Reviews

Perhaps the cliche writing here would not be so nauseating if it weren't claiming an association with Austen. No, on second thought, it would still be as nauseating.

"I'm sorry," says our enabling, insecure, codependent "heroine" about a million times. But, we can make her a bumbling mess because, you know, she HUNTS and plays CRICKET. So she's, like, EMPOWERED?

"I refuse to accept your apology." GASP! "Because it is I who should apologize," says our "hero" who was a complete jerk for the first four episodes. But...no!...he's not a jerk. He's just a poor man with a broken heart in need of our heroine to save him from himself! Because brooding, arrogant gaslighters are sooooo attractive--according to the mostly MALE writers of this so-called "adaptation."

The only thing more disappointing than watching this is realizing that our cultural bar has dropped so low that people are gushing over this rehash of tired old chick flick tropes full of outdated gender stereotypes without any of Austen's wit, intelligence or humanity.

I'm so encouraged to hear this got panned in Europe. But I'm guessing Americans will eat it up.

As of this writing, male users have given this film an average rating of 5.8 and female viewers have given this film an average rating of 7.7, so...with that kind of blatant gender divide you know something interesting is going on!

In this film, Ophelia has agency, thinks for herself, affects the narrative of the men around her and is strong and beautiful while she's doing it. You can imagine how threatening that is to some--ahem--people who prefer their female characters as lampshade tropes fluffing male heroes and hold narratives written by men and the pathetic female characters they create to be sacrosanct. In other words, I suggest you consider the source when you read some of these reviews.

This movie is gorgeous to watch. I mean, really stunning. It's refreshing to see a film that just celebrates visual beauty. Kudos on the art direction, costumes and makeup. This film was strongest when it matched the original Hamlet narrative with clever twists. Even adding characters not in the original narrative that play "off stage" was interesting and fresh. But changing the plot from the original play during the action of Shakespeare's play? That pushed the film a bit too far, which is why I deducted 2 stars.

As a lifelong fan of Shakespeare, I thoroughly enjoyed two hours of tweaking the Bard. A long time coming, well done and good fun. I hope we see more of the same with other Shakespeare tales.

What happened? The White Queen and the The White Princess series were such a breath of fresh air that actually gave the women of history the respect to be full human beings with intelligent heads, passionate hearts and mature agency. This series plays more like a Lifetime TV soap opera. Women are obsessed with sex and love when they're not slut shaming each other. And then there's the contrived gratuitous nude scenes of female characters. Did we really need to see Princess Catherine naked in her bath before her wedding? Because nothing communicates depression and disillusionment like full body nudity? Instead of spending time on the fascinating politics of the era (like the previous two miniseries did), viewers are forced to sit through fabricated scenarios with fictitious minor characters such as "helpless damsels in distress" being rescued by "male saviors." Ugh. Remember how Starz had a different version of The White Queen for American audiences that had more gratuitous sex scenes than the UK version? My guess is that this time, Starz must have pressured Phillipa Gregory to dumb down and sex up these women from the get go. What a disappointing bait and switch.

Hollywood keeps giving the green light on these movies that contain female characters that have no relation to my life or any women I am friends with. No, we're not all dreading turning 50 and filled with low self-esteem about aging. Just gender flip this film. Imagine a film of a bunch of 50 something men getting together for two hours of stale self-loathing humor. No men would watch it. Women should boycott (girlcott?) this film, too.

Do not listen to the (male) critics giving this a mediocre rating.

Like with the reviews of "Maleficent," the mostly male sci-fi geek critics are completely missing how amazingly revolutionary, inspiring and refreshing this gender-flipped and race-flipped reboot of the 1960s series is, labeling it "boring" because

1) there's no psychopathic violence 2) there's no pornification of female characters and 3) people are kind and good to each other and act with integrity

As we all know, these are heinous sins in the Psychopornopathic Media Age, particularly to (male) critics who have deadened their humanity by watching oodles of violence and pornography.

AND, those same critics are missing how AMAZING it is to see the series break tired old gender and romance stereotypes for BOTH women AND men. Because, you know, that's too "PC" to be fun. lol

I binge watched the whole series in two days!

Just good clean fun for all ages all the way around without having to endure any trauma to your neural net, autonomic nervous system or humanity. :)

Chills, spills and thrills! Beautiful vistas of an alien planet! And Parker Posey's anti-hero, Dr. Smith, is creepily awesome!

Definitely kid friendly, too. Watch it with your children. You'll be glad you did. <3

We actually know what Agatha Christie would have thought of Kenneth Branaugh's bastardization of "Murder on the Orient Express." She predicted, in "Mrs. McGinty's Dead," that some idiot would dramatize her books by adding sex and violence that was not in her original work and hypermasculinizing Poirot, while dumbing down her expert character development in a way that insults the audience's intelligence. She knew it had to happen. And it has.

So much about this movie was so bad, it was laughable. Branaugh's heavy handed direction--"Look at me everybody! I'm so clever! I'm going to put Poirot on top of the train! underneath the train! on the side of the train! And film the train from every possible angle like a fight scene from the Batman TV series!" was the worst kind of in your face grandstanding directing. The shots from above--and I mean directly ABOVE--the action were simply ridiculous.

Branaugh even MADE SURE we ALL KNEW his Poirot was HETEROSEXUAL by repeated non sequitur contrived references to a young, thin, pretty, white female love interest in a photo who had about as many lines (none) as the "prostitute" added to a scene with the creeped up Monsieur Bouc character, whose only line was to gush over meeting Poirot, when she wasn't simpering like a child. I honestly have never been so repulsed by a handsome male character in my life as Bouc's predatory lecher.

What the heck was Branaugh thinking? The only thing worse than dumbing down and sexing up the story with psychopathic violence and creepy lechers was the hitting- you-over-the-head-with-oh-so-unsubtle white savior references to the terrible evils of RACISM!!! Please, someone save us from Hollywood white male liberals bending over backwards to be politically correct about race and thinking they are sooooo progressive while maintaining the worst female madonna/whore lampshade character tropes and adding stabbings, guns, fist fights and shootings not in the original story.

"Yes, I took a masterpiece and made it into a self serving piece of crap--but that's OK, because there's a black doctor who gets to make some great speeches about how his white male friend helped him get into med school."

So...let's review. Branaugh ADDED to Christie's original story 1) Poirot's righteous finger pointing at the horrors of racism (adding an empowered black MALE character) and 2) Poirot chuckling with his buddy (wink wink) about buying and selling women for sex. In 1934. In Istanbul. Creating a disempowered female character known as "the prostitute" who does not even get a name and whose entire narrative purpose is to stroke Branaugh/Poirot's ego and 3) adding a female love interest whose only narrative purpose is to proof Branaugh/Poirot's "manhood" who is literally an inanimate photograph and 4) male characters punching walls, fist fighting, stabbing and shooting people and 5) giving Poirot himself characteristics completely antithetical to Christie's beloved detective. As if we needed any more proof of Hollywood's hypocrisy in the treatment of women and sex in our films and normalizing toxic gender stereotypes in both male and female characters.

And the script! It read like some high school freshman TRYING to sound erudite. "Overt overture?" Uh...I was waiting for them to serve a "cheesy cheeseburger" in the dining car. Many of the lines would have been more appropriate in a Steven Seagal movie--"Why won't you DIE!" What!??!?!

Only a fool would take one of the masterpieces of British literature by the great Agatha Christie and make it into a pandering show of ego and arrogance, while insulting the audience's intelligence and perverting Christie's moral dilemma on the definition of justice into a tale of vigilantism and revenge by a bunch of thugs little better than the man they murdered. I am HORRIFIED to think a whole new generation will think THIS detritus has anything to do with Agatha Christie's novel. If I could, I would give this film negative stars.

Do yourself a favor. Watch David Suchet's virtuoso performance in the 2010 Murder on the Orient Express. That production did Christie justice and then some. Or better yet, read the book. Remember reading? Then you'll know that Branaugh should be tarred and feathered for what he did to her epic magnum opus.

No, Ken, you didn't have to mutate Christie's story to pander to today's audiences. She is literally the best selling author of all time. Christie needs no help. She appealed to people's humanity and intelligence, creating one of the most popular characters in the history of literature, not to mention a pantheon of assertive female characters and humane male characters, breaking stereotypes 80 years ago that, unfortunately, still survive today. All you did was play to the lowest common denominator, appealing to our baser instincts while maintaining arguably the most brilliant whodunnit plot of all time. So, new audiences think this "cheesy cheeseburger" is great, not realizing that they could have had filet mignon.

And the tragedy is--she even predicted you would do it. Strip her legacy of it's intelligence and humanity, add male and female stereotypes and neanderthal violence all the while using her brilliant plot to make money.

And you STILL did it.

The comedy: There were many, many laugh-out-loud moments in this film. I heard males and females of all ages laughing in the theater. There were also jokes that weren't all that funny, but when it was funny, it was REALLY funny. Definitely a good time.

The gender flipping: If you're female, or a male who supports gender progressive movies (like my male date for the film who really enjoyed it, too) this film gets high points for images that we rarely see on film that are inspiring and way more accurate as to how women are in real life than Hollywood would have us believe. Namely, women are 1) funny 2) brave 3) intelligent 4) warriors who are 5) supportive of each other. And all without cleavage, perfect hair or pornographic posing. Oh, and it also sends the message that females are attracted to sexy males. Wow. How revolutionary...women lust, too! Who'd have thunk it?

I was sitting next to a young white girl of about 12 who laughed and clapped throughout the film. I asked her about the film after the credits rolled. She was smiling and excited and could not stop talking. Here's what she said:

"My new favorite film!" "I didn't want it to end. I kept saying don't end, don't end, don't end!" "I liked the black Ghostbuster--she really stood out and was really funny!" "I have a new crush-- the boy in the film!"

So, while this film may be "ruining" some adult men's childhoods...it seems to be poised to be a highlight for the childhoods of the current generation of girls.

Gertrude Bell is one of the most remarkable people (of either sex) to have ever lived...but you wouldn't know it from this film. Archaeologist, mountain climber, poet, translator, linguist, explorer, diplomat, spy, (to name just a handful of her many accomplishments) and all in a time in which women were virtually prohibited from doing any of those things, for the most part, and in territories that even men of the time feared to tread. In addition to being the world's expert on both Sunni and Shiite relations before, during and after WWII, she was charged with drawing up the boundaries for modern day Iraq. She was respected, admired and desired.

But, since she was female, it took nearly a decade to green light a movie on her life and then some man decides to make her life story an epic "romance" and, of course, make the MEN in her life central to her story. How heartbreaking that her story was so terribly contrived to conform to Hollywood's stereotypes about women and women's lives. And how more tragic that this film could not even find a U.S. distributer as of this writing. This is why we live in a world that thinks women make little to no contributions to history. We rarely tell their stories and when we do, we stuff the round peg of a remarkable life into the square hole of Hollywood sexist tropes, believing no one wants to see a film with a female protagonist unless she's spending at least half the movie pining over some man in order to feel whole.

While the movie does cover many of her remarkable accomplishments, my beef with the film is the need to weigh her story down with overly melodramatic, poorly written scenes of tragic love instead of celebrating a superlative life of unique and notable triumphs. I wanted to see more on her travels, her discoveries, her diplomacy, her efforts during the war. Just gender flip this film (although it would be hard to find a man of history as accomplished in multiple fields as she was) and you'll see how ridiculous is the script's focus on what was only one facet of the brilliant gem that was Gertrude Bell.

I urge anyone interested in history to read about this woman's life. Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, by Janet Wallach is a great biography.

Hollywood has perfected the fine art of trivializing and "romanticizing" women's history...yet again.

I had high hopes for this film, but was really disappointed. It lazily and unconsciously eroticizes hyper masculinity and rape culture ideas about sexuality. It's also shamefully heteronormative. Lesbian, gay and transgender people of color simply do not exist. I lost count of how many "Be a Man" moments there were in the film (hey Mr. Lee, that's kinda the problem right there). Spike Lee sells out black women to save black "manhood" by reinforcing that women's worth and power is in their sexuality. The problem isn't that the film is sexy, because it's not. The problem is that the film is rapey. WHAT a missed opportunity to really make some statements about breaking down the gender norms that enable male gang violence. Instead, this film just reinforced a strict gender binary in which females are dressed as porn stars and move like strippers and are the objects of lust. For all the talk of "booty" I didn't see one naked male "booty" in the whole film--though there was plenty of naked female "booty." The language of "sexuality" in the film repeatedly frames sex as something the big strong male does TO the sexy female who gives it up to him. Spike Lee has taken his archaic definition of "sex" from the porn industry, which is ironic, since the film is about becoming conscious of your own "slave conditioning." Apparently the women in this film did not get that memo regarding sexuality. The people raving about this film are totally oblivious about this underlying irony. For women and men of all colors, this movie gets three stars for being one step forward, but two steps back in analyzing and addressing the true cause of male gang violence--toxic hyper masculinity and the sexual scripts that enable it, which this film enthusiastically reinforces.