We're Getting More Branagh Poirot!

Chris here. Has everyone caught up to Murder on the Orient Express yet? For yours truly, it was set exactly in the spot in Europe that Clueless said we might be "whelmed" and our Eric Blume felt the same. But that hasn't stopped audiences from turning it into a modest hit, resulting in a global take of over $150 million - and that's enough for Fox to officially kick off a mini-franchise.

The new Agatha Christie Poirot films are keeping in line with the adaptations of the 70s, so next up will be Death on the Nile - expect Evil Under the Sun afterwards should Nile be a success too. Branagh is expected to return as director and star, and Orient Express's screenwriter Michael Green will be back as well. Get ready for more CGI exotic locales and modes of transportation because this one is set on a steamboat in Egypt. John Guillermin's 1978 version was an Oscar winner for Costume Design (Angela Lansbury headresses!) so let's hope for repeat opulence there as well.

But most importantly it will feature another massive cast! The aforementioned screen adaptation featured Lansbury, Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, Mia Farrow, David Niven, and Peter Ustinov's Poirot to name a few. It wouldn't be too confusing to have Michelle Pfeifer return, would it? What famous faces do you want to see in Branagh's next ensemble mystery?

Review: Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

by Eric Blume

The good news is the bad news:  director Kenneth Branagh’s new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is exactly what you think it will be.  It’s a stylish, corny, enjoyable two hours filled with movie stars and that absurd moustache.  It delivers on romantic glamor and old-school moviemaking, but there’s not a surprise to be had.

Out of the gate, Branagh plunges us into a prologue that’s both boring and obvious.  He means to establish Hercule Poirot’s philosophy and fastidious nature, which sadly serves only as clunky groundwork which you know will circle back by the finale (which it does).  He also tries to bring some levity to the piece with a few lame jokes.  At first Branagh seems to be overplaying his hand...  

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Blueprints: "Evil Under the Sun"

In anticipation of the release of Murder on the Orient Express this weekend, Jorge Molina takes a look at a lesser known Agatha Christie adaptation to see how a mystery can introduce its suspects before it even begins.

There are few things that give me more comfort in life than murder mysteries. Clues woven cleverly through a narrative, the slow reveal of hidden motivations, the buildup to a clean and logical resolution. Watching one person inevitably emerge a criminal from a large group of eccentric and enigmatic characters. 

Agatha Christie is still the undeniable queen of the genre. In her novels she perfected the character archetypes for these stories: the charismatic millionaire, the begrudging femme fatale, the quiet foreign girl, the ambitious older lad... to name but a few.

And when her work started to inevitably get cinematic adaptations, with them came a pool of dramatic flair for actors to dive into...

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Murder on the Orient Express: Ingrid Bergman steals the show - or does she?

We're near the end of Ingrid Bergman's career so here's the penultimate episode in our retrospective. Happy 100th to the superstar on August 29th. Here's Lynn Lee...

By 1974, Ingrid Bergman was a grande dame of film in the twilight of her career, with two Best Actress Oscar wins under her belt, and nothing left to prove.  Perhaps that’s why she deliberately opted for such a small part in the star-studded Murder on the Orient Express, despite director Sidney Lumet’s attempts to coax her into taking a bigger one.  And yet, despite her own efforts to stay out of the spotlight, it found her anyway, with her tiny role as a mousy, middle-aged Swedish missionary netting her an unlikely third Oscar.

We don’t see too many movies like Orient Express these days – A-list extravaganzas where most of the stars end up with little more than glorified cameos but just seem to be in it for fun.  And to be fair, the movie is fun and directed with flair, even as it plays up the absurd theatricality of the whodunit setup – something that doesn’t register as strongly when you’re reading Agatha Christie’s plummy prose.  It’s a bit much at times...

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Stage Door: "Little Wars"

If I were a blurb whore I might start this article with:

"If you liked... 

Julia (1977), The Children's Hour (1961), The Little Foxes (1941), Corey Stoll & Kathy Bates as Ernest Hemingway & Gertrude Stein in Midnight in Paris (2011), and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker in Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle

...than you'll love Little Wars"

But I am not a blurb whore. At least not most of the time. But I do think you'll love Little Wars. 

Here's a beautiful problem with theater (and smallish movies, too): there's more good stuff than anyone can possibly see. And also, sometimes, depending on promotional budgets and media pedigree or lack thereof in both cases, more good stuff that we sometimes ever hear about. I refuse to be a part of that problem so I blog from the missionary zeal of great entertainments. One of the reasons The Film Experience takes detours to theater and TV and books is that all of the storytelling playgrounds inform and cross-pollinate.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas are the focus of "Little Wars"Which brings us to "Little Wars," one of five works by a very promising young playwright Steven Carl McCasland who I hadn't even heard of until last week. (The five plays run in repertory through May 31st so there's only 4 more chances to see this one). I bring it to your attention because it's entirely affordable ($18 a ticket) and it's an actressexual's delight.

Little Wars riffs on iconic people and though that device can sometimes prove gimmicky (consider that wobbly first season of Penny Dreadful or any number of tacky riffs on "public domain" characters), it's also responsible for great works of art (case in point: The Hours, fictional but inspired by Virginia Woolf's 'whole life in a single day' work on Mrs. Dalloway). McCasland's play happily falls much closer towards the latter pile of fictions. It imagines a 1940 evening inside the Parisian salon of Gertrude Stein (Polly McKie) & Alice B Toklas (Penny Lynn White), then "radical lesbians" -- radical because they were out -- who've invited "The Great Agatha Christie" (Kim Rogers) to dinner... liquid dinner nat'ch. Things don't go as planned since there's an unexpected visitor who goes by "Mary" (Kristen Gehling), a secretive housemaid (Samantha Hoefer) and Christie really disrupts the plans by bringing along Dorothy Parker (Dorothy Weems) and playwright Lillian Hellman (Kimberly Faye Greenberg). Initially just hearing these famous accomplished characters (who did know each other in real life though the play is fictional) verbally spar, boast, and drink like fish is entertaining enough but as the play progresses, organic drama emerges involving differences of opinion about art, the Nazi threat, marriages (gay and straight), and survival through wars large and small.

McKie and White anchor the play with fairly miraculous specificity as the odd (lifelong) couple at its center but most of the women are given at least one shining moment or two in McCasland's generous ensemble writing. I wanted a clearer picture of Dorothy Parker's famous wit, she mostly seems sad and drunk, but there was more than enough to compensate elsewhere. Familiarity with their collective works or previous biopics will undoubtedly aid your enjoyment -- especially if you've seen The Children's Hour (1961) and Oscar favorite Julia (1977) -- but the play is strong enough to stand on its own as a fascinating and unexpectedly moving collision of voices at a pivotal moment in history. 

Kim Rogers as Agatha Christie in "Little Wars" © Samantha Mercado Tudda

P.S. an 'it's a small-world' bonus for readers of The Film Experience. The actress playing Agatha Christie, Kim Rogers (no relation), is a longtime fan of The Film Experience -- we'd never previously met but we talked after the show.