Death On The Nile (2022) - Movie Review

With how a lot of mainstream films have been collecting dust while the pandemic kept mucking up the release schedule over the last couple years, this film arguably has gone through the worst aging of any film caught in that shuffle. Between when filming wrapped up in December of 2019, and its official release in February of 2022, at least four of the actors in this ensemble film have become embroiled in controversies. Actual Cannibal Armie Hammer, Letitia Wright’s ‘vaccine scepticism’, Russell Brand’s descent down the conspiracy YouTube rabbit hole, even Gal Gadot’s nauseating cover of Imagine (which, in her defense, she has since admitted to being… out of touch, to put it mildly); this is the kind of PR clusterfuck that could end up burying a film in release limbo indefinitely, COVID or no COVID.

Not that I'm holding any of that against the film myself. It’s rather unfair to hold Kenneth Branagh or indeed any of the other cast members responsible for actions that not only weren’t even of their own doing, but took place quite a while after the work itself was finished. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more than a little hilarious thinking about this four-car pile-up in hindsight, but… I have no other way to say it: This is a situation where separation of art from the artist absolutely applies. Hell, this isn’t even a new phenomenon for this specific series, given how controversial the casting of Johnny Depp was in Murder On The Orient Express. And that’s also taken on new life considering new information regarding his and Amber Heard’s… disastrous relationship, and how the film itself framed the death of his character in an ultimately positive light, as part of the story’s larger examination of the concept of justice.

I’m bringing all this up because, this early into 2022, it’s the kind of production snafu that threatens to overtake the film itself in terms of sheer interest, more so than possibly any film to come in the next several months. But honestly, as someone who went into this thinking that it would pale in comparison to Branagh’s Belfast, and who wasn’t that into Orient Express to begin with, I walked away from this very surprised by the results. Like, I think I liked this more than Orient or Belfast.

Red Notice (2021) - Movie Review

Rawson Marshall Thurber is a cinematic underachiever. The man knows how to put a film together, and his recent collaborations with Dwayne Johnson have been a solid match-up, but it always feels like his films should be far more interesting than they actually turn out. I mean, when the film of his that has aged the best contains an entire scene aggrandising Lance Armstrong and a bi-bait finale, something is askew. So, as I look at his latest feature, know that I will probably give the guy a hard time but it’s mainly because he’s shown enough talent as a filmmaker to be doing better than he has of late.

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) - Movie Review

So… yeah, it’s been pretty quiet around here lately. A lot of shit has happened over the past few months (in addition to the longer parade of shit that has happened over the last two years), and between everything happening in the real world and the drastic changes taking place within the film world… I gotta be honest, it’s not a particularly fun time to be writing about movies. I’ve been wrestling with quarantine brain for a while now, struggling to delve back into this profession that I have devoted so many years of my life to pursuing. Every time I thought I had bounced back, the malaise would resurface and I’d be stuck back in the same pit of inactivity.

But no more, I say. It is long past time for things to get back to normal (or whatever qualifies as “normal” around here), and to get things back into gear, I’ve decided to return with a rather unusual feature. I don’t usually make the time to review director’s cuts around here, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime example of such things.