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jeffoswald
Reviews
Fit for Christmas (2022)
Blech
I suggested to my wife we watch this together and share a little holiday romantic time. How bad could it be? Thirty minutes into it she asks "Isn't there a football game on?" Channel changed. We knew it was going to be cheesy and that is what you expect in a Hallmark style holiday movie. But, this was stale even for the tried and true 'finding love at Christmas' formula. Perhaps, the writers should try something a little different? This plot has been tried in so many variations that it is hard to create anything original or fresh. On the bright side, the venue looked great. I find it hard to believe that it wasn't a tourist destination already.
Bandolero! (1968)
Not every Western can be High Noon or Stagecoach
While hardly a classic in the sense that the two I mentioned, it is still a very enjoyable movie. Does it have flaws? Absolutely, but very few movies do not. Stewart is fantastic and Martin is always watchable. Welch is miscast, but she is not so terrible that you want to turn it off. The supporting cast is a Who's who of the Western genre. They don't add or subtract to the overall movie. Andrew Prine and George Kennedy are very good as well. All in all a good movie, so give it a shot.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Dreadful
I am a huge fan of the 1974 Sidney Lumet version. Even if you already knew what was going to occur, Lumet managed to create tension and drama by utilizing an excellent cast and pacing of the plot. The David Suchet version is also exceptionally well done and is a 1b to Lumet's 1a in my opinion. What made these adaptations so good was that they were more or less loyal adaptions to Christie's novel and managed to capture the spirit of the original story. So when I heard that a remake of this movie had been done, I initially refused to see it. Far too many classics have been recently remade and most have been disappointing or downright awful. I wish I had stuck to my original decision.
Alas, I found it on one of the premium movie channels and I could not resist the temptation. I knew that we were in trouble early on when Branagh (whom I usually like very much i.e. Dunkirk) decided to play Poirot not as the dandy that ANYONE who is familiar with this classic character knows him to be. It is like taking James Bond and making him a pacifist.
Then there are the goofy camera angles. What is the point of the shots that literally only show the TOP of the character's head? What the hell is he doing on top of the train? Ugh.
The casting. What a waste of a good cast. Here is a clue for you scriptwriters. When you dramatically change the characters, you dramatically change the script. The story begins to morph into something that is completely unrecognizable. This is definitely the case with this movie. The characters do things that are completely incomprehensible and only adds to the confusion. The classic "reveal" scene at the end of the movie falls completely flat.
Here is a suggestion to all of you movie moguls. Instead of butchering classic versions of movies (Murder on Orient, Magnificent Seven, Poseidon Adventure, Ben-Hur, etc etc.) why don't you take some of the mediocre or above average stories of the past and try to IMPROVE on them. If you feel compelled to remake a classic, at least try to be loyal to the original movie and material. After all, we call them classics for a reason.