I'm Here for the Cruising: Death on the Nile and the Opulent Poirotisms

Every couple of years I end up re-watching my fave set of Agatha Christie film adaptation from the brief golden years of these big screen murder mysteries (1974-1982). I don't know why these adaptations dropped out of favor by the mid-80s. Maybe it was too much focus on blockbusters, Tom Cruise, and Reagan-era stupidity.

But for a short window, these opulent ("You own EVERYTHING!"), lush, luxe, and plush British-made productions were all the rage. Starting with the most famous, 1974's Murder on the Orient Express. With a cast of Oscar-winning actors and the famed Sidney Lumet directing, it was a hit and opened the door for the next production, Death on the Nile.

Bette Davis, Maggie Smith (never been young, but always been fabulous), demure Olivia Hussey, Angela Lansbury (OTT, draggy, and brilliant here), melancholic Jane Birkin, chilly Lois Chiles, and flittery, nervous Mia Farrow doing her flittery, nervous best in one of the lead roles, the women of Nile are the true shining stars of the movie. The men just recede into the background, save for the stellar Peter Ustinov, probably the best Hercule Poirot I've seen yet.

Lansbury serving looks:

Forget the twitchy, mannered, and grotesquely painted Albert Finney as Poirot in Orient Express, supremely capable but also completely off-putting. Ustinov has a lightness of touch and a sunnier disposition in Nile, which he carries over into the next and last 20th century big-screen adaptation, the wonderful Evil Under the Sun (1982)  

Come for the mystery, stay for the costumes, set design, period details, bombastic score, and scenery chewing. Oh, and Simon MacCorkindale.

Just when we thought Agatha Christie was bound for an afterlife of only stuffy, stodgy, slow-moving BBC TV adaptations, word is that there is a new big screen Hollywood adaptation coming this November. Once again, going back to the big leagues, Murder on the Orient Express will be remade, under the direction of Kenneth Branagh. He will also star as Poirot and lead a cast including Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfieffer, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, and Judi Dench.

Can't wait. And there better be a movie poster, a hand-drawn illustration with all of the lead cast's floating heads. We expect that. We deserve it. In the opulent world of Christie, we own everything.

I'll Take a Big Slice: the Overabundance of '90s in 'Sliver'

After not having seen it for well over a decade, I thought it would be fun to wallow in the early '90s beige depths of Sliver, the film adaptation of the novel by psychological thriller king Ira Levin. It continues his fascination with both the apartment living nightmares of his Rosemary's Baby, with the fish out of water/"Why the hell am I living here?"-isms of his The Stepford Wives. The screenplay was adapted by future Showgirls scribe Joe Eszterhas, right after his mega hit Basic Instinct.

Although the soundtrack boasts some great '90s ethereal pre-trip hop by Enigma, Massive Attack, and Neneh Cherry, it also birthed UB40's dreadful cover of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love with You."

As you twirl your arms to the theme of Sliver's title character Carly (Sharon Stone) below, and feel the herbal ecstasy kick-in ("It's legal!"), it may be best to just peruse the collection of images I've gathered to help makes sense (or not) out of the ridiculousness of Sliver.

Enigma - Carly's Song (featuring Sharon vamping it up in several different wigs and outfits)

Carly/Sharon gives us:

Chokers and parted down the middle cute bobs

Berets and XXL overcoats, all in beige and neutrals

Pearl necklace rope chokers over black velvet (if you please) mock turtleneck gowns, ripped wide open while in a fine dining restaurant

Billy Baldwin as the Carly/Sharon love interest and potential bad boy had his share of looks too.

Skank tank, veins, and a not-needed weight belt while doing cardio.

That's Billy in a nutshell.

You WISH You Were Sybil!: M. Night's 'Split'

I haven't seen an M. Night Shyamalan movie since 2008's miserable The Happening (Mark Wahlberg playing earnest nerd; Zooey Deschanel playing....anything; pollen being a population killer instead of a nasal enemy). I'm not sad about it either.

The Lady in the Water, The Last Airbender, After Earth? No thanks. But after mega-budgeted, mediocre sci-fi tangents, M. Night moved in to the low-budget, PG-13 level horror realm of The Visit and now Split. He's earning back some street cred and increased critical praise. But is it earned? I haven't seen The Visit beyond the trailers and teasers that were everywhere when it was released. But my opinion on Split? Well, it's split. C'mon, you knew that had to be coming, right?

The film is a psychological thriller about three teenage girls who get kidnapped from a mall parking lot and put into the underground lair of a split-personality killer named Kevin (James McAvoy, chewing the scenery, sometimes whole). Why is it that even the most working class of villains, like Kevin, somehow have the money to set up some kind of elaborate system of rooms, locks, endless unused spaces, etc.?

Betty Buckley stars as McAvoy's psychiatrist Dr. Fletcher (a nod to Angela Lansbury's Murder She Wrote persona, perhaps?) and does a relatively good job of selling M. Night's sometimes ridiculously overstuffed script. As the lead captive girl Casey, Anya Taylor Joy is the real heart of the story, as the cool, calm, and Clarice Starling-level resourceful heroine. She's the one to watch, amidst the hamminess of McAvoy.

Though not awful, I felt Split's best bits were cribbed from the superior 10 Cloverfield Lane, and of course the final act of Silence of the Lambs. Even the newish Netflix series The OA did a more novel take on young people trapped in a basement by a demented mind.

Is it a good Shyamalan movie? Yes. He seems to be climbing out of the big-budget bloat of his mid-00s schlock period. Is it derivative as well? Yes, of course.

It also wouldn't be an M. Night film without a much touted "twist ending." This film's twist? Not very interesting, and more subtly meta in regards to his other films. If you're waiting for that mind-bending twist, don't hold your breath.

"There's Nothing There, Man, It's Just....Void" - Missing Something with 'The Void'

The quote in this post's title is actually from the '80s comedy Sixteen Candles, but even though it's being uttered to high school stud Jake Ryan, it is still apt when describing the new indie horror film, The Void.

I saw the trailer a month ago and was excited for its release. The trailer seemed to promise a return to the '80s body-morphing "practical effects" (i.e., non CG) of classics like The Thing (oh, you mean THAT movie?) or much of Cronenberg's '80s gems.

The Void does make good on its vibe of non-CG, model-made creatures, which is one of its definite pluses. And it's familiarity in story and vibe is like a warm, friendly blanket of horror movie commonality. But it's also what eventually sends this film off the rails.

A small-town cop on night duty finds a disturbed, injured man crawling on a desolate forest road and brings him in to a small local hospital. The tiny night staff of nurses and doctors and a few patients are caught up in a quickly disintegrating mess of possessed murderous staff, renegade hicks with guns, and a growing crowd of masked, robe-clad cultists surrounding the hospital. What's not to love?

The movie both benefits and suffers from its mash-up approach of other, usually better films. The location and intro seems to riff on the hospital set of Halloween 2, and the melting and morphing alien/human hybrids in the film's second act definitely take a huge influence from The Thing. Speaking of John Carpenter, with the trapped and surrounded in a small location set-up, I'm getting shades of Assault on Precinct 13.

Where the movie starts to fall apart is the final act. With its nonsensical plot splinters and reliance on Hellraiser-style characters and situations, it leads to a head-scratching final shot.

Do you remember Danny Boyle's sci-fi thriller Sunshine, a remarkable visual feast of outer space travel and a thrilling tale of survival and escape? It also ended with clunky humanoid/demon nonsensical mess. The Void seemed to think that was a good call for an ending as well.

Hoping a re-viewing of the film will fill in plot holes and clear up the confusion of a promising story that went off-track.

"Hunks of the King" - The Second in a Continuing Beefcake Calendar Series

Coming off of the "smash success" of my April 12th blog post featuring my first Beefcake Calendar series idea, The Hunks of 'The Thing' I've whipped up a second in a possible continuous calendar series.

The Hunks of the King, is of course a calendar showcasing the beefcake men who've starred in the various multitudes of Stephen King film adaptations.

So many bad (and a few good) film adaptations abound, so I had a nice selection to choose from.

Without further ado... The Hunks of the King - Beefcake Calendar: 1984-2017


January
Dale Midkiff
Pet Sematary

February
Ed Harris
Needful Things

March
Robert Hays
Cat's Eye

April
David Keith
Firestarter

May
Thomas Jane
The Mist

June
Idris Elba
The Dark Tower

July
James Caan
Misery

August
Kiefer Sutherland
Stand By Me

September
David Strathairn
Dolores Claiborne

October
Peter Horton
Children of the Corn

November
James Franco
11.22.63

December
Emilio Estevez
Maximum Overdrive

Bon Appetit! - 'Raw'

[The trailer is a bit NSFW]

How's your appetite for cannibalism in movies these days? They usually center around zombies and The Walking Dead, but the new French horror film Raw brings it back to the living. And it's not to everybody's taste.

French filmmaker Julia Ducournau's film follows Justine, a newbie at vet school who is unsure of the world around her. Caught up in a chaotic first few weeks at a strange vet program (frat-style hazing and "Hell Week"; is this normal to starting school, any vets out there?), this lifelong vegetarian is forced to eat raw meat as a hazing ritual. Looks like it starts off a chain reaction of her ever-increasing, terrifying behavior.

Her older sister Alexia, also at the school as a student, and her gay roommate, the gorgeous Adrian (it's France, they don't care) both egg her on and shield her from the chaos of her new found cannibalistic urges. You know how Freshman year is.

The uncomfortable, increasingly twisted gross-out horror comes rapidly as Justine's hunger moves from curiosity to insatiability. Garance Marillier, as Justine, gives a go-for-broke performance as an unhinged student discovering her sexuality, her bloodlust, and her stellar vet studies all at the same time. It's an impossible acting chore for this far-out role but she manages as well as one could hope.

Director Ducournau creates some indelible shots in the film (lots of animals - horses, dogs) in both movement and as carcasses. She has a keen eye for stark beauty and clinical, medical chills. The film gave me shades of Cronenberg's body-morphing films, as well as the brutal Catherine Breillat film Fat Girl.

There was also an odd dark, dark humor in Raw. The whole set-up of the story, and the eventual pay-off is so over-the-top at times, it may bring a few nervous laughs. Melancholy, dark humor, brutality; I have no idea what Ducournau will bring to her next film, but I will definitely watch.

"Hunks of 'The Thing'" - the 1982 Beefcake Calendar

I'm gonna get back to film reviewing in just a moment (two new horror releases will be covered in the next week!) but as you wait for that, let me take a moment to cover one of my fave horror movies from the past, with a new twist.

Let me introduce one of the hunkiest casts in horror film history. Here's my online beefcake calendar of the glorious 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing.

Granted, you could have made an entire calendar of Kurt Russell in this film alone. Dreamy.

January
Kurt Russell - MacReady

February
Richard Masur - Clark

March
Keith David - Childs

April
Donald Moffat - Garry

May
T.K. Carter - Nauls

June
Peter Maloney - Hennings

July
Norbert Weisser - Norwegian Pilot

August
Joel Polis - Fuchs

September
David Clennon - Palmer

October
Richard Dysart - Dr. Cooper

November
Thomas Waites - Windows

December
Wilford Brimley - Blair/Santa Claus

School is Hell: 'The Blackcoat's Daughter'

Following up my last post, I decided to tackle the other film by Osgood Perkins, a former actor, and son of movie star Anthony Perkins.

His most recent film, 2016's I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House shares many traits with his first feature, 2015's The Blackcoat's Daughter - the beautiful cinematography, brilliant use of silence, impeccable design and lighting, and a constant sense of dread. Pretty Thing has a calmer, ghostlier vibe, while Blackcoat's Daughter follows a blunt, cold feeling of possession.

Both films relish the idea of physical isolation and loneliness of environment; in Pretty Thing, it's an old haunted farmhouse, in this film, it's an abandoned boarding school.

Kieran Shipka (the wonderfully dry pre-teen Sally Draper on Mad Men) is Katherine, a boarding school student who is waiting to be picked up by her parents at the beginning of a winter break. Weird dreams wake up Katherine (or is it a waking dream) featuring a shadowy figure she calls "Daddy" (Her father? A demon?) that starts her on a path that involves Rose, a fellow student who also needs to stay an extra day or so at school waiting for her parents as well. Let's just say, she'll regret that decision.

I don't want to discuss plot points too much (even the trailer shows too much). There is a second storyline that involves Emma Roberts. After seeing the entire movie, I think that storyline may not have been needed. I won't spoil it, but I think when you reach the end of the film you could ask yourself the same question.

I wondered if more time spent at the beginning of the film exploring Katherine's odd transformation might have made a more successful story. Things happen very quickly at the beginning, and the idea of possession begins right away; it seems rushed.

But you can't deny the fantastic vibe and the mood that Perkins created in the two feature films he's completed to date. I hope he can stick with these smaller, indie films that pack punches. He might get spoiled if he gets a big budget, movie stars, and major studio distribution. Or he could assemble a modern-day The Exorcist and become a true horror master filmmaker.