Tag Archives: kenneth brnagh

Classic Drama Collection: Emma, The Woman In White, Jane Eyre, The Death of the Heart, The Lady’s Not For Burning

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cover art

I rotate between being a physical media snob and a guy who wants to grab everything, no matter how cheap. There are a number of boutique Blu-ray labels (Criterion, Arrow, etc.) that put out these really nice discs. They restore the audio/video, load them with extras including making-of featurettes, audio commentaries, and more, and put them in attractive-looking boxes and include lovely little booklets to go with them.

They are awesome. They are also expensive. I love them, but I ain’t exactly rich.

Then there are companies who put out lots of cheap sets. They don’t do any type of restoration to the video, they come in cheap plastic, and they include very few extras. Often they’ll bundle multiple movies into a single set.

The snob in me prefers the fancy sets, but my budget often tells me to just buy the cheap stuff. It depends on the day on which part of me I listen to.

Truth be told I don’t care that much about audio/video presentation. I mean there are limits, I don’t like grainy images projected with poor lighting, etc. I want things to look as good as they can, but at the end of the day, I’m not upset if I’m watching something on the lower end of the spectrum instead of ultra-high-quality 4K productions.

I don’t love the way those mult-movie sets look on my shelf, but for the right price, I’ll get down with it.

That’s a long-winded introduction to this set featuring five cinematic adaptations of British literature/drama. It is a nice, if rather bare-boned set. This is actually the kind of thing this sort of set is good for. On their own, I don’t know that I would purchase any of these movies. They are mostly made-for-TV type deals, with not incredible production volumes. But they are still good movies and bundled up like this makes it a good purchase.

Anyway, you can read my review of it here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: A Haunting In Venice (2023)

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a haunting in venice poster

I follow a lot of film critics and culture writers on various social media platforms. Most of them like to periodically complain about the state of the movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has created a seismic change in movies, and more specifically the way movies are shown in theaters. Or rather how many movies are no longer shown in theaters.

The MCU has made billions upon billions of dollars. Their method of interconnecting their films into one giant universe (and making piles of cash in the process) has made every other studio chase those billions. In doing so they are no longer satisfied with smaller movies, where they can only make millions of dollars instead of billions, virtually erasing mid-budget films in the process.

These film critics complain and complain about how adult-oriented dramas, mysteries, and romances simply don’t exist at the movies anymore. They wax nostalgic about times in the past, two or three decades ago, when they could go to the movies and watch something that wasn’t based upon a comic book or a part of a larger franchise.

Yet, when those types of films do get made and do get shown in the theaters, these same critics tend to pan them and encourage others not to go see them.

Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot films are a good example of this. Based upon the novels of Agatha Christie, Branaugh has directed and starred in three films in which he plays the famous Belgian detective. I won’t claim that they are great films by any stretch, but they aren’t big-budget superhero films either. They are well-told mysteries with terrific casts and are made for adults. In a word they are exactly the sort of films that these types of critics complain don’t get made anymore. Yet when the movies come out, those same critics do nothing but grouse about them.

And that’s enough grousing from me. The latest Poirot film is probably the best one. As the title implies there is a supernatural element to it, and while it isn’t a straight horror it certainly contains elements of horror and that means I get to talk about it tonight. It also means that my daughter is having a sleepover and me and the wife had a much-needed date night and this is as close to horror as she’d let me get.

Hercule Poirot has retired into seclusion in Venice, Italy. There has been too much death and misery in his life and he simply cannot stand to tackle another mystery.

When his friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a novelist who writes thinly veiled Poirot mysteries, invites him to a seance he at first declines but her friendship wins him over.

The seance takes place on Halloween night in an old, decaying palazzo. It is being held by Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) who hopes to speak to her daughter who mysteriously killed herself in the palazzo one year prior. Also at the seance are an assortment of interesting people all of whom have a connection to Rowena and her daughter and, it will be found out, had a reason to murder her.

Poirot quickly exposes the psychic (Michelle Yeoh) as a fraud and is ready to leave, but when the psychic is murdered and someone tries to drown him in an apple bobbing bowl, he locks everyone inside the palazzo and finds himself once again back on a case.

This one is based on a much less famous book (Hallowe’en Party) than the other two films (Murder on the Orient Express & Death on the Nile). Apparently, it’s quite loosely based as well, which allows it to surprise you with its story rather than retell one that is quite familiar to casual fans.

The palazzo is reminiscent of all those gothic castles in those old haunted house movies that I love so much. It allows for plenty of creepy, atmospheric shots down long corridors, and shadowy rooms. The film has a lot of fun toying with whether or not the supernatural aspects are real or not, making it great fun to watch.

Kenneth Branagh clearly enjoys himself playing the famous detective and he’s become quite good at it. He’ll never replace David Suchet (who played Poirot in the long-running British television series) but he’s still quite entertaining. I love that he’s able to make these lavish adaptations with large, wonderful, casts. I hope he gets to make a dozen more.