it was based on a very short tale,a very surprising and pleasant one,but with a very stark material for a quite longish TV movie.It's the first time that the padding of a short story has not destroyed completely the original tale:even TR Bowen failed with the absolutely abominable Bachelor in the Jeremy Brett series.Certainly ITV is winning the best laurels with creeper,darker and psychological stories.They simply don't have the lighter,funnier string.But when they are dark and grim and spooky they are really great (and it's very promising for Pale Horse,pity it's not an Harcourt or an Elyot!). The actors were simply perfect. Julia McKenzie is now perfectly confident in Marple's sensible shoes:if they give to her a good script,like this one or Mirror Crack'd or They Do It With Mirrors she's a real stunner.The fault in past episodes was not hers,and we must put the blame absolutely on the unfortunate, unpleasant and unfaithful plots. Sharon Small is pathetic but never ludicrous in her role of a neurotic ,bedridden woman.Toby Stephens is very possibly now the best English leading actor,and he would have been perfect in an Hitchcock movie.Claudie Blakley shines in her role of Phillipa,the overanxious sister of the deceased,Ms.Rushbrook is a very good Christiean nurse ,and she could have been tending Laura Welman in Sad Cypress.Jason Durr is a wondrous loony in the Edgar Lawson's vein.David Calder and Donald Sinden,two old battle-horses are winning their battle for the umpteenth time.And the village,with its eerie Seven Sins fresco is a malignant marvel of murderous merriment.This episode and the two Mirrors are the perfect models for a perfect Marple episode.This is the correct garden path for a long and highly pleasant series.
Julia's Sittaford
9 July 2010
Warning: Spoilers
The Marple series had touched the bottom with Sittaford Mystery, as Suchet had met with Appointment his major disaster,but The Secret Of Chimneys is a good rival for the infamous Worst Christie Award,the Oscar given by outraged viewers to the worst adaptation of our dear Agatha's work.Gosh,what an awful jumble of musical codes,murdered maids and,again,illegitimate children (as I had atrociously suspected, they have again inserted this stilted and very melodramatic cliché another time.I think it's now the mark or the signature of the two beloved TV series,any Poirot or Marple must have now a couple or two of illegitimate children in the final solution,usually absurdly related to other characters but not related at all with the novel they are supposed to adapt.).What a disaster!Edward Fox was a great Caterham,Dillane was a great inspector,the direction was not so bad,with the clever, swift passages from flashback to reality,but the story became swiftly a nightmare of silly tricks and clumsy coincidences,with a solution exceedingly easy to solve from the too crystal-clear prologue,even if it was desperately cloaked after with a very thick fog of convoluted and quite pointless red-herrings.Certainly Chimneys was a very bad choice,it's a light Wodehousian romp,highly amusing in itself and far more adequate to the old LWT.Pat Sandys would have transformed it in a little gem ,but now the Wodehouse touch is apparently disappeared from England ,and the story was instead transformed in an old and musty melodrama with a spread of modern "merriment" that even Conan Doyle would have found quite stale.The fact that part of the solution was based on Christie's Herb of Death (poor little Chimneys had quite nothing to do with this Irish Stew)can't be a liniment to our disappointment.I like very much the Marple series,I have found the McEwan age enchanting and highly poetical.Julia McKenzie had some very good scripts in Mirror and Mirrors,and even Rye was quite adequate,particularly in the second half.The first half of Evans was quite joyful,before an untimely degeneration. I accept Marple in other sleuths' cases,it could be very interesting,as Zero or Ordeal had wisely demonstrated.I can accept changes and some modernization (particularly if they can serve to dig in the inner psychology of some character).But the story must be the same.You can't adapt Oliver Twist telling the escape from Alcatraz of a young Russian spy,ruthlessly shadowed by Detectives Sikes and Fagin of FBI.It would be a Twist that even Oliver would not accept.So,you can't tell us that SPOILER
the Secret of Chimneys is the story of a philandering Austrian count murdered by a cuckolded husband unfortunately married to one of the lusty Marple women (apparently, they were the Hilton sisters of the 20s,always involved in adultery and wild parties.Next time old Jane will confess to having smoked hemp in a Rhodesian rugby stadium with the bishop of Ely,in her very fast youth.) No,if Marple want to keep her passionate followers must restrain herself quite a bit.People thinking that the change of actress could be a change of direction towards a serious and Taliban purism have now understood that the series was instead pushed towards even more substantial and obnoxious changes. Geraldine McEwan was never involved in such a big lot of unfaithful plots.She was very maligned but she had only Sittaford ,when Julia McKenzie has on her conscience Evans,Chimneys and Easy.I strongly advice Chorion to stick to more psychological plots as Caribbean or Sparkling Cyanide or Crooked House instead of dedicate themselves to lighter stories they can't adapt with the adequate fidelity or panache.If you don't like them,please,don't destroy them. Personally,I'm quite afraid to see what they can do with Man in Brown Suit or Seven Dials ,and even with Black Coffee or the Big Four,because, alas ,even Suchet has never been immune to awful changes (the real mistake was Easy,it was a very strong novel with a very sound plot and an highly original solution,why change it so much?)I don't want be too harsh against Paul Rutman, it was not totally his fault,he wrote with Mirrors the better Julia's Marple until now,but perhaps Kevin Elyot and Stewart Harcourt understand better Christie World,and they could be let with the total burden of the series on their skillful shoulders.Mark Gatiss could have made a miracle with Chimneys,it's quite a Lucifer Box plot.Rutman was simply very far from the mark,as Patrick Barlow was not at all at ease with Evans.But please,please,change something but not everything.People would like to can recognize the novel they are watching on the telly,it isn't?
the Secret of Chimneys is the story of a philandering Austrian count murdered by a cuckolded husband unfortunately married to one of the lusty Marple women (apparently, they were the Hilton sisters of the 20s,always involved in adultery and wild parties.Next time old Jane will confess to having smoked hemp in a Rhodesian rugby stadium with the bishop of Ely,in her very fast youth.) No,if Marple want to keep her passionate followers must restrain herself quite a bit.People thinking that the change of actress could be a change of direction towards a serious and Taliban purism have now understood that the series was instead pushed towards even more substantial and obnoxious changes. Geraldine McEwan was never involved in such a big lot of unfaithful plots.She was very maligned but she had only Sittaford ,when Julia McKenzie has on her conscience Evans,Chimneys and Easy.I strongly advice Chorion to stick to more psychological plots as Caribbean or Sparkling Cyanide or Crooked House instead of dedicate themselves to lighter stories they can't adapt with the adequate fidelity or panache.If you don't like them,please,don't destroy them. Personally,I'm quite afraid to see what they can do with Man in Brown Suit or Seven Dials ,and even with Black Coffee or the Big Four,because, alas ,even Suchet has never been immune to awful changes (the real mistake was Easy,it was a very strong novel with a very sound plot and an highly original solution,why change it so much?)I don't want be too harsh against Paul Rutman, it was not totally his fault,he wrote with Mirrors the better Julia's Marple until now,but perhaps Kevin Elyot and Stewart Harcourt understand better Christie World,and they could be let with the total burden of the series on their skillful shoulders.Mark Gatiss could have made a miracle with Chimneys,it's quite a Lucifer Box plot.Rutman was simply very far from the mark,as Patrick Barlow was not at all at ease with Evans.But please,please,change something but not everything.People would like to can recognize the novel they are watching on the telly,it isn't?
The first good McKenzie!
4 July 2010
Ohhhh!At last,Julia has found her way!At last she's Marple,a central character sleuthing in a very creepy thriller as a sharp bloodhound and not a sensible and sensitive schoolmarm overwhelmed by every other character and finding her path to center stage only when she arrives for sheer chance to a very convoluted solution.Here Marple,oyez,oyez,really investigates ,and she not simply hears blandly what other people have to say.Here you can see the light of understanding shining in her eyes when she finds the truth in Gina 's reflection in the mirror.Here you can watch her when she reenact a very astute murder plot before a stunned Alex Jennings. The movie is simply perfect.It's faithful,but it has its own personal way to be it so,as it demonstrates the very thrilling version of Edgar Lawson's attack to Lewis,very different from any other version,but very faithful all the same.Sarah Smart is the better Mildred ever seen ,and simply shines in her role.Emma Malin is a very great and subtly fascinating Gina.Elliot Cowan is a Brilliant Brit Brando .Nigel Terry is a particularly menacing Gulbrandsen.Penelope Wilton wipes away even Simmons and Davis as the Only Carrie Louise,and Brian Cox is a very different Serrocold,but formidable in his own way:Mills was such a gent,Ackland was a benign Titan completely dominating his candid wife.Cox instead is a fumbling, bumbling husband , totally confused by the events and desperately trying to keep himself in stride with his stronger and overwhelming Lady Bountiful.A very good and personal interpretation, very different from the Ackland's domineering Serrocold,but very acceptable all the same. And the music...at last Dominik Scherrer is returned himself.The desire to toning down background music ,answering to misguided requests of some fans,had reduced his scores to miserable shadows of the previous seasons.The music must not be obtrusive,of course,but it was a mixage problem ,a technical glitch not an artistical one.If you tone down too much Music and its importance and you destroy its own personal participation to the scene ,you reduce it only to Muzak,and it lose its own meaning.Here,Scherrer's score is again essential to build up a very creepy atmosphere in the queer and eery old Stonygates,helping the director to create thrills and threats,as in the marvelous beginning or again in the wonderful Dress Rehearsal,the best directed version of the crucial scene of the novel :people complaining against background scores simply don't remember how it was important the very domineering background score in the old Hickson series and how the very bland McKeown's scores reduced the impacts of a few of the last Suchet 's episodes (the new composer has instead found his own way with his many variations on the old Gunning's theme,and Three Act Tragedy shines at last the better score after the Gunning Era). So far,Mirrors is the best McKenzie episode.We can only hope that its model will be followed again by the series,returning it to the glorious, thrilling merriment of McEwan's age.But Crack'd let us to hope that it's really happening again ,and that Great Julia will be remembered ,at last, as a Great Jane!
Half a spoof,half a movie....
4 July 2010
The first outing of McKenzie as Marple was certainly a difficult one.As other fellows reviewers have remarked it,they were so eager to not disappoint purists that poor Julia(an excellent actress indeed) was left with nothing to do except to be a nice and understanding but not so clever schoolmistress,totally lacking the sharp and steely glint in the eyes making Joan and Geraldine two very different but equally redoutables birds of prey.Without a touch of eccentricity,present usually in all the versions of Marple( in Joan Hickson it was her complete lack of pity,as a sort of righteous Madame Defarge ,a real Nemesis with a scourge and a whip in her arthritical hands;in Geraldine McEwan it was her dizzy and batty compassionate understanding of everyone,ruthless or hopeless as they could be)it's quite impossible to understand why a serious copper as Matthew McFadyen was compelled to hear her theories.Luckily ,after a bit of confusion here and in Evans,Great Julia has found her way,partially in Easy and very skillfully in the marvelous Mirrors,and now is at last a Superior Sleuth as Marple must be. Same can be told of this version of Rye.The first half of the movie is actually a version not of the book but of the T R Bowen version of the book.But it's a very telegraphed version ,and so overacted that the result is simply a not so pleasant spoof of the previous movie:gosh,if I want to watch Hickson ,I watch Hickson ,not a second rate version of her movies.The second half,instead,when they had finished everything it was put in the Hickson movie,magically the movie picked its own shape,the characters like creepy Mary Dove ,batty Jennifer and stuffy Percival were better developed and the very good actors had at last something to act(not Lance,Rupert Graves was always good from the beginning ,as the excellent McFadyen).People acting only in the first half of the movie as a particularly pointless Cranham(he was a much better Rex Fortescue when he played George Barton in Sparkling Cyanide) were left with nothing to do.People appearing only in the second half as sinister Prunella Scales and slick and soapy Larkin were luckier and more in the possibility to make a good impression,even if their parts were so short! No, Kevin Elyot is perhaps the better adapter of Christie works.But they must left him to fight for himself,without the obligation to steps in other one's shoes.And in Mirror Crack'd ,he has demonstrated again that he can do something good in itself ,without the silly burden to mimic past versions of the same book.But until now ,They Do It With Mirrors is the only McKenzie movie standing out as a very good ,flawless TV Movie on the same level of the better Hicksons and McEwans.
Not so bad,actually.....
8 June 2010
Warning: Spoilers
The ITV version of Murder is Easy is after all a good addition to the series.The atmosphere of the haunted village is very good,the culprit is very pleasantly creepy,the acting of Pemberton,Haig,Speer,Henderson,Chancellor absolutely stunning.It could be perfect if only changes wouldn't have damaged the final results as it can happen to Poirot and Marple in the last times.The new motive for the murders is unlikely,melodramatic and very good only if found in a Nineteenth century French feuilleton.It seems more De Montepin or Ohnet than Christie.So,I strongly disagree with other reviewers accusing or defending the writer for his use of "modern adult themes".They are not.They are far older than Christie's books,they are so old that Christie wouldn't ever have used them.The great mistake of the last Poirots and Marples SPOILER is their excessive use or misuse of the illegitimate child theme,sometimes with very ludicrous effects (the very awful Appointment With Death) sometimes in a better,dramatic vein(the excellent Nemesis or here,in Easy) but always with an unpleasant sense of ancient melodrama(babes in the river like Moses,phooey!).And the real problem is that the last four or five solutions are always based on the same trick,they have begun with the abominable Missing Will,and, after some years of peace ,they are using it more and more, wasting even the quite good Third Girl.Third Girl, Sittaford,Appointment,Nemesis,Easy,perhaps next Chimneys if my suspicions are correct...no,it's frankly too much.If the culprit would have commit the murders SPOILER
for revenge,trying to destroy a fiancé having jilted her for her madness,as in the novel, the solution would have been newer and perfect,and the actress would have had the acting skill to render it wondrously.Instead,it's only a Seven Stars for me,as the old inn.It's a pity,because, really,it's an enchanting little gem of a movie,with a very unpleasant flaw in its otherwise highly poetical structure.
for revenge,trying to destroy a fiancé having jilted her for her madness,as in the novel, the solution would have been newer and perfect,and the actress would have had the acting skill to render it wondrously.Instead,it's only a Seven Stars for me,as the old inn.It's a pity,because, really,it's an enchanting little gem of a movie,with a very unpleasant flaw in its otherwise highly poetical structure.
Moffett & Biggerstaff earn two stars to a Big Mess
21 May 2010
Warning: Spoilers
A disappointing episode with an excessive amount of change and improbabilities and an outbreak of overacting from many players,from Mayall to Murray to Clarke to Williams,is really saved from the disaster by the generous efforts of Sean Biggerstaff and,above all, of Georgia Moffett,really shining as the two junior detectives,and singularly overwhelming titular sleuth McKenzie,reduced to a simple,if skillful,sparring partner for the two Partners in Crime.Frankie and Bobby,and a good Natalie Dormer as the mysterious Dark Lady of an exceedingly convoluted plot where the awkward additions to the Agatha's adventure really don't add too well,save the TV movie from the catastrophe of Sittaford and of the very awful Appointment in the Marple's sibling series Poirot.In some way,the plot is similar in the basic structure to Agatha's novel,and we are here far from the worst.Evans is not the Abominable Bachelor of late Jeremy Brett,but certainly is not a very pleasant plot.It's a pity,because the first half of the movie was very amusing, and a bit more of fidelity to the source could have driven it easily to the Golden Dozen of the Marple Marvels.
Martin Shaw rules in Theatreland!
16 April 2010
If the direction of this episode is sometimes a bit flat and ( willingly and deliberately,I must say) over-theatrical,the day is saved by the excellent script and by the great acting of Martin Shaw,an endearing,very ironic ham.Suchet is the usual supreme himself,Miss Nixon is a fresh and very promising ingénue and Kate Ashfield is a very intelligent and penetrating Muriel Wills.A very good appetizer for the new season! The story is very faithful to the novel,the final is duly melancholic,the only problem is the exceedingly phoniness of some scenes,certainly due to some budget restrictions,but even more to the decision to give to the movie a sort of theatrical aspect.All considered,if sometimes people seems to walk about among stage props and painted scenery,it could be taken as a signature of the director and not as a real mistake.
haunting,weird,marvelous!!!
29 March 2010
Nemesis is the best movie of this season.A very loose adaptation of the novel,but respecting its basic principles ( the culprit,the motive,the Bonaventure Rock murder,the deceived and angry son,the Rafiel's be-quest for the truth,the final switch of graves....),is directed with great northern style by Winding Refn,giving to the story the weird and haunting flavor of a Karen Blixen's Gothic tale.The script by Churchett is clever,thrilling,highly poetical and subtly menacing.And the acting is really top-notch:Geraldine McEwan shines as a steely and not at all cute Nemesis.If they let her on center stage instead to push her behind the wings ,she's a Great Marple,if a nonconformist one.Amanda Burton is simply perfect.Grant is a wondrous Raymond West,the best incarnation of this character.Dan Stevens is a good improvement on Bruce Payne,in the same role(Payne's beggar sounded quite phony).Cole,Woof and Reid are great.Ruth Wilson is a very promising actress.And Mellor,as a wounded and shell-shocked pilot,is a real discovery.People having disliked this movie are simply showing their prejudice against the series.If you are judging Nemesis as a movie and not as a battle in an unholy crusade against Geraldine and Churchett the Heretics,well, you will watch it with a sort of endless guilty pleasure.This is not Bertram or Sittaford,this is really British TV on its best!
Returning to Bertram's,I have found it very changed......
25 March 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This was my very Marplish commentary,viewing this awful movie after the excellent TOWARDS ZERO.And the changes were no good at all.The very bad directing spoiled the only acceptable idea of the screenwriter,the very good locked room murder.The rest was a very confusing Irish Stew of stolen jewels,stolen paintings,Nazis,polio,mad hatters and twin,driving even Charles Kay and Peter Davison to their worst and embarrassing interpretations after two long and highly distinguished careers.Polly Walker and Emily Beecham were simply non existing:Tom McRae simply forgot to build up their characters,being too interested to invent newfangled and outlandish red herrings.So the story is the more shallow one after the big Sittaford mistake.McCutcheon almost solved the case instead of Marple,a very bad move because she was obnoxiously pesky and know-it-all.Simply she had not the acting skill for playing Supersleuth instead of McEwan.Mangan was better let to his Cappuccino Years.I adore the McEwan series,but I adore it for their better episodes,as Announced or Paddington or Finger and Zero.Sometimes they can be surprisingly faithful and refreshing.But,no,Marple.Not always changes are for good.The unholy coupling of maids and cockney coppers can bear very tainted fruits.So,Kevin Elyot confirmed himself in this season the best writer of the whole series,Geraldine McEwan was swiftly pushed away from the limelights,and the lurking shadow of Julia McKenzie was ominously present behind Bertram's new wings.A pleasant and ,alas, highly advisable return to normality after this turmoil,I must meekly confess......
Witness for the Prosecution
(1982 TV Movie)
The Greatest Trial on Screen
4 October 2009
The better version of Witness For The Prosecution,starring a very remarkable Diana Rigg as a frosty and yet highly intense dark lady,and presenting the most compelling courtroom drama ever seen on the screen,with a duel to death among an ambitious and insinuating prosecutor played with his usual malicious glint by a wonderful Donald Pleasance and a dying and cunning barrister played with vulnerable naughtiness by a titanic Ralph Richardson.The stellar cast is completed by the Gotha of beloved English character actors:Wendy Hiller,Richard Vernon,David Langton,Peter Sallis...even Deborah Kerr in an endearing role of comic relief.A major success,highly deserving a DVD edition,and very curiously far superior to the Billy Wilder version,exceedingly verging on glamor and comedy.
Endless Night
(I) (1972)
the best Christie movie ever made
17 April 2008
.....and the only real "movie" adapted(very faithfully) from Christie,being any other Christie film only a description more or less faithful of her works,but without any attempt of artistic interpretation.Gilliat instead give us a creepy, highly disturbing,a bit surrealistic movie,rich of hidden signals and onirical images,with the most edgy and shocking ending ever seen in Christie World.No Rutherford's antics, no Ustinov's or Laughton's royal buffoonery,this time but Hywel Bennet in a great form as the British answer to Anthony Perkins (and he wins his personal battle with Great Tony at full hands), Hayley Mills as a gracious,lovable Damsel in Distress and Britt Ekland toning down her seductive charm for playing with Teutonic strength and briskness a boring and apparently scheming and manipulating governess.Per Oscarsson is perfect as the genial wizard-architect giving birth to a cursed dream-house.But the real winner is Sidney Gilliat with his intelligent screenplay and his rich,symbolist imagery.It's very rare to watch a movie without to understand where the director is driving us.Gilliat have accomplished this highly difficult miracle.
The Crucifer of Blood
(1991 TV Movie)
sign of four meet Maltese falcon
16 March 2008
Warning: Spoilers
A very enjoyable edition of wondrous Paul Giovanni's play, with a great Charlton Heston(it was one of his great theatrical successes) as an Holmes based more on Frederic Dorr Steele than on Sidney Paget,and very possibly on Gillette's mould.Watson is a great Richard Johnson,very truthful and highly human as an old man hoping for an impossible romance,and Susannah Harker is a very good and alluring damsel-in distress-cum-dark lady à la Maltese Falcon.Simon Callow is perhaps the better Lestrade ever seen,but the real show stealers are Clive Wood as a sinister Jonathan Small,John Castle as an opium addicted " captain Morstan", chanting wide-eyed his loony and highly poetical lines, and great Edward Fox as an highly malignant and evil "major Sholto".The movie is highly theatrical,but ,as other reviewers told,is a precious memento of one of the best stage-play Holmes.And the script by Giovanni is a real gem,arriving directly to us from the great Agra treasure's chest
give me an headache
2 July 2006
Well, the screenplay is faithful, even if it's quite tough and aggressively modern, but the directing is absolutely horrid!The camera floats around and give me seasickness (or ,perhaps,trainsickness) even when the convulse characters are with the feet solidly on the land.Even Suchet is hysterical,and I miss longingly his usual aplomb.The actors have no time to act because the director cuts any dialog after the first two lines.And the Tamplins are more annoying that amusing, as they are intended to be.You end the movie with the impression to having been assaulted by some train thugs, who have stolen to you the pleasure of the deep insight of human psychology very present in the last four episodes.Alas, what a pity!Not a disaster, but not certainly the best Christie TV movie.And someone is criticizing the quiet little Marples....
Murder on the Orient Express
(2001 TV Movie)
wonderful Molina
10 June 2006
OK, it's a TV movie.OK ,they have moved a great story in the modern age without too much money and with some undistinguished TV actors.But Molina is a great, great, great Poirot (and actually now the best living film actor) second only to Suchet...because Suchet can live in Poirot's age! And Natasha Wightman is far better than pale-acting Vanessa Redgrave as the frosty and haughty Mary Hermione Debenham (and Amira Casar give some sense and heart to the Helena'character ;Jacqueline Bisset was only beautiful, but she don't gave any feeling to her part as the only living survivor in a butchered family.Casar was tragic and shattered.Bisset was a model on the catwalk):The screenplay is quite faithful, and not a buffoonery as sometimes it happens with Poirot films (if Ustinov is on the crime scene,alas!)So, not so bad at all...And I love to think Monsieur Poirot in the arms of beautiful Vera De Vasconcelos!!!! They could make a miniseries,I would love to see Molina solve faithfully at last THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD!!!!!!
What a disaster!
10 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
the most catastrophic result in Christie's TV movie story! Dr Sheppard, the world-famous ambiguous narrator of the story, doesn't narrate anything at all, and he do not collaborate in any way with poirot .His role is completely sucked by Inspector japp, and so the highly celebrated Agatha Christie's final twist is deprived of any sense.The tender relationship among Dr Sheppard and his sister,the psychological key of the novel, is substituted by a silly shooting in a chemical factory, as in a Batman film(but of course without special effects) and by the absurd murder of the butler.Certainly the worst screenplay in a series duly highly praised for the excellent Suchet, but not certainly for the uneven quality of the screenwriters,throwing usually in their scripts Labour party marches or speed water records with no sense or relations with the story they must to adapt.
St Mary Mead,at last!
10 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
The ultimate edition of Vicarage, far more faithful to the original than the Hickson version.At last, the relation among Griselda and her clerical husband is dramatically,deeply explored.At last we can see the gossipy friends of Miss Marple in action, in one of the worldwide famous"scandal and tea at the vicarage",lamentably absents from the past version.At last, Lawrence Redding is a dashing, flamboyant,charming artist.At last, Anne Protheroe is really in love with him.At last,Lettice is a spoiled,sexy daughter(oops,stepdaughter,as Anne Protheroe would say),wonderfully played by Christina Cole,defeating Mena Suvari on her own battlefield.At last colonel Protheroe is really a candidly pompous old blimp.Only the maquis intrigue was not necessary to the story, and it was a psychological mistake (Protheroe was not a burglar,only a pompous silly ass).But in complex it's a very charming,highly interesting TV movie
the ultimate Paddington
10 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
After the Rutherford and the Hickson versions, merrily dispatching with large parts of the murder plot (the Hickson version was so different from the novel in the second half of the film that I thought to have mistakenly changed channel on my telly), at last we can see Paddington quite as Agatha wrote it, with all the marvelous complexities of her murder mystery.The murderer is let at last to poison an entire family,Martine Crackenthorpe can graciously appear as the loving mother of James Stoddart-West, and her presence in the story is clearly explained. Amanda Holden is a good rival for Jill Meager in the part of Lucy Eyelesbarrow, and John Hannah plays a mild,nice ,intelligently goofy policeman, pleasantly similar to Jim Hutton in the Ellery Queen old series.And Pam Ferris and Geraldine McEwan are a formidable,impressive,highly sympathetic dynamic duo!
Marvellous Wanamaker,Excellent McEwan
10 February 2006
A splendid edition of Announced, basically faithful in spirit and plot line to the original, and played with uncanny style and skill by Zoe Wanamaker in excellent form.The chemistry among Letiltia Blacklock and her friend Bunny(a great Elaine Page) is perfect,giving a deep insight in their friendship and in their mutually protective relationship,and offering to us a touch of poetry in the dramatic ending, when everything is solved by a formidable Geraldine McEwan .The middle age love story among Cherie Lunghi and Robert Pugh ,even if not present in the novel,is delicate and moving.And Sienna Guillory, with her dark,looming ,menacing presence is the absolute,ultimate Christie dark lady.Excellent,excellent,excellent!
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