The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C Following Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, A Haunting in Venice is Kenneth Branagh’s third go-around adapting Agatha Christie’s mystery novels featuring detective Hercule Poirot. Refreshingly, Branagh has opted to adapt one of Christie’s less famous Poirot novels this time. Based on the 1969 novel Hallowe’en […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B- Marlowe marks the return of classic pulp detective character Philip Marlowe to the big screen. First introduced by author Raymond Chandler in the 1939 novel The Big Sleep, Marlowe has since appeared in dozens and dozens of novels, short stories, radio plays and films, with the most famous portrayal of […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C+ Missing harkens back to a (thankfully) short-lived trend from 2014-2018. The thought process at the time was simple: If members of Gen Z find it so difficult to look away from their phones for two hours, let’s make movies that simulate the riveting experience of staring at a phone. So, […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B+ Vengeance, the directorial debut of B.J. Novak, is a dark comedy and a refreshingly neutral social commentary about the blending of cultures from red and blue states. A surprisingly original film to (briefly) creep into about a thousand theaters nationwide, Vengeance is an engrossing and often funny film that offers […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D+ The idea of Kenneth Branagh directing and starring as Hercule Poirot in a series of films based on Agatha Christie’s novels sounds so brilliant on paper that the underwhelming results seem even more crushingly disappointing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of old-school murder mystery whodunits and, consequently, […]
The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B- This is another case where I had never heard of a movie prior to heading to the theater to see it, but it was the only thing playing that I hadn’t seen and that seemed to make it my best option. Fortunately, while it’s nothing groundbreaking, there are far worse ways […]
If you’ve never heard of this movie, then you’re not alone. I had (very reluctantly) planned to see The War with Grandpa yesterday but I checked the theater listings desperately hoping to find something else to watch. Lo and behold, this was playing. I had never read a word about it, never saw a […]
I love a good whodunit. I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie’s novels, Clue is one of my all-time favorite movies and the idea of a bunch of rich people sitting around a parlor and drinking brandy as they are systematically bumped-off just speaks to me for some reason. What the fuck is a […]
Murder on the Orient Express is, of course, an adaptation of the classic mystery novel by Agatha Christie. I haven’t read the book (though I have read some of Christie’s many other mystery novels), but I have seen the original 1974 film adaptation. Truth be told, while it is considered a classic, it was […]