After a short break caused by COVID, Kenneth Branagh’s handsome Agatha Christie adaptations, “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Death on the Nile” and now “A Haunting in Venice,” have become an annual tradition. Like fruit cake at Christmas, or those Halloween Molasses Kisses that stick to everything they come in contact with, the movies are a sweet treat, but are quickly forgotten.
Branagh returns as both director and elaborately mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot. When we first see the world’s best, and most famous sleuth, he is in self-exile in Venice, living alone with only his bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio) for company and as protection from the crime groupies that pester him when he leaves the house.
He is burned out, tired of staring into the abyss of the worst of human behavior. Instead, he passes his time ensconced on his rooftop patio, enjoying the sun and the best pastries Venice has to offer.
His idyll is interrupted when an old friend, possibly his only friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) drops by. She is the author of a string of detective novels based on Poirot’s exploits, and has a case she thinks will lure him out of retirement.
She convinces him to attend a Halloween night seance at the allegedly haunted palazzo of Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a mother grieving the tragic death of her daughter Alicia. The detective, a man of science, is skeptical, but agrees to attend, if only to expose the proceedings as fakery.
When people start dying, Poirot’s instincts kick in as he sorts through the red herrings, ghostly happenings and the backgrounds of each guest, including the pious housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), the shell-shocked Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his precocious son Leopold (Jude Hill) and psychic medium Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), to get to the bottom of the case. “There have been two impossible murders,” he says, “as if the living have been killed by the dead. No one shall leave this place until I know who did it.”
“A Haunting in Venice” is the most gothic of Branagh’s Christie adaptations. Tilted camera angles and extreme close-ups lend a claustrophobic, and welcome weird vibe to the murder mystery. Add to that some jump scares and hallucinogenic imagery, and you get the jitteriest of Branagh’s Christie films. The rest of it, from the stunt casting to the big reveal at the end, feel more familiar, like ghostly spectres left over from the other films.
Branagh directs and performs with vigor, but the mechanics of the investigation sap much of the film’s energy and tension. Despite good performances— Cottin and Yeoh are standouts—the talky nature of Poirot’s interrogations, even when broken up by slick editing and inventive photography, slow the movie’s pace to a crawl.
Worse, the cross examinations don’t reveal much in the way of usable clues for the audience. One of the treats of a murder mystery as a viewer is the opportunity to follow along, to arrive at a conclusion based on the information provided. “A Haunting in Venice” cobbles together a series of clues, obvious only to Poirot and screenwriter Michael Green. It feels like a cheat when the great detective reveals an arcane fact not even hinted at in the narrative.
“A Haunting in Venice” is a beautiful looking film, with exquisite, gothic production design and some fun performances, but as a thriller, it feels as lifeless as one of the movie’s murder victims.
“Golda,” a new biopic of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir is not a cradle to grave look at the life of the first women in the world to serve as a head of government in a democratic country. Instead, the film, now playing in theatres, focuses on the eighteen days of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
Hidden under an inch or two of make-up, Helen Mirren plays the chain-smoking, seventy-five-year-old Meir with equal parts fragility and steeliness. Confronted with the news that Syrian forces are gathering on the Golan Heights, she convenes a military consultation with Mossad chief Zvi Zamir (Rotem Keinan). Ignoring his warnings of imminent invasion, she approves full-scale mobilization but rejects a preemptive strike, fearing the perception of warmongering would affect Israel’s access to foreign aid and military support from their allies, especially the United States.
My gut told me that war was coming and I ignored it,” she says. “I should have mobilized that night. All those boys who died, I will carry the pain of that to my grave.”
Told primarily in flashbacks— Israeli director Guy Nattiv uses Meir’s testimony to the Agranat Commission into the failings of the Israel Defense Forces in the prelude to the war as a framing device—“Golda” is actually the story of two battles, the Yom Kippur War against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and Meir’s struggle with cancer.
Narrowing the film down to the Yom Kippur War allows for a focused look at those events but feels like part two of three of the Golda Meir story. A life of the magnitude and influence of Meir’s deserves and requires historical context. Watching the truncated story of “Golda” I found myself wishing for a more detailed account à la “The Crown,” but without the soapy elements.
The casting of Mirren was controversial—critics said an Israeli or Jewish actor should have been hired to play Israel’s most important female figure—but in Meir’s more intimate scenes, Mirren dives deep to portray the character’s many facets. Her eyes moisten at the reports of the horrors of war, she is resolute as the only woman in the room and, surprisingly, even humorous.
The film works best in Mirren’s scenes with Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) and her assistant Lou Kaddar (Camille Cottin). Her cat-and-mouse with United States Secretary of State Kissinger is far more playful than you might imagine.
“I am first an American, second a secretary of state, third a Jew,” says Kissinger. “In this country,” Meir replies, “we read from right to left.”
The relationship with Kaddar is grounded in respect and trust, and in the little moments, like when she solicitously takes a cigarette out of Meir’s mouth as she is undergoing cancer radiation therapy.
“Golda” isn’t the definitive telling of Meir’s story. It feels a little too stage bound, a little too condensed, but the collective effect of Mirren’s intimate moments and the sound design by Niv Adiri that brings the battlefield to Meir’s war room, make “Golda” an interesting, if flawed, retelling of one of the seminal events of the 1970s.
“Stillwater,” the new Matt Damon movie now playing in theatres, uses the bones of American exchange student Amanda Knox’s story as a starting point to tell a story of a father determined to prove his daughter’s innocence.
Damon embraces the role of Oklahoma oil rigger Bill Baker, a MAGA man whose wraparound shades are almost a character of their own. He’s rough ‘n’ tumble, prays before every meal and spends every dime he makes visiting his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) in prison in Marseille, France. She’s serving a nine-year sentence for the murder of her lover; a crime she says she didn’t commit.
Allison usually treats him with casual offhandedness—he wasn’t around much when she was a kid, and when he was, he was drunk—but this time is different. She hands him a letter, written in French, which he does not understand, with new evidence that she hopes will exonerate her.
When their Marseille-based lawyer tells Bill the letter and the new info is not enough to get a new trial, he launches his own investigation. Serving as translator is Virginie (Camille Cottin), who, along with her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvad), help him make his way through Marseille and provide the closest thing to a family he has known since his daughter went to jail.
“Refugees, zero waste,” says Virginie’s friend of Bill, “he’s your new cause.”
“Stillwater” is two-thirds of a good movie. The screenplay, co-written by director Tom McCarthy with Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré, darts back-and-forth, shifting focus between the various storylines. In the film’s first hour or so, the story skews toward Allison, Bill’s bumbling investigation into the new evidence and his burgeoning relationship with Virginie and Maya. But just as the story should heat up and head toward thriller territory, McCarthy suddenly veers away from Allison’s predicament. Abruptly, “Stillwater” becomes more interested in a presenting a character study of Bill, a man of few words and even fewer motivations. Damon is compellingly watchable in the role, giving Bill a deep inner life that isn’t always apparent on the surface—I guess still waters really do run deep—but the film feels sidetracked by the diversion.
“Stillwater” is wonderfully shot and the father-daughter relationship that develops between Bill and Maya is touching and authentic feeling but is let down in the film’s final act.
