A Haunting In Venice (2023) - Movie Review

After the release limbo and subsequent inundation of cast controversies that wound up plaguing Death On The Nile, it is somewhat relieving that Kenneth Branagh’s latest dive into the works of Agatha Christie hasn’t run into any such unpleasantness just on the surface. And yet, right from its horror-tinged trailer, I admit to being sceptical about how much I would like this one. Honestly, my first impression was that this was going to be yet another attempt to cross-promote with the Conjuring supernatural aesthetic, which has been steadily shrinking in my favour over the course of 2023. But hey, this wouldn’t exactly be the first time I went into a film with weird and arguably unfair expectations, much as I try to avoid such things. And it’s ultimately a moot point anyway since, again like Death On The Nile, I quite enjoyed this.

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.

The Call Of The Wild (2020) - Movie Review

Every so often, I find myself sitting in front of this word processor and realising that what I have to say, or at the very least the bulk of what I have to say, could just as easily be said by anyone. It’s the kind of plain-faced, right-in-your-face facet of the production at hand that is so blindly obvious, I almost feel like a rube for even bringing it up. I’m not so conceited that I see what I have to contribute in these reviews as anything tremendously vital, but I at least try to bring the one thing that no-one else can lay claim to to the table: My own perspective. Unfortunately, I doubt that means much in this case, since what I have to report back about this film is something just about anyone could point out. So let’s get that out of the way first: Wow, this is some bad CGI.