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Reviews
Wormwood (2017)
Great documentary or great film but not both at once
I watched this over 2 days and both times I had trouble sleeping afterwards thinking about this story and all its ramifications. As many reviewers have said, it is FAR too long, deliberately strung out and padded especially with a specious comparison to Hamlet which allows for numerous clips of the b/w Olivier film version. There is no real relation to Hamlet here even though both stories feature a Son who's Father has died in bizarre circumstances. The essential theme of Hamlet is one of obsession with revenge which leads to madness and slaughter.
In Eric Olsen's calm and witty and highly intelligent discussions I did not at any time detect a desire for revenge, only a desperate need to find an unattainable truth.
Unlike many others I really loved the dramatised reconstruction - the cast was excellent and the film created a powerful atmosphere of dread and grief. It just seemed wasted as the viewer is constantly jolted out of the reconstruction and back to the documentary. Equally, the documentary, when it plays it straight and allows Eric to speak or shows archive film of the hearings, is also really poweful and it is annoying to be jolted out of that and back to the same dramatised scenes over and over.
By the way, thanks to the reviewer who mentioned Eric's Son, Stephan Olson. I think the ommission of any mention of him is quite underhand. The film strongly suggests that Eric has not had any successful relationships with women because of his obsession and that his personal life has been pretty empty but clearly he was with someone long enough for her to have a child with him and for that child to be a part of his family.
Marple: Endless Night (2013)
Casting failures dunnit
The majority of these TV Marple adaptations are excellent but this is pretty awful. The original story has a very dark atmosphere to it and and was an early example of the Unreliable Narrator technique now so common in crime fiction.
In the book you feel empathy with the narrator until the reveal. In this production Tom Hughes comes across as so cold and narcissistic I felt he made an obvious villain. Joanna Vanderham as Ellie was equally unengaging - in the book she is high spirited, impulsive, childlike but here she is so lacking in energy it makes her supposedly passionate marriage to Mike and obsessive friendship with Greta totally unconvincing.
This lack of engagement affects most of the cast so it's impossible to believe in the story despite the usual immaculate production values. For me only Adam Wadsworth as the architect friend Robbie stood out.
I really love Julia Mckenzie as Marple but she is wasted here as her forced inclusion into the story jarrs with the use of a narrator.
All in all not worth two hours of anyone's time.