Review: "Murder on the Orient Express"

The remake of “Murder on the Orient Express” starts slow, chuffing away and spinning its wheels with little forward movement, but gradually builds a head of steam. It propels us through the usual twists and turns of a classic whodunit, as a dozen suspects are queried and sorted in the search for a killer.

By the end of the film, it has completely transcended the murder/mystery genre and become an emotionally affecting treatise on right and wrong, evil deeds and revenge.

I wasn’t expecting this movie, but I confess I wasn’t expecting much at all. I’ve neither read the book by Agatha Christie nor seen the 1974 film version.

(I assure you I mean to: it’s currently sitting in my Netflix DVD queue. Yes, some of us still pay for the shiny disc plan.)

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot -- everybody wants to call him “Hercules” -- an ostentatiously mustachioed gentleman whose courtly demeanor hides a mind as troubled as it is brilliant.

Poirot is vexed by “imbalance” -- whether it be a tie knotted askew, two boiled eggs for breakfast that are not the same size or a plot to take another human life. People wonder at his marvelous deductions, but as he explains to an admirer, when things are not perfectly aligned it stands out to him as plain as the nose on your face.

Even if, like me, you are innocent of the book and other movie, you probably know the basic plot: Poirot is plopped onto a train full of colorful characters, and one of them turns up gruesomely dead. Trapped by an avalanche that has derailed the locomotive, they stew together as the masterful investigator sifts through the evidence, which includes a torrent of lies and misdirection.

Michael Green provides the screenplay, which near as I can figure follows the book and other film pretty closely. The ethnicities and vocations of a few of the characters are shifted around, but the basic dynamics remain the same.

This is billed as one of those classic “all-star casts” -- though, truth be told, it’s more like half a cast of stars, most of them faded, a quarter recognizable character actors and a quarter you’ve never heard of.

Johnny Depp is the biggest name, playing a slimy, scarred American businessman named Ratchett. Michelle Pfeiffer turns up as Caroline Hubbard, an often-divorced woman apparently looking for her next sugar daddy, and Poirot is her prime candidate. Josh Gad is Hector MacQueen, Ratchett’s resentful secretary, and his manservant, Masterman, is played by Derek Jacobi.

Judi Dench, alas, is given little to do as a snooty displaced Russian princess, though Daisy Ridley delights and surprises as Mary Debenham, a smart and resourceful governess. Lucy Boynton and Sergei Polunin are addled dancers/diplomats/royalty.

Willem Dafoe plays Gerhard Hardman, a xenophobic German scientist, and Leslie Odom Jr. plays Arbuthnot, a black British doctor. Penelope Cruz is Pilar Estravados, a nurse turned missionary whose job is to make devilish pronouncements about the evil that men (and maybe women) do.

It’s a sumptuous movie of gorgeous costumes and exquisite settings. The Orient Express is not some railway for bumpkins, but a four-star hotel for the rich on wheels. Somehow even after the train engine is stopped, there’s still plenty of heat and five-course meals.

I’ll admit the turnabouts of the plot started to grow a little tiresome for me -- “It’s him! No, it’s her!” -- but the movie really starts to gel just past the midway point. Poirot is basically a human Google: he knows everything about everyone, everywhere.

I wouldn’t think to give any hints about the ending, other than to see it’s a humdinger. Forty years after it was a movie, and 40 more for the book, “Murder on the Orient Express” still has surprises aplenty.

Review: "The Counselor"

Cormac McCarthy is a glorious novelist, and many of his books have been turned into exceptional films -- "The Road," "No Country for Old Men." But his first attempt, at age 80, at an original screenplay falls flat on its Gucci boot heels.

This story of drug intrigue along the U.S./Mexico intrigue is a murky mess, all character but little plot. The movie at one point actually loses track of its main character, an amoral (and never-named) attorney played by Michael Fassbender. In the final act, McCarthy and director Ridley Scott start introducing a bunch of new characters played be recognizable actors, who say a few lines and disappear with little consequence to their appearance.

It's almost as if there was a raffle entered by a bunch of thespians who wanted to say they were in a Cormac McCarthy film.

A strange undercurrent of sexual energy runs through the movie, with many encounters between characters having the feel of a power-trip seduction. There's very little actual sex, though, and one comes away believing these people like to talk about sex more than actually engage in it.

Penelope Cruz plays his girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, a sweet and unsullied woman who has no idea her man is in deep with the Mexican drug cartel. He provides her the high life of magnificent houses, cars and meals, and she's innocent enough to accept that he earns his pile defending low-rent criminals (like Rosie Perez, who has a strong, single scene).

The counselor has an association with Reiner (Javier Bardem), a flashy club owner and drug kingpin, and decides to go in with him on a big narcotics deal. The lawyer thinks this will be a one-off, but Reiner knows better. The two men like each other's company, so going into business seems like the next step.

Hanging around the edges is Malkina, Reiner's cruel cat of a girlfriend, played by Cameron Diaz in a performance shockingly devoid of any nuance. Malkina is a predator in every way -- for money, sex and attention. As if the filmmakers hadn't made this point clearly enough, they gift her with a cheetah pattern tattoo all over her body, and a pair of the actual animals as pets/guardians.

My biggest problem with this movie is that all the characters speak as though their dialogue was written for them. Everything sounds very arch and constructed, as if we're supposed to revel in the resplendence of McCarthy's prose instead of believing these words would actually fall out of somebody's mouth. It's the sort of thing that works on the page but not on the screen.

Example: "Isn't that a little cold?" "The truth has no temperature."

Considering the story revolves around drug trafficking, the actual mechanics of the plot are left rather unclear. We never actually see or hear from the cartel people, though shadowy go-betweens turn up and depart without much rhyme or reason. The truck hauling the drugs -- we're never even told what kind it is, other than it's a lot -- has all sorts of adventures on the road, changing hands several times. The counselor and Reiner get blamed for the loss, even though they were just victims, and spend the rest of the movie on the run.

Brad Pitt appears a few times as Westray, a slithery associate of the counselor who also has some skin in the game and delivers apocryphal warnings about what's to come.

This is the sort of movie in which early on, we are told about a particularly nasty way for someone to die. And we know we're just marking time until one of the people we're watching meets that grisly fate.

This is the sort of movie that is bewitching to actors, since they get to speak a lot of pretty dialogue and wear cool clothes and engage in conversations where everyone's trying to pretend how smart they are. But for audiences it's a listless wander through the desert, where the scenery is pretty but the map was lost long ago.

Review: "Broken Embraces"

Pedro Almodovar, the Spanish auteur who loves to play around with film genres, takes a stab at film noir in his newest, "Broken Embraces" -- with a little flavor of Federico Fellini's "8½" thrown in for good measure.

It's the story of a filmmaker (Lluis Homar), blind and lonely, who goes by the name Harry Caine. His name used to be Mateo Blanco, before he lost his sight and the love of his life, played by Penelope Cruz. (Both names, incidentally, are writing aliases Almodovar has himself used.)

Harry/Mateo is content to lead a quiet life writing movie scripts, with the help of his longtime friend Judit (Blanca Portilla) and her son Diego (Tamar Novas). Then he gets a visit from a slimy fellow calling himself Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano) who wants Harry to write a screenplay for him to direct.

This sets off a shifting timeline in which the Harry of today attempts to puzzle out the mystery of what happened to Mateo 14 years ago.

It turns out Ray X is really the son of a wealthy businessman, Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), who financed Harry/Mateo's film back in the 1990s starring Ernesto's mistress, Lena (Cruz).

Mateo and Lena soon became lovers, which prompted the jealous financier to have his son videotape all the behind-the-scenes action -- ostensibly for a documentary about the making of the film, but really to spy on his mistress.

Writer/director Almodovar weaves together the intersecting storylines of the characters, both past and present, in a sort of murder/mystery potboiler.

Homar and Cruz are a scorching-hot film couple. Unlike most such portrayals of filmmakers and their muse, he is not an egotistical narcissist and she is not a dimwitted twit easily manipulated.

Similarly, the portrayal of her businessman sugar daddy is not a black-and-white depiction of evil. Ernesto helped her ailing father get proper medical treatment, and seems to generally care about her well-being -- a bit too much, as it were.

A few aspects of the plot are puzzling. For example, why Ray X seeks out Harry/Mateo after so many years. And the film plays around with the notion that the writer's blindness is a ruse, but then just drops the idea.

"Broken Embraces" isn't among Almodovar's finest work, but it's a diverting jaunt through familiar cinematic tropes, as well as the filmmaker's distinctive psyche.

3 stars

Review: "Nine"

As a musical, "Nine" is fairly enjoyable. There's a lot of pageantry, dancing, gorgeous costumes and equally gorgeous women wearing them. The songs aren't really strong enough to make you want to rush out and buy the soundtrack, but the actors, mostly non-professional singers, carry them off fairly well.

As a story, though, this film version of the Broadway show -- which, in turn, was adapted from Federico Fellini's seminal autobiographical film "8½" -- "Nine" leaves much to be desired.

It's the tale of Guido Contini, a successful Italian movie director struggling to make his 9th film, though he doesn't have a script or even a notion of what it's about. Nonetheless, sets are being built and costumes being stitched, and the flurry of activity at the studio has an undercurrent of panic because his last two flicks were flops.

Meanwhile, his personal life is a shambles as he juggles his wife, mistress and lead actress, all vying for attention.

Now, let me get my biases right off my chest here: I'm not a big fan of movies about tortured artists. Whenever a film endeavors to convince us how much people who paint or write or direct have to suffer for their art, it makes me want to watch them dig sewage ditches or teach at an inner-city high school, just so they'd know what real hardship is.

Filmmakers using their art medium to contemplate their own role in creating it just strikes me as wretchedly narcissistic.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido, who makes us like him a little bit by acknowledging in his opening song that he's a 10-year-old boy housed in the body of a man nearly 50. He knows he's headed for a cliff, creatively and romantically, but he just can't take his foot off the gas.

Day-Lewis nails the Italian accent, and makes for a striking figure with his head and shoulders perpetually hunched like he's expecting a blow. His singing is just so-so, though he only performs a couple of tunes.

The rest of the songs are sung by the various women in Guido's life, swirling through his imagined movie as they represent different aspects of his own fantasies and delusions.

The best song, and singer, is "Be Italian," sung by pop star Fergie (aka Stacy Ferguson) from the Black Eyed Peas. She plays Saraghina, a beach-dwelling prostitute who taught Guido a few things about love when he was a boy.

We already knew Marion Cotillard (who plays Guido's wife Luisa) could sing from her Oscar-winning performance in "La Vie En Rose." So it's no surprise that she pulls off her two songs quite well, particularly the raging emotions of "Take It All."

Nicole Kidman (as Guido's leading lady) also does well with "Unusual Way," as does Penelope Cruz (as Guido's desperately needy mistress) with the torch song "A Call From the Vatican."

Judi Dench, as Guido's longtime costume designer and confidant, is less impressive with her tune, and Sophia Loren's lullaby as Guido's mother is so short it seems tacked on just to give an excuse to include the Italian screen legend.

Kate Hudson, playing a nosy American journalist, has fun with the upbeat "Cinema Italiano," which was not in the stage version but was written exclusively for this film.

Director Rob Marshall ("Chicago") is a dazzling visualist, and the musical scenes hum along under their own energy and momentum. Whenever the music stops, though, "Nine" is revealed as a silly story in need of a chair.

2.5 stars