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Post by Salzmank on Sept 9, 2020 16:40:19 GMT
A more recent example but I really enjoyed Branagh's Dead Again. I keep meaning to check it out.
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Post by politicidal on Sept 9, 2020 17:18:14 GMT
A more recent example but I really enjoyed Branagh's Dead Again. I keep meaning to check it out. Pretty great. I don't hear it mentioned much though.
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Post by Salzmank on Sept 13, 2020 3:36:02 GMT
This may be blasphemous, but is Geraldine McEwan anyone else’s favorite screen Miss Marple? To be candid, I find the McEwan adaptations much better-paced than the much-vaunted Joan Hicksons, and McEwan displayed a wonderful mischief-streak that made her Marple more of a character than a stereotypical old gossip. Watching the Murder at the Vicarage adaptation now… It’s splendid, and McEwan’s Marple is wonderfully mischievous—“the worst cat in the village,” Christie originally called her.
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Post by Salzmank on Nov 12, 2020 18:59:42 GMT
I'd like to praise the Murder, She Wrote episode “The Corpse Flew First Class,” which I rewatched yesterday for the first time in years. It’s got everything I like best in mysteries: confined setting, eccentric suspects, witty dialogue, multiple clues, surprise solution (object lesson in misdirecting attention away from the most-likely person)—all of which are more than most MSW eps can boast. Direction (by TV vet Walter Grauman) better than usual too.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 15, 2020 6:59:47 GMT
I am a huge fan of The Thin Man and the Pink Panther movies but Knives Out is an exceptional whodunit, one of the few that gives enough clues to solve it yourself if you are observant. (I wasn't observant enough.) I also enjoy Clue although it's unsolvable. Guess I like my whodunits with some grins.
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Post by dirtypillows on Nov 24, 2020 16:46:08 GMT
And Then There Were None - the 1945 version is the best. Though I like the 1974 version more than most.
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Post by Salzmank on Dec 7, 2020 4:31:10 GMT
I’ve been watching some ’30s Philo Vance flicks recently. I’d already seen The Kennel Murder Case (1933, with William Powell as Vance; a classic of the genre, brilliantly directed by Michael Curtiz), The Dragon Murder Case (1934; entertaining but a weak solution, and Warren William is no Powell), and The Garden Murder Case (1936; pretty weak). William Powell played Vance in four Murder Cases: Canary (1929), Greene (1929), Benson (1930), and the aforementioned Kennel. Other than Kennel—by far the best of the series— Benson is good, with a solid mystery plot and a quick pace. The 1929 films are not especially great, but they are fascinating as early talkies. I’ve got to give Canary another shot, but I liked quite a few things about Greene despite its slow pace and few camera movements. Not-yet-Sherlock-Holmes Basil Rathbone played Vance once, in The Bishop Murder Case (also 1929). It’s also more interesting than good, but it has some effective Gothic-horror touches and a genuinely creepy sequence in which a man is killed as a schoolteacher reads fairy tales to her pupils. Rathbone, though, is stiffer than Powell is in the same year. I haven’t seen the rest in the series. Has anyone else seen these? |
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Post by novastar6 on Dec 7, 2020 7:18:56 GMT
Knives Out. I couldn't figure out how they were going to fill up 2 hours when less than halfway in it's revealed there was no murder, so how can you have a murder mystery without a murder? but they found a way to tie up that loose end anyway. |
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Post by Salzmank on Dec 2, 2021 16:33:10 GMT
Did I not put The Verdict (1945) on my list? It deserves to be on the list.
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