Death on the Nile (2022)

Too Heiress Human

or

"It's Nor Just a River in Egypt, Honey..."
 

We talked about the John Guillermin version of Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile" last year in anticipation of this year's release. The story's not one of Dame Agatha's best and is the weakest part of the film, which relies heavily on trying to repeat the success of the earlier all-star Murder on the Orient Express, but with fewer A-listers and an eye to luring the older audiences who flocked to Murder... with older stars like Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, and Peter Ustinov.

 

Well, now Kenneth Branagh follows up his version of Murder on the Orient Express with his version of Death on the Nile (given this route, can Evil Under the Sun be next?), which fixes some things from the earlier version—mostly performance—adds a little tension with a limited time-frame, as well as giving Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh and his mustache again) more of an emotional reason to solve the murder, rather than merely see justice done and the puzzle solved. It has already been well established in the Branagh version of Christie's world that Poirot prefers a tidier world, but, evidently, that is not enough.

Nor is it enough, apparently, that Poirot has a particularly fussy mustache—more than Ms. Christie implied and it was obsessed over in many reviews of Branagh's Murder—now we must know why it is. Necessary? No. But, at least in the opening black and white sequence which shows a particularly glorious and tragic day in Poirot's WWI service, we get to meet Catherine, whose history was hinted at in the previous Murder... Again, none of this is Christie's creation, but if it keeps Branagh engaged, then scripter Michael Green can play with the elements all he wants.

And play he does. Eliminating book characters, substituting others and swapping attributes from one character to another. The basic mystery is the same—a person is murdered on a closed stage—a ship going down the Nile—and no one goes missing and the obvious person with a motive has an airtight, can't-get-by-it alibi, and Poirot must find the killer before the ship docks and they disembark, the culprit possibly to go loose. The only thing helping in determining "whodunnit" is that two of the suspects are also murdered before the issue is solved. Process of elimination had to occur somewhere.

This is it in very general, non-spoilery turns, because the way Branagh and Green set it up, surprises come early and often, whether you've read the book or seen the earlier versions, and they're done in quite inventive ways that would have put Dame Agatha in a dead faint. It is for sure that she would not have approved of the steamy, sweaty dance sequences that open the film proper, not would she have approved of turning one of the passengers from a gossipy (and drunk) romance novelist to an African-American blues chanteuse* (Sophie Okonedo). The socialist on the boat is no longer a radical, but a member of the upper class (Jennifer Saunders), and there are no kleptomaniacs this time, but there is no longer a jewel thief being pursued by a friend and fellow-passenger of Poirot.

That role gets substituted by Poirot pal Bouc (Tom Bateman), back from the Murder... film, and this time accompanied by his mother Euphemia (Annette Bening), who just happens to be a friend of the family on the celebratory but doomed boat trip; in fact, everybody has some relation with the happy couple—they being Linnett and Simon Doyle (Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer), she being the heiress of the super-rich Ridgeway family. 

So, why is Poirot there? Well, that's one of those spoilery secrets unique to this version—although I can say that the happy Doyle's have asked Poirot for his assistance, as they are being stalked by Simon's former fiance Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey), who it seems can't let go. They think she's off her nut, and things get dangerous when Simon and Linnett escape being crushed at Abu Simbel. The thing is: "Jackie" hasn't arranged to smuggle herself on the boat yet and crash the party.

The production is lush, and perhaps too much so. The vista is given the full CGI treatment where everything looks so picture-postcard perfect that it feels like it was photographed in Egypt's uncanny valley—there doesn't even appear to be dust in the air, no grit (unusual in a desert environment), no one even sweats in the heat (certainly as much as they do on the dance floor), and there is a distinct difference between underwater shots of the Nile being dragged for clues, and the shots below the boat suggesting the carnivorous nature of life below the surface—there's plenty to show it on the ship, so the pixelated watery detours are completely unnecessary. And the film has a fetish for the Gilded Age right down to the glistening silverware and the sheen on a champagne bottle, lit as carefully as the stars.

And they're good, by the way. Branagh has some moments to flex his acting muscles with both comedy and tragedy masks. Gadot and Hammer are terrific (rumors to the contrary) and Emma Mackey's jilted fiancee simmers to a broil without the full-on hissy-fits that Mia Farrow brought to the 1978 version. Letitia Wright gets to play some drama, instead of playing "the sprite" (and she's great at it), Okonedo pleasantly threatening, Russell Brand just fine without relying on comedy, Jennifer Saunders delightfully brassy along with Dawn French, and Annette Bening a highlight, probably better than is called for.

Branagh direction is a bit stagey and geometric, keeping in mind a proscenium arch throughout as if the curtain just lifted. And the geometry extends to some almost too-perfect tracking shots that would make you suspect Wes Anderson was directing (if you didn't know any better). That being said, his version of a John Woo Mexican standoff lacks the tension that one should expect, except to wonder why there are so many guns allowed during international travel. Maybe it's movies like this that convinced the cruise lines to ban them.

In fact, the movie is a bit like a cruise trip—superficially opulent, until you realize you're stuck on a boat with people you don't like, and you swear to never do it again. But, then there's the lure to get away. Death on the Nile gets away with a lot.

* Dame Agatha was never afraid to use the "n-word" and in fact one of her most famous works contained the word in the title, before it was changed to something equally racist (in today's terms) at the hands of the publisher's, lest sales were hurt. (And you thought "cancel culture" was a new thing? It's been around as long as evolution).

Despicable Me

Written at the time of the film's release and before I developed my distaste for Minions. 

 
"Assemble the Minions!"

You can't swing a pixelated bug-eyed cat in a multi-plex these days without hitting a new digi-toon, being ground out like so many linked sausages, but with different degrees of quality.  The technology is now such that the makers no longer have to worry about working around the complexities of the images; such strides have been made in the field over the last 15 years that the work approaches photo-realism, if that is the intention of the pixel-wranglers. What is exciting now, with the constraints no longer a factor, is seeing what the various creators around the world DO with it, and the visions that they create, whether their source be in the world or the mind. Now that reality is no longer a problem, the makers of these visions can effectively throw it away.

So, here's Despicable Me.  You've been seeing the trailers for months, and for me, the impression has been a little "meh." Oh, the comic timing has been crack and the sensibility behind them a little twisted. But, whether that translated to a 90 minute feature is always the $20 million dollar question.

And Despicable Me is terrific. Frequently laugh out-loud funny, with breathless timing and a constant willingness to push the envelope in technology and story-telling. Sure, it has the obvious arc of a children's story, and you know how things will turn out, but the journey is the fun thing.

Gru (Steve Carell) is a "Fester-ish" super-villain on hard times. Oh, sure, he's not exactly hiding out in some super-secret headquarters somewhere—he only drives vehicles that pollute outrageously with a maximum of sparks and smoke, his is the only house in the neighborhood painted in dark, dingy colors and furnitured with Bondian uber-tech and stuffed animal corpses. Underneath is a vast gleaming complex linked by pneumatic tubes and what look like habi-trails, kept running by what appear to be thousands of animated twinkies.*He may seem like a villain who has everything (and what he doesn't have, he can obtain by ice-shackling the person who does with his "freeze-ray"), but there's a new villain named Vector (Jason Segel, voicing a character who's equal parts Bill Gates and Phil Silvers) who's just topped everybody by stealing one of the Pyramids. Good score. And the Bank of Evil ("formerly Lehman Brothers") likes the reaching entrepreneur with enough gall to think big when it comes to crime (call it "professional courtesy"), so they'll only dispense loans to those baddies with outlandish schemes. There's no greater "out-land" than The Moon, and so Gru sets his sights on it—a dream he's held since it was first pa-shawed by his crank of a Mum (Julie Andrews, wickedly unrecognizable).

But, you need a plan.  And his involves orphans ("We got adopted by a bald guy...I thought it would be more like Annie"), a "Spy vs. Spy"-style industrial espionage plot, and...cookie-robots.

The thing is witty in look and happenstance: the people are bulbously malleable as in The Incredibles, and the sets have a Burtonesque retro-engineering feel to them, but because the animation is done in France, the flow and pace, and attention to detail, is quite unlike things state-side, making it intriguing and refreshing. The voice-actors are spot-on by being nearly impenetrably unidentifiable...you won't recognize Will Arnett, or Kristen Wiig (two of my favorite comic actors of the moment) or Russell Brand, and Steve Carell's Gru is an amazing comic performance featuring crack timing, muttered asides and a nicely Slavic accent that tortures its way through idioms. 

And I love the buried movie references, little echoes of the past that tweak the unconscious, be they from It's a Wonderful Life, The Wrath of Khan, The Empire Strikes Back, or The Godfather (the last is so wickedly placed, I couldn't believe the writers were so sick to think of it). But, it's all done with its heart in the right place and a warmth of spirit tough to find in movies these days. It'll yank your heart strings to a ridiculously cartoonish length and never let them go.  This is one for the whole family, even though the parents will need to do a bit of explaining along the way (some of the jokes will just sail past the heads of kids, which is always a sign of a good cartoon).

I saw Despicable Me in 2-D, but it might actually benefit a 3-D screening, especially for the end-title sequence where the Minions attempt to bridge the gap between the screen and the audience—a hilarious concept that's a bit mind-blowing when you think of it (and evidently there's a phone app that allows you to translate what they're saying during it—will wonders never cease?).

* Called "Minions," they have all sorts of uses and are voiced by the co-directors and "Flight of the Conchords" Jemaine Clement.  Yee-es.

Despicable Me

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Assemble the Minions!"

You can't swing a pixelated bug-eyed cat in a multi-plex these days without hitting a new digi-toon, being ground out like so many linked sausages, but with different degrees of quality.  The technology is now such that the makers no longer have to worry about working around the complexities of the images; such strides have been made in the field over the last 15 years that the work approaches photo-realism, if that is the intention of the pixel-wranglers.  What is exciting now, with the constraints no longer a factor, is seeing what the various creators around the world DO with it, and the visions that they create, whether their source be in the world or the mind.  Now that reality is no longer a problem, the makers of these visions can effectively throw it away.

So, here's Despicable Me.  You've been seeing the trailers for months, and for me, the impression has been a little "meh."  Oh, the comic timing has been crack and the sensibility behind them a little twisted.  But, whether that translated to a 90 minute feature is always the $20 million dollar question.

And Despicable Me is terrific.  Frequently laugh out-loud funny, with breathless timing and a constant willingness to push the envelope in technology and story-telling.  Sure, it has the obvious arc of a children's story, and you know how things will turn out, but the journey is the fun thing.

Gru (Steve Carell) is a "Fester-ish" super-villain on hard times.  Oh, sure, he's not exactly hiding out in some super-secret headquarters somewhere—he only drives vehicles that pollute outrageously with a maximum of sparks and smoke, his is the only house in the neighborhood painted in dark, dingy colors and furnitured with Bondian uber-tech and stuffed animal corpses. Underneath is a vast gleaming complex linked by pneumatic tubes and what look like habi-trails, kept running by what appear to be thousands of animated twinkies.* He may seem like a villain who has everything (and what he doesn't have, he can obtain by ice-shackling the person who does with his "freeze-ray"), but there's a new villain named Vector (Jason Segel, voicing a character who's equal parts Bill Gates and Phil Silvers) who's just topped everybody by stealing one of the Pyramids. Good score.  

And the Bank of Evil ("formerly Lehman Brothers") likes the reaching entrepreneur with enough gall to think big when it comes to crime (call it "professional courtesy"), so they'll only dispense loans to those baddies with outlandish schemes. There's no greater "out-land" than The Moon, and so Gru sets his sights on it—a dream he's held since it was first pa-shawed by his crank of a Mum (Julie Andrews, wickedly unrecognizable).

But, you need a plan. And his involves orphans ("We got adopted by a bald guy...I thought it would be more like Annie"), a "Spy vs. Spy"-style industrial espionage plot, and...cookie-robots.

The thing is witty in look and happenstance: the people are bulbously malleable as in The Incredibles, and the sets have a Burtonesque retro-engineering feel to them, but because the animation is done in France, the flow and pace, and attention to detail, is quite unlike things state-side, making it intriguing and refreshing. The voice-actors are spot-on by being nearly impenetrably unidentifiable...you won't recognize Will Arnett, or Kristen Wiig (two of my favorite comic actors of the moment) or Russell Brand, and Steve Carell's Gru is an amazing comic performance featuring crack timing, muttered asides and a nicely Slavic accent that tortures its way through idioms. 

And I love the buried movie references, little echoes of the past that tweak the unconscious, be they from It's a Wonderful Life, The Wrath of Khan, The Empire Strikes Back, or The Godfather (the last is so wickedly placed, I couldn't believe the writers were so sick to think of it). But, it's all done with its heart in the right place and a warmth of spirit tough to find in movies these days. It'll yank your heart strings to a ridiculously cartoonish length and never let them go. This is one for the whole family, even though the parents will need to do a bit of explaining along the way (some of the jokes will just sail past the heads of kids, which is always a sign of a good cartoon).

I saw Despicable Me in 2-D, but it might actually benefit a 3-D screening, especially for the end-title sequence where the Minions attempt to bridge the gap between the screen and the audience—a hilarious concept that's a bit mind-blowing when you think of it (and evidently there's a phone app that allows you to translate what they're saying during it—will wonders never cease?).

* Called "Minions," they have all sorts of uses and are voiced by the co-directors and "Flight of the Conchords" Jemaine Clement.  Yee-es.