Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Murder on the Orient Express (1974): adapted by Paul Dehn from the Agatha Christie novel; directed by Sidney Lumet; starring Albert Finney (Hercule Poirot), Lauren Bacall (Hubbard), Martin Balsam (Bianchi), Ingrid Bergman (Greta), Jacqueline Bisset (Countess Andrenyi), Sean Connery (Arbuthnot), John Gielgud (Beddoes), Wendy Hiller (Princess Dragomiroff), Anthony Perkins (McQueen), Vanessa Redgrave (Mary), Michael York (Count Andrenyi), Colin Blakeley (Hardman), Richard Widmark (Ratchett), Rachel Roberts (Hildegarde), and Jean Pierre Cassel (Pierre): 

The producers brought the 'so many stars in head-shot boxes on the poster!' approach normally used by Hollywood for disaster movies and historical epics at the time to this adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's most famous Hercule Poirot novels. With a twist!

Frankly, it's a bit... soporific in its first half, as various clues are laid out prior to the eponymous murder. And Albert Finney is a honking, sputtering, too-jolly-by-half Hercule Poirot. The high-powered cast goes through its paces, nabbing a sympathy Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Ingrid Bergman along the way (even though Bergman had already won two deserved Oscars and should have nabbed a third for Notorious). It's an interesting movie, and something of a departure for Sidney Lumet. Lightly recommended.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Murder on the Orient Express (2017): adapted from the novel by Agatha Christie by Michael Green; directed by Kenneth Branagh; starring Kenneth Branagh (Hercule Poirot) and a cast of dozens: Enjoyable, good-looking adaptation of the 1930's Agatha Christie classic of British mysteries stars Kenneth Branagh and his crazy prop mustache as Hercule Poirot, world's greatest consulting detective. 

Branagh directed as well, in a classic Hollywood style buttressed by CGI for some of the large-scale visuals with which he opens up Christie's locked-room mystery. Well, locked-train mystery.

The all-star cast has about three lines each, which is pretty much how the movie has to work unless it's going to be 8 hours long. Critical backlash to this film puzzled me. It's pretty much exactly what it has to be, and it's far superior to the stiff 1974 version that netted Ingrid Bergman a sympathy Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Recommended.

Cooties and Minions and Indians, Oh My!

Cooties (2014): written by Leigh Whannell, Ian Brennan, and Josh C. Waller; directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion; starring Elijah Wood (Clint), Rainn Wilson (Wade), Alison Pill (Lucy), Jack McBrayer (Tracy), Leigh Whannell (Doug), and Nasim Pedrad (Rebekkah): Fun, uneven zombie-satire co-written by Leigh Whannell, who worked on the Saw and Insidious franchises and appears here as a loopy biology teacher. The semi-all-star cast is solid. The movie's tone shifts a lot, from satire to earnestness and back again. 

Cooties is at its best when it's throwing violence at the viewer. And as that violence is caused by children who've been turned into flesh-eating monsters by tainted chicken nuggets, there's a certain level of hilarity involved in all the gore. The lead characters are all primary-school teachers at Ground Zero of the great child-zombie outbreak in the Illinois town of Fort Chicken. Seriously. I've certainly seen much less convincing straightforward zombie movies and TV shows. Recommended.

Minions (2015): written by Brian Lynch; directed by Kyole Balda and Pierre Coffin; starring the voices of Sandra Bullock (Scarlet Overkill), Jon Hamm (Herb Overkill), Michael Keaton (Walter Nelson), Alison Janney (Madge Nelson), Jennifer Saunders (Queen Elizabeth II), and Geoffrey Rush (Narrator): The jolly yellow sidekicks of the Despicable Me movies get their own movie, a prequel that explains their origins and history. The opening history sequence is funny and inventive and involves evolution. Is there an alternate cut for the Bible Belt and other evolution-free zones? 

Minions really could use Steve Carell's reformed super-villain Gru for more than the 30 seconds he's in this one. Sandra Bullock's super-villainess Scarlet Overkill isn't nearly as funny as Gru. But the minions are pretty funny, and the movie zips along, buoyed on what seems to be some sort of record for most classic songs used on a soundtrack (the film is mostly set in 1968). Jennifer Saunders shines as the voice of Queen Elizabeth II. Recommended.

Ten Little Indians (1965): adapted by Peter Yeldham and Harry Alan Towers from the play and novel by Agatha Christie; directed by George Pollock; starring Hugh O'Brian (Lombard), Shirley Eaton (Ann), Fabian (Raven), Leo Genn (General Mandrake), Stanley Holloway (Blore), Wilfrid Hyde-White (Judge Cannon), Daliah Lavi (Ilona), Dennis Price (Dr. Armstrong), Marianne Hoppe (Frau Grohmann), and Mario Adorf (Herr Grohmann): So-so second movie adaptation of Christie's classic mystery (a.k.a And Then There Were None) has a wildly uneven cast and an uneven tone to go along with them. The movie relocates the action from an island to the Swiss Alps, to no really distinguished effect. Lightly recommended.

Dog's Breakfast

Slumdog Millionaire (2008): adapted by Simon Beaufoy from the novel by Vikas Swarup; directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan; starring Dev Patel/Ayush Mahesh Khedekar/Tanay Chheda (Jamal), Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala/Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail/Madhur Mittal (Salim), Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar/Rubina Ali/Freida Pinto (Latika), and Anil Kapoor (Shem): Winner of eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. I didn't find it as annoying separated from the hype by eight years as I did at the time. Visually, it's certainly a Dickensian marvel hopped up on goofballs: Danny Boyle and co-director Loveleen Tandan are nothing if not visually dense, and the editing keeps things at a fever pitch for long stretches. The protagonist remains a character without agency, and I'd still like to see a movie from the POV of his flawed but pro-active brother, who is really the secret hero. And as to Dickensian -- well, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, to name two, relocated to India. Recommended.

Undercover Genie: The Irreverent Conjurings of an Illustrative Aladdin (2003) by Kyle Baker: Fun collection of sketches, spot illustrations, and short comic strips from the immensely talented Kyle Baker. Even the introduction is interesting as it points out all the problems of a self-obsessed American comic-book industry (where Baker got his start). Almost out of the gate in the 1980's, Baker did an enormously impressive, funny, and searingly satiric job of illustrating DC's wonky Shadow series. 

And he kept getting better, especially once he started scripting his own work. These piec es from the 1990's and early oughts show his immense range as both a writer and artist. On one piece he may riff beautifully on Jules Feiffer. Next up -- a funny spot illustration for a magazine article on the band R.E.M.. Baker is one of the great treasures of American cartooning. Long may he reign. Highly recommended.

The Devil You Know (Felix Castor #1) (2006) by Mike Carey (a.k.a. M.R. Carey): The prolific and enjoyable Mike Carey's first novel after more than a decade of fine work in comic-book writing on such titles as Hellblazer and Lucifer introduces us to London, England's favourite (ha!) freelance exorcist, Felix Castor. Castor moves through a world pretty much exactly like ours with one significant changed premise: about eight years before the events of this novel, various ghosts, spirits, and demons started to appear in the world. Now they're pretty much everywhere, with no real explanation as to why the afterlife expelled so many creatures and dead people.

Carey does a lovely job of giving us just enough back-story and exposition to keep us afloat in this strange new world. Exorcism is something that only certain individuals can do, regardless of religious affiliation (of which Castor has none). Castor plays tunes on a tin whistle to work his exorcisms, while others use anything from cat's cradles to more traditional bells, books, and candles. Exorcism is basically a state of mind and a talent linked to that mind that can take pretty much any form. When it works, exorcism sends the ghost away. Where? Castor doesn't know.

In this first adventure, the not-very-hard-boiled Castor takes an assignment to purge a rare documents library of a newly acquired ghost which seems to have arrived with a shipment of pre-Revolutionary Russian documents. Of course, nothing is as it seems. Castor will soon come to question the ethics of exorcism itself. He'll also have to face human crime-lords, a giant were-something that looks just barely human, and a succubus called up from Hell. There will also be an embarrassing moment at a wedding and a moment of seriocomic vengeance at an annoying teen's birthday party.


Everything goes down smoothly and enjoyably. Carey's imagination is a fun place to stroll around in, his characters deftly sketched, and Castor an occasionally guilt-wracked but generally witty and humane narrator. And then there's Castor's best friend Rafi, in an insane asylum with a demon welded to his soul. That's partially Castor's fault, and the Rafi storyline will gain in prominence as the five Felix Castor novels play out. Recommended.

The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor #5) (2009) by Mike Carey (a.k.a. M.R. Carey): Argh! Mike Carey hasn't written a Felix Castor novel since this one. Come back, Mike! Freelance exorcist Felix Castor finally gets his showdown with the demon Asmodeus, who's in possession of the body of Castor's best friend. Asmodeus is out and about in London, up to something that will free him from his unwanted mortal vessel without sending him screaming back to Hell. Meanwhile, the supernatural world seems to be shifting, changing the rules that have only been in place for the ten years since ghosts, demons, and other beings were inexplicably unleashed on Earth.

Castor is a fun hybrid of hard-boiled detective and snarky, ironic commentator. Carey's put a lot of thought into Castor's world, in which scientists and occultists alike try to master the spirit world before it masters them. If there's a flaw here, it's that it's hard to care about Felix's best friend Rafi. He willingly participated in the ritual that stuck Asmodeus in him. Moreover, we've never seen him unpossessed in the series: we're told over and over again what a charming rogue he is, but we never really have that shown to us. It makes the stakes somewhat light: like some of Castor's occult colleagues, I find it hard to justify worrying so much about keeping Rafi alive when the demon riding his body is racking up such a death toll. 

But other than that and a last couple of pages that reminds me of all those 1960's and 1970's American TV dramas that ended with everyone standing around laughing despite the catastrophes that came earlier in the episode, The Naming of the Beasts is a fun and often wildly imaginative ride. More Castor please! Recommended.

The Missing (a.k.a. Virus) (2007) by Sarah Langan: Winner of the 2007 Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers' Association for Best Novel, The Missing is a horror novel of its time. Specifically, it makes a lot more sense when one thinks of U.S. adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the tepid governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. This is a horror novel about how the Bush Administration lost a war against monsters. And I think that informs how it won that Best Novel award, because it's certainly not a great horror novel. Timely, though, and of its time.

The Missing is Sarah Langan's second novel. It takes place an almost literal stones-throw away from the setting of her first novel, The Keeper. They're both set in small-town Maine -- The Keeper in the run-down industrial town of Bedford and The Missing in the adjacent upscale town of Corpus Christi. The Keeper picks up about a year after the disastrous (for Bedford, anyway) supernatural events of The Keeper.

This time around, we begin in Salem's Lot territory, as a mysterious virus buried in the woods near Bedford infects a child and a teacher during an extremely ill-advised school field trip to the Bedford woods. The virus, which seems to be both sentient and telepathic, kills most people and turns the rest into what are basically amalgams of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Corpus Christi could be in trouble. So, too, the world.

Langan's a pretty brave writer. She's not interested in providing sympathetic characters. Our main characters are instead deeply flawed. So flawed, indeed, that the novel eventually suffers. Harking back to my Bush thesis, the authorities in their entirety are utterly incompetent. Not the authorities of the town -- of the United States. Despite the fact that the virus causes its monsters to sleep during the day-time, nothing is done about them other than a half-hearted quarantine of the town, swiftly broken. We get the point -- it's Katrina all over again, but Katrina with monsters.

But between the incompetent indifference of the authorities and the incompetent unpleasantness of most of our protagonists, all of whom do at least one unforgivably stupid thing, we're left with an apocalypse one simply isn't invested in. And as the vampiric qualities of the monsters echo such novels as Salem's Lot, we're not even given an interesting apocalypse with unpleasant characters as we got in, say, Thomas Disch's The Genocides. Monsters run around killing and eating people. The disease spreads. Good times!

Langan is a solid writer, one gifted with the ability to create complex characters. There are a couple of people left to root for by the end of the novel. But the last fifty pages go by in a blur of telling and not showing, as the scale of the infestation suddenly goes national. It's a last fifty pages that seem to gesture towards a sequel that never materialized, one in the vein of Justin Cronin's later The Passage trilogy or even Max Brooks' World War Z.


And for all Langan's strengths, she's nonetheless created an unpleasant novel that fails to horrify in the end because its sub-textual critique of the Bush government forces its depiction of governmental response to a crisis into the realms of the absurd. Lightly recommended.

And Then There Were None (2015): adapted by Sarah Phelps from the novel by Agatha Christie; directed by Craig Viveros, Basi Akpabio, and Rebecca Keane; starring Maeve Dermody (Vera), Charles Dance (Judge Wargrave), Toby Stephens (Dr. Armstrong), Burn Gorman (DS Blore), Aidan Turner (Lombard), Harley Gallacher (Cyril), Miranda Richardson (Miss Brent), Paul Chahidi (Morris), Sam Neill (General MacArthur), Anna Maxwell Martin (Ethel Rogers), and Noah Taylor (Rogers): Fine, grim, darkly filmed BBC/Lifetime miniseries adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel that has now boasted not one but two currently unusable alternate titles. Making Christie this grim cuts against decades of weirdly light-hearted adaptations of her work. It works. And if your only exposure to this story is the 1940's film adaptation, you're in for a surprise: the plot is almost relentlessly faithful to Christie's original, with only a few cosmetic alterations. Recommended.

When Writers Attack

Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer: written by Michael Moorcock; illustrated by Walt Simonson (2004-2006; collected 2007): Elric creator (among many, many, many other things) Michael Moorcock returns to his most famous fantasy creation for an origin story of sorts. Here, we see the sickly heir apparent to the throne of fantasy kingdom Melnibone undergo four trials to determine his worthiness to be king when his father dies. 

Walt Simonson's artwork is well-suited to the material -- as with his brilliant 1980's work on Marvel's Thor, this work possesses a real and specific and dynamic view of the fantastic. Moorcock keeps things cracking along in this idiosyncratic tale of trials and tests while keeping things accessible for those who haven't encountered Elric of Melnibone before. 

One of the things I noticed in returning to Elric's world after about 30 years away is how much George R.R. Martin's conception of Old Valyria and its dragon-and-dark-magic-based primacy owes to the Moorcock's vision of Melnibone in relation to the Young Kingdoms of humanity, right down to the dragons. Recommended.

Agatha: written by Kathleen Tynan and Arthur Hopcraft; directed by Michael Apted; starring Dustin Hoffman (Wally Stanton), Vanessa Redgrave (Agatha Christie), Timothy Dalton (Colonel Archibald Christie), and Celia Gregory (Nancy Neele) (1979): Slight but enjoyable fictional speculation about what happened during Agatha Christie's famous 11-day disappearance in 1926. I realize that she was actually helping Doctor Who battle giant alien bees, but this is almost as plausible. Redgrave, Hoffman, and Dalton are all excellent, while Michael Apted's direction keeps things mostly tight and Vittorio Storaro's cinematography casts a period glow over everything. Apparently, the Christie estate sued twice to keep the movie from being released, unsuccessfully. But really, it's not all that scandalous. Lightly recommended.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief: based on the book by Lawrence Wright; written and directed by Alex Gibney (2015): Excellent, occasionally harrowing documentary about the history and practices of the Church of Scientology from creator L. Ron Hubbard's adventures in writing and sub-chasing in the 1930's and 1940's through its creation in the mid-1950's to its well-financed global position today. 

Interviews with former Scientologists and some often astonishing archival material form the bulk of the documentary, along with commentary from Lawrence Wright, who wrote the book it's based on. London, Ontario's Paul Haggis supplies a lot of the ex-Scientologist anecdotes and rueful self-examination, but he's far from the highest ranking member of the Church to testify to the camera about its excesses, leaders, and overall weirdness. Another documentary home run for Alex Gibney, whose best-known previous work is probably The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Enron Story. Highly recommended.

Grabby Grab-bag

Seems Like Old Times: written by Neil Simon; directed by Jay Sandrich; starring Chevy Chase (Nick Gardenia), Goldie Hawn (Glenda Parks), Charles Grodin (Ira Parks), Robert Guillaume (Fred), T.K. Carter (Chester), and Yvonne Wilder (Aurora) (1980): Highly enjoyable Neil Simon farce written specifically for Hawn and Chase, who were coming off the success of their first film together, Foul Play. Chase does an insane number of pratfalls, Hawn is goofy and funny, and Charles Grodin offers able, mostly deadpan supporting work. The rest of the supporting cast is also excellent, including a half-dozen dogs used to surprisingly potent comic effect. Recommended.

The Paper Chase: adapted by James Bridges from the novel by John Jay Osborn Jr.; directed by James Bridges; starring Timothy Bottoms (James Hart), Lindsay Wagner (Susan Fields), and John Houseman (Professor Kingsfield) (1973): Excellent chronicle of first-year law school at Harvard gives one just enough bildungsroman without overwhelming the viewer with some sort of message. Timothy Bottoms is excellent as first-year-law-student Hart, who faces assorted school and relationship problems on his way to understanding the law.

Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner does nice work as Hart's on-again, off-again love interest. John Houseman won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the imposing contract law professor Kingsfield. The male hairstyles may look wild now, but the movie grounds everything in verisimilitude. It's one of the few movies set at college with classrooms and facilities that actually look like college classrooms and facilities (and have some of the same lax security from time to time). Highly recommended.

The Alphabet Murders: adapted by David Pursall and Jack Seddon from the novel The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie; directed by Frank Tashlin; starring Tony Randall (Hercule Poirot), Anita Ekberg (Amanda Beatrice Cross), and Robert Morley (Hastings) (1965): Completely loopy attempt to reimagine Agatha Christie's Belgian super-sleuth as some sort of combination of Inspector Clouseau, Our Man Flint, and James Bond... as played by Tony Randall doing a Peter Sellers imitation. The approach doesn't really work, but the film has a surprising number of laughs. I'm guessing it was a box-office bomb, as no one ever tried something like this again with Poirot. Bizarre enough to be lightly recommended, especially if you're accustomed to the more traditional portrayals of Poirot by such actors as Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, and David Suchet.

Seven Keys to Baldpate: adapted by Anthony Veiller, Wallace Smith, Glenn Tryon, and Dorothy Yost from the play by George M. Cohan based on the novel by Earl Derr Biggers; directed by William Hamilton and Edward Killy; starring Gene Raymond (William Magee), Margaret Callahan (Mary Norton), and Henry Travers (The Hermit) (1935): Fifth version (!!!!!) of a 1913 drama adapted from a popular novel by Charlie Chan creator Earl Derr Biggers. Fifth version! And there would be more under this title and others! It's a mystery farce set at an off-season hotel where a writer has gone to write a novel in 24 hours. The hotel is empty and only he has the key. Or does he? Much running around ensues in a very stagey manner, and things wrap up in barely more than an hour. Of interest for its historical value, but certainly not in any way a classic. Lightly recommended as a curiosity more than an entertainment.

Strange Bedfellows

Quick Change: adapted by Howard Franklin from the novel by Jay Cronley; directed by Bill Murray and Howard Franklin; starring Bill Murray (Grimm), Geena Davis (Phyllis), Randy Quaid (Loomis), and Jason Robards (Rotzinger) (1990): This is almost a 'lost' Bill Murray movie, one that didn't do well at the summer box office back in 1990. I think it may be too low key to have ever been a huge success, but it also got lost in a flood of blockbusters that year. As is, it's the only movie which Murray also produced and (co-)directed, and it's really good.

Quick Change follows a bank heist masterminded by Murray's character. That part goes smoothly. However, getting out of New York turns out to be the real problem. Terrific supporting work from Geena Davis, Randy Quaid, Tony Shaloub, and Jason Robards makes a zippy script flow smoothly even if the plan does not. Murray's character, while sarcastic as always, nonetheless also resonates with what appear to be warmer human feelings. It's a fine, neglected performance from Murray in a fine, neglected film. Recommended.


And Then There Were None: adapted by Dudley Nichols from the play Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie; directed by Rene Clair; starring Barry Fitzgerald (Quincannon), Walter Huston (Armstrong), June Duprez (Vera Claythorne) and Louis Hayward (Philip Lombard) (1945):  Adapted from Agatha Christie's play, itself an adaptation of her own novel which at one point had a truly regrettable title in Great Britain (look it up). Fun though somewhat stagy and a bit overlong, the movie adapts a book that really works as the foundational work for an astonishing number of horror movies and thrillers in which a rising body count lifts all tides. Walter Huston and Barry Fitzgerald pretty much act everyone other than Judith Anderson right off the screen. Recommended.

The Grudge: adapted by Stephen Susco from the screenplay by Takashi Shimizu for Ju-On; directed by Takashi Shimizu; starring Sarah Michelle Gellar (Karen), Jason Behr (Doug), William Mapother (Matthew), Bill Pullman (Peter), Grace Zabriskie (Emma), Clea DuVall (Jennifer), Ted Raimi (Alex), and Ryo Ishibashi (Nakagawa) (2004): The sprung rhythms of this horror movie, adapted from a Japanese horror movie directed by the same director, sometimes yield good scares. By the end, though, the ridiculous omnipotence of the ghosts makes the movie an exercise in the cliched nihilism of most American horror movies.

No one even tries to find a religious or spiritual solution to the ghost problem, though there is a scene early in the film which suggests either an abandoned plot thread or a red herring. The logic of the ghosts in the movie would seem to suggest that everyone on the planet should have been murdered by spirits long ago. They can do anything and go anywhere. And what is up with the hair? Lightly recommended because it's really short.


Night of the Living Dead: written by George Romero and John Russo; directed by Tom Savini; starring Tony Todd (Ben) and Patricia Tallman (Barbara) (1990): 1990 remake of George Romero's genre-defining zombie masterpiece of 1968. Romero supplies a new script, while make-up wizard Tom Savini directs for the first time. The whole experience loses something in colour, but the thing does build to a satisfying climax.

Stuntwoman Patricia Tallman makes for a good heroine, much less passive than the original Barbara, while Tony Todd is sharp and sympathetic as her brother-in-arms (though not the actual brother who says that famous line I'm not going to repeat). The social satire is much more pointed this time around, and much more in the vein of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. His zombies may be dangerous, but they're also sources of sorrow and pity in a way few other film-makers have even even tried to capture. And unlike so many younger American horror film directors, Romero isn't afraid to mix a bit of hope in with the despair and the disgust. Recommended.