BEFORE: Last week's films "Moonwalkers" and "Bright" were viewed on Netflix, and "Jane Got a Gun" was viewed on iTunes because I didn't catch it on Netflix in time. And yesterday's "Pirates of the Caribbean" was viewed on Netflix, and tomorrow's film too. But tonight I'm finally dipping into that stack of Academy screeners, so that Johnny Depp can carry over from "Dead Men Tell No Tales", and he's also the link to tomorrow's film. Now, as I've explained before, it's NOT illegal for me to borrow these screeners, even though I have to go through several on-screen warnings about anti-piracy and how these screeners shouldn't be loaned out to anyone, and should be destroyed after the Academy member breaks the seal on them and watches them ONCE only. The simple justification for this is that all of these films WILL be on premium cable some time in the next, say, 6 months. And I WILL record them then and put them on DVD in my collection. But by then I will have missed the best linking connections, so I'm just pre-watching this now, before adding it to my collection later, when it airs on cable.
But it's (hopefully) relevant now - or, more accurately, it was relevant two months ago, before the Oscar ceremony aired. But for me to be only two months behind, that's a good sign, that means I'm catching up. Maybe next Oscar season I can watch the films BEFORE they're nominated and awarded, but I think that might be asking a lot, we'll see.
I'm already sort of regretting not following the Paul McCartney link - I've got a bunch of rock-themed documentaries building up, on everyone from Bowie and Clapton to Rush and Black Sabbath, plus those famous docs about Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston (yes, it's all rather morbid now...) Linking from McCartney could have made a great entry point, since there are 2 Beatles docs on Netflix, and PBS is running that "Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years" documentary this week, too. (Plus there are THREE docs/concert films about the Rolling Stones airing this week...) But as I've said, my schedule is arranged from now to July 4, and if I stop to watch all those music docs (15 at last count) it's going to throw my schedule off, I may not be able to get back on board my chain in time for Mother's Day, Memorial Day and Father's Day, not to mention the new "Avengers" and "Solo" films. So I've got to just collect all these music docs and wait for another opening on the schedule.
Oh, and Movie Year #10 is now 1/3 over, I forget that hitting the 100 mark means that. But I am right on schedule, even though I have no idea what Movie #3,000 will be. I've only got things programmed up to about Movie #2,980 - so I can only tell you 80 movies that WON'T be #3,000.
AFTER: It's 2018, but everything old is sort of new again, and being re-packaged for a new generation. The hits on TV include "Roseanne", "Will & Grace", "Hawaii Five-O", "MacGyver" and "Lethal Weapon". I think "The X-Files" is also coming back for more episodes, not to mention the impending return of "Magnum, P.I." with a twist, and I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of retro revamps. When they pitched the new "Lost in Space", did someone say, "Think of it as "Lost", only in space!" So now "American Idol", "Dynasty", "Cagney and Lacey", "Charmed", "Murphy Brown", "Trading Spaces", they're all coming back. Somebody who had the bad fortune to fall into a coma in the late 1990's or early 2000's could wake up, turn on TV and feel like they never missed a beat. (Just don't let that person watch the news or tell them who the President is, they probably wouldn't believe you anyway.)
The same really goes for movies, too - did anyone in the 1980's or 1990's think we'd be watching "Planet of the Apes" and "Mad Max" movies here in the future? Or that there would be ELEVEN "Star Wars" movies instead of three? (I'm counting "Solo", "Rogue One" and the animated "Clone Wars" one, of course). That there would be a legitimate prequel to "The Wizard of Oz", remake of "The Pink Panther" and five more movies with "Rocky" in them? Surely we are living in the end times. Horror movie franchises, I can understand, but who saw the remakes of "The Magnificent Seven" and "Ben-Hur" coming? Were they even necessary? Now that "Jumanji" and "Tomb Raider" have been re-booted, I think it's safe to say that no matter what your favorite franchise is, more installments are probably on the way.
But this is questionable at best, to re-make the most famous film version of an Agatha Christie novel, because this story is SO distinctive, and if you've seen the 1974 movie, there's very little reason to watch this again. I don't think I can watch this objectively, not if they stick to the same script, so I think the best bet here is just to watch it, see if it's the same as the last version, get it out of the way, and move on. So that's what I'm going to do, and the less I say about the plot here, especially the ending, the better. But that goes for any murder mystery, right? You're actually better off here if you NEVER saw the 1974 version, in which case, feel free to dive right in. And then you won't have to watch the inevitable remake of this remake, which should hit theaters some time in the 2030's. (Will there even BE theaters in the 2030's, or will we have holo-decks by then?)
I suppose it's natural to follow up all of the Sherlock Holmes films I watched in March with yet another murder mystery - it's been only about three weeks since Sherlock solved a murder mystery on a train in "The Pearl of Death", after all. But Hercule Poirot is NOT Sherlock Holmes, although they have similar super-human like powers of observation - but here there's an implication that Hercule's power comes from having OCD - I guess in this case that stands for "obsessive compulsive detective". Is it possible, was he always this way in the books, was he "Monk" before there was a "Monk"?
I wish they could have kept the OCD idea alive for the whole film, but they sort of abandon that halfway through - if he's a good detective because he notices things that are out of place or don't line up right, you'd think that would be helpful in the main case, not just in the lead-in story, which sort of tells us what we need to know about Poirot. I liked the part where he stepped in some camel dung, and because he knew this was going to throw him "off-balance", he promptly stepped in the pile of dung with the other shoe, just to even things out. I feel you, Poirot. When you live by a set of rules, you have to follow them through, all the way. Later, when talking with Johnny Depp's character, he describes himself as being older, set in his ways, and aware of the finer things in life. That's not nearly as much fun...
From a structural standpoint, the other bugaboo is that there's no real way for mystery fans who DON'T know the ending to possibly guess at it, because it involves the information from another case, which Poirot is quite familiar with, and the audience is not. But it eventually all comes out in the wash, as it should. Thankfully not in flashback form.
Also starring Kenneth Branagh (last seen in "Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope"), Tom Bateman, Penelope Cruz (last seen in "The Brothers Grimsby"), Willem Dafoe (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Judi Dench (last seen in "Spectre"), Josh Gad (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast"), Derek Jacobi (las seen in "Cinderella"), Leslie Odom Jr. (last seen in "Red Tails"), Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "People Like Us"), Daisy Ridley (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Olivia Colman (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Lucy Boynton (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Marwan Kenzari (last seen in "Ben-Hur"), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Sergei Polunin, Miranda Raison.
RATING: 5 out of 10 second-class compartments
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