Death on the Nile review – Kenneth Branagh makes heavy weather of Christie caper

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Admin

Branagh’s spirited performance as Poirot and a big-name ensemble cast can’t keep this stale and two-dimensional whodunnit afloat

Long coronavirally delayed, Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie movie puffs effortfully into harbour. It’s the classic whodunnit about a murder on a steamer making its way down the river in Egypt with an Anglo-American boatful of waxy-faced cameos aboard. The horrible homicide means that one of the passengers will have to spring into action, and this is of course the amply moustached Hercule Poirot, played by Branagh himself. It is Poirot who interviews suspects, supervises corpse-storage in the ship’s galley freezer cabinet and delivers the final unmasking – and all without the captain insisting that the Egyptian police should possibly get involved.

Screenwriter Michael Green has adapted the 1937 novel with some new inventions: some people of colour are introduced, and Christie’s intense dislike for her wealthy-hypocrite leftwing character has been dialled down. Most startlingly, Green invents a very good prelude showing the young Poirot’s service in the trenches of the first world war, and the origin of that moustache. Nothing in the rest of this rather stale and two-dimensional tale matches the brio of that opening.

What happens when your star is cancelled but you can’t cancel the film?

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Admin

Scandals affecting Armie Hammer, Kevin Spacey and Johnny Depp have all hit their movies. We look at how film companies cope when leading players’ box-office stock crashes

Does Armie Hammer ever yearn for the time when the worst thing people said was that nobody liked him? “Ten Long Years of Trying to Make Armie Hammer Happen” was the cruel but incisive headline of a 5,000-word BuzzFeed article from 2017 which concluded that only a wealthy white man could not merely have withstood so much failure but have been rewarded for it. The US actor tweeted about the piece, calling it “bitter AF” before making a celeb’s exit from the social media platform: he deleted his account then quietly reactivated it.

Those must seem now like halcyon days. Hammer’s fall began a year ago when messages surfaced online, purportedly sent from him to various extramarital partners, suggesting an erotic interest in cannibalism. Sexual assault allegations were made by multiple women, while an accusation of rape prompted a Los Angeles police investigation. Hollywood tends to act fast when handling a scandal in the age of social media and #MeToo: Hammer was dropped immediately by his agents, William Morris Endeavor. He exited projects including the Jennifer Lopez romcom Shotgun Wedding, Amma Asante’s cold war thriller Billion Dollar Spy and The Offer, a 10-part series about the making of The Godfather. His scenes in Taika Waititi’s soccer comedy Next Goal Wins were reshot with Will Arnett taking his place.

Why stars should think twice before calling out their critics

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Admin

From Lizzo to Lana Del Rey, celebrities have taken umbrage with reviews online. But arguing with journalists only warps the public’s view of the media, and puts writers under siege

In 2018, while working as a freelance writer, I travelled three hours outside of London on a train, and then a coach, to review a music festival. I camped in the cold and the rain, waking up at 8am each morning to make sure I didn’t miss anything. When I got home, I filed what I thought was a generous review. I did not expect the organiser and the founder of the festival to find me on Twitter to tell me that I clearly hadn’t attended, or that my three-star review was full of lies. They were hurt that I hadn’t given it five stars. I was hurt that my hard work – complete with blood blisters, swollen glands and glitter that took two weeks to wash out of my hair – was now seen as a declaration of war.

As an editor and sometime critic specialising in pop culture, differing perceptions are par for the course. I find it skull-crushingly boring to see the same TV show or album receive near-identical reviews across the board, or read identikit reviews of the same film. I inhale people’s opinions – the good and the bad, the funny and the touching, the flippant and the problematic – and exhale them. I don’t internalise them. I don’t agree with a lot of what I read, but I take something from it: someone else’s views. I go to certain people because I know, nine times out of 10, we think very, very differently (here’s looking at you, Camilla Long). Reviews can serve as a guide but they are also an artform in their own right. They entertain, inform and challenge readers. The writer AO Scott described criticism in his 2016 book Better Living Through Criticism as “art’s late-born twin”.

Actor Armie Hammer under investigation for 2017 sexual assault allegation

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Admin

The accuser, known as Effie, was 20 at the time and claims she briefly dated the Call Me by Your Name star while he was married

The actor Armie Hammer is under investigation for sexual assault, Los Angeles police said Thursday.

Hammer is the main suspect in a sexual assault that was reported to police on 3 February, an LAPD spokesperson said. Police did not give further details.

Armie Hammer drops out of Jennifer Lopez film amid social media controversy

Posted on January 13, 2021 by Admin

Hammer was due to appear opposite Lopez in the action comedy Shotgun Wedding but has requested to step away

Armie Hammer has dropped out of an upcoming film with Jennifer Lopez after messages allegedly sent by the actor were leaked online. Hammer has described the messages and social media response to them as an online attack, calling them vicious and spurious.

Hammer, star of movies including The Social Network and Call Me By Your Name, had been set to appear opposite Lopez in action comedy Shotgun Wedding. However, he will no longer take the role.