Tag: mysteries

New Year, New You: Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948)

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When I was thinking of what theme I should do for January, my wife was the first to come up with the New Year concept. Originally she suggested road trip movies. New Year means trying to make changes in your life, and sometimes that means leaving the place you’ve been stuck in. I liked that idea but wasn’t sure I could do enough road trip movies to make it through the month. 

But I do think you can encompass travel into my larger theme of New Year, New You. Now, we are going to stretch it a little further and suggest any movie where the people are traveling somewhere even if they don’t experience much growth along the way.

I love road trip movies. I love movies set on trains even more. I love train travel in general. I have ridden a lot of trains all over Europe and Asia; it is a wonderful way to travel. As much as I love to drive, it is very nice to ride the rails and not have to worry about anything. Trains are so much more enjoyable than planes. You have more legroom. You can get up and walk about. And the scenery is often much more beautiful. 

There are lots of different types of movies set on and around trains. I love a good mystery or thriller set aboard a train.  Trains are enclosed spaces, so the killer (or thief, or whatever) only has so many places to hide. But there are usually many cars so that you aren’t just stuck in one room. And the train is traveling, which allows for different scenery and different passengers to come and go, and the ever present possibility that someone could jump.

An important diary is stolen from the Paris Embassy by Zurta (Albert Lieven) and Valya (Jean Kent). They hand it to a man called Poole (Alan Wheatley) who is supposed to usher it to a designated rendezvous point. Instead, he runs to the Orient Express with intentions to sell it to the highest bidder. The diary is said to contain information that in the wrong hands would lead to yet another world war.

Zurta and Valya learn of Poole’s deception and board the train. It departs for Trieste. To complicate matters, Zurta is wanted by the authorities in Trieste and must depart before they arrive there.

They don’t exactly know where Poole is on the train; he’s doing a good job of staying low, and they can’t make a show of looking for him because they had every intention of using the diary themselves. 

Mixed in with all of this espionage is a big bag of characters having their own side stories. Usually this kind of film has lots of these types of characters, but their screen time is minimized. They exist to give the film color, to give the setting some realism. But here they are given ample opportunity to be on screen. Numerous, what would normally be side characters, are given time to have fully drawn stories. Our leads often feel like supporting parts. 

There is a young GI looking for some birds to chat up and winds up in a car with a British ornithologist. A boorish Brit spends all his time with the train’s renowned chef trying to teach him how to cook dull dishes. A businessman takes a woman with him who is decidedly not his wife in hopes of an affair, but fate keeps intervening and keeping them apart. Etc. and so forth. 

Poole bribes a porter to get a private room where he hides the diary. But then he’s kicked out because that room was reserved by a very prominent and rich writer. He’s then sat with a French detective, Inspector Jolif (Paul Dupuis). Eventually, the diary will be found, and someone (or someones) will find themselves dead. It is Inspector Jolif who will have to put everything together. But even then the film doesn’t bother itself too much with that angle.

I sound like I’m complaining, but I’m absolutely not. I enjoyed this crazy cast of characters and each of their stories. I would have enjoyed it more if they’d spent just a little more time on the thriller aspects, but mostly this film is a lot of fun.

Now Watching: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

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Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)
Directed by Rian Johnson
Starring: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church, and Jeffrey Wright

Synopsis: A young priest is sent to help a charismatic older priest in a small church. A seemingly impossible murder brings in Detective Benoit Blanc to solve the case. Every parishioner is a suspect.

Rating: 8/10

Released on Thanksgiving in 2019, Knives Out felt like a breath of fresh air. This was just before Covid kept us all home and right in the middle of Trump’s first term in office. It was a cozy little blanket that kept us warm from all the trouble brewing in the air. It was a lovely little Agatha Christie-esque mystery with an incredible cast and a terrifically twisty plot. I loved it.  I still love it, as I watched it last week and found it to be just as delightful as ever.

Its sequel, Glass Onion, wasn’t quite as good. It felt a little too modern and a little less cozy, but it featured another great cast, and Daniel Craig had slipped perfectly back into his brilliant detective’s slippers.

I’ve been excitedly waiting for the third film ever since. Sadly, because Wake Up Dead Man is a Netflix film, it only got a limited theatrical release. The only theater anywhere near me that was showing it was an old, broken-down theater half an hour away. I really wanted to see this on a great big screen with an audience, but that didn’t happen.

Still, it was worth the wait. We get another great cast and a mostly great, twisty mystery. Josh O’Connor is terrific as a young priest with a dark past but a passion for compassion who comes up against a firebrand more interested in calling out the sinners than loving his flock. There are some interesting reflections on faith and the importance of finding your own calling.

At 142 minutes, it runs a little long, and not everything worked for me. The original is still my favorite, but I hope they keep making these movies for years and years to come.

Nicolas Le Floch, Vol. 2

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There was a period of time, back around 2015, when I was reviewing a lot of International Mysteries. These were mostly put on DVD by a company called MHZ. They weren’t all good, but it was fun seeing how other countries handled their murder mysteries. Then I got busy, and the well ran dry.

I’ve recently subscribed to a streaming station run by MHZ and am once again enjoying my international mysteries.

I don’t really remember this French series, but you can read my review here.

International Settlement (1938)

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One of the things I love about going through my old reviews is that I find films that I had forgotten I’d ever even watched. I don’t remember this film at all. I certainly don’t remember writing a review of it. Yet here we are and here it is.

The funniest thing about this review of this B-movie thriller is that I apparently didn’t know who George Sanders was ten years ago. He’s become one of my favorite actors, yet apparently I didn’t recognize him. How crazy that is to me now.

Mysteries in May: Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

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There is this thing that certain movies do where a character will have a vision or be foretold the future in some way. The future is usually bad for them; they’ll die or someone close to them will be murdered. The visions will include several very specific, yet strange details. The characters will spend the rest of the movie trying to stop the inevitable. At first, they will probably not believe in the visions, but as those specific, yet strange details all come true, there will be a mad rush to stop the horrific thing from becoming reality.

I don’t know if Night Has a Thousand Eyes was the first film to do this thing, probably it wasn’t. But I believe it is the earliest version of it that I’ve seen (or maybe not, I’m sure I’ll remember an earlier one once I hit Post.

Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of this trope, probably because it is a trope. Whenever this sort of thing happens, you know the prophecy (or whatever) will come true. A prophecy that doesn’t come true in a movie (or is narrowly averted) would be boring.

John Triton (Edward G. Robinson) used to be a charlatan. He had an act where he pretended he was psychic. He was good at it, too. Then one day, he discovered he really could see the future. But the things he could see were always terrible events, mostly people getting killed. The thing he pretended to do for money has now become a curse.

The film begins with Jean Courtland (Gail Russell), an heiress, attempting to kill herself by jumping in front of a train. Her boyfriend, Elliott Carson (John Lund), saves her in the nick of time. When she asks him how he knew where she was, he takes her to a bar where Triton is waiting for them.

Lund is skeptical of Triton’s psychic abilities, but Jean is a firm believer. Triton then tells the whole sordid deal of how he came to know Jean and how she found herself about to commit suicide. We see this in flashbacks.

Basically, Triton had a vision that Jean’s father was going to die in a plane crash. He tries to warn her, but is unsuccessful in saving him. They begin to talk, and Triton has another vision, foreseeing Jean’s death under the stars, in a few days.

Jean can’t take the pressure and decides it isn’t worth living, knowing she’ll be dead soon anyway. But after Lund rescues her, she decides to try for life. Lund calls the cops, and a whole bunch of people try to make sure the prophecy doesn’t come true. The prophesy has some of those pesky details I was telling you about and as they come true everybody is freaking out.

I won’t spoil it all for you, but you can probably guess most of it. I will say it does something at the end that’s pretty interesting, but most of it is rather pat.

Edward G. Robinson is great, though. He’s always great, and he plays the tormented psychic pretty well.

Mysteries in May: The Uninvited (1944)

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The Uninvited was not the first ghost story to ever make it on film, but it was one of the first movies to take them seriously. Prior to this, ghosts were used for comic relief, or there were natural or psychological reasons for them to “exist.” They were explained away in some fashion. In The Uninvited, they are quite real and quite terrifying.

Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) are holidaying on the coast of Cornwall. They fall in love with an abandoned seaside manor. When they inquire into whether or not it is for sale, they are at first told by Stella Meredith (Gail Russell) that it is off the market, but her grandfather, Commander Beech (Donald Crisp), immediately agrees to sell it for a low price.

Later, they’ll learn that Stella is quite attached to the house as it was her mother’s house, and where she died under mysterious circumstances when Stella was quite young. Roderick and Stella form an instant bond and the beginnings of a romance, but Commander Beech forbids it and for Stella to even set foot inside the house.

There are rumors around the village that the house is haunted, and sure enough, our heroes begin experiencing strange occurrences. Their pets refuse to go up the stairs. They periodically smell mimosa wafting from somewhere, though there isn’t any on the premises. And in the wee hours of the morning, they sometimes hear a woman sobbing.

At first, Roderick is skeptical, but Pamela wants to believe, and Stella is a firm believer and is fascinated. She believes her mother haunts the place. At times, she seems possessed by her.

One lonely evening, she runs out of the house in a trance and nearly falls off a cliff next to where her mother did that very thing. They hold a fake seance (to try and convince Stella to stay away from the house) and see a real ghost.

The film isn’t really scary. Not by the gore-filled, jump scare standards of today. But it is full of a wonderfully creepy atmosphere. It isn’t quite gothic, but it was certainly influenced by the genre with the big, creepy house and the various mysterious characters.

The main cast is all terrific, and while the story didn’t quite enthrall me, it did keep me fully interested and entertained. It is a perfect Saturday night movie to watch in the wee hours of the night during a thunderstorm.

Foreign Film February: Le Corbeau (1943)

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In a small French town, someone calling themselves The Raven (or Le Corbeau in French) is sending out poison pen letters – gossipy missives accusing various townsfolk of scandalous goings-on. Though letters are sent to nearly everyone in town, accusing loads of people of all sorts of terrible things, they concentrate on Dr. Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay) accusing him of having an illicit affair and of performing illegal abortions.

At first, the letters are kind of funny, at least to those who are not being accused, but as more and more of the townsfolk are being accused things become serious quickly. One man commits suicide after being told something in a letter. Fingers get pointed. Demands are made to those in power. The letters must be stopped.

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot who also helmed the masterful Diabolique (1955) and The Wages of Fear (1953) Le Corbeau is a terrific little mystery in which the answer to who The Raven really is doesn’t matter nearly as much as what those letters do to the townspeople.

Made in the middle of the Nazi occupation of France the film can be seen as a commentary of the paranoia many French people felt during this period. Never knowing who to trust or what to believe. Interestingly, it also caused problems for its directors since it was produced by a German company, and the French were none too accepting of Germany-made things after the war. They eventually got over it.

It is sometimes called the first French film noir and I can totally see that with the moody black-and-white photography and Dutch angles. It falls just short of being the masterpiece that the two other films of his I mentioned earlier in this review, but Le Corbeau is still a wonderful film deserving your attention.

Foreign Film February: The Vanished Elephant (2014)

the vanished elephant

Welcome to Foreign Film February 2025. I started the month off with a bang, watching three movies over the weekend. Then I got busy and distracted and forgot to actually write about them. Here we are nearly one week into this, the shortest of months, and I have neither watched any other movies nor written anything.

Hopefully, the rest of the month will go better. But considering…well *waves hands frantically in all directions*…everything else going on in the world, I wouldn’t count on it.

The Vanished Elephant is a beautiful, strange, moody, and confounding neo-noir mystery that questions the very fabric of the story it is telling the longer it is spun.

Edo Celeste (Salvador del Solar) is a successful crime writer who has decided to end his long-running detective series. Naturally, as these things go, a real-life mystery forms. New clues have come to light which might let him understand what happened to his fiancee who disappeared several years prior.

He keeps finding packages full of photographs which, when placed together in a certain order will reveal a much larger picture. There is a whole complicated procedure that I did not at all understand that led him to figure out in what order to place the photographs.

Some murders happen. He investigates on his own despite the real police constantly telling him not to. Eventually, he will become a suspect.

As the film progresses this fairly standard mystery formula begins to dissolve to be replaced by an even bigger mystery about the nature of story and reality. To say more would be to spoil its many surprises.

Ultimately, it didn’t work that well for me. I found it more unintelligible than mysterious. It is definitely a film that will work better for the viewer on a second viewing as you’ll likely discover details that will help you understand what it is doing. I’m just not sure I care enough to give it another go.

It is well-made and quite beautiful to look at. It reminded me a bit of David Lynch’s movies, but that might just be because he just died and I’ve been thinking about him of late. But it does have that beautiful weirdness about it.