Ten Days of Terror!: A Haunting in Venice

Film: A Haunting in Venice
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Sometimes, an actor falls in love with a character and they can’t walk away from that character. Kenneth Branagh appears to have become entranced with the character of Hercule Poirot. A Haunting in Venice is the third Branagh Poirot movie; he got through the two classics in A Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. In that respect, A Haunting in Venice is treading a little bit of new ground. It’s nice to see some new Poirot stories on the big screen rather than the same two over and over. That said, it’s probably inevitable that Branagh will eventually adapt Evil Under the Sun.

Right now, there are two mystery franchises that have large budgets and attract a good number of stars. Branagh’s Poirot films are one of them; the second is the Knives Out series with Daniel Craig. Branagh’s films are period pieces and are adapted from Agatha Christie stories. If you’re going to adapt a mystery, you could do a lot worse than the grande dame of whodunnits. Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films are modern and original. Both include a star actor who clearly loves the role. And if you ask me to put my money on one, I’m going with Knives Out.

A Drop of Dandelion Wine

Film: Belfast
Format: DVD from Nippersink Library through interlibrary loan on basement television.

Before the release of Belfast, Kenneth Branagh had a very odd relationship with the Oscars. He had been nominated five times, all in different categories but had never won. Finally, with three nominations for Belfast, he finally got a win. I like Branagh in general, and I tend to like a lot of what he does. His Hamlet is pretty great and I’m still of the opinion that his Henry V is the best one available. I think he should have won for that, for director at the very least.

Belfast is a story about growing up in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles,” the euphemistic name of the internecine war between Protestants and Catholics. Buddy (Jude Hill) is eight or nine and appears to very much be a stand-in for Branagh at this age. Buddy is vaguely aware that there are problems—hard to be ignorant of them completely when there are riots and house fires on his street. His family is Protestant, as are most in the area, and most of the people in the street don’t seem to care that much that some of their neighbors are Catholic. But, of course, religion remains a great divider, and those who want the Catholics to leave are starting to get violet.

Wednesday Horror: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Films: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Format: DVD from Mt. Morris Library on various players.

I remember when Kenneth Branagh’s version of Frankenstein, sometimes called Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was released. I was interested in it because I like Branagh as a director and liked him in 1994 as a director. This was the guy who appeared on the directorial scene with Henry V, the most bad-ass version of Shakespeare’s most bad-ass history. I liked Dead Again probably more than it deserves. And here he was directing a classic horror tale with Robert De Niro as the monster. How could it be anything but awesome?

And then the reviews came in, and most of them were disappointing to say the least. So I never got around to it. I was married, had a wife who didn’t (and still doesn’t) care much for horror movies, and a job that took up a ton of time, so I essentially forgot about it. And then, boom, here it is, several decades later and Frankenstein falls into my lap. I remembered seeing the previews. I remembered the poor critical reception. But this blog is all about figuring these things out for myself at some point, so why not check it out?

The State of Denmark

Film: Hamlet (1996)
Format: DVDs from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’ve seen four cinematic versions of Hamlet. From worst to first, I would rank them with the German version made for television (and skewered on Mystery Science Theater 3000) as the worst, the 1990 version with Mel Gibson good but sort of “Hamlet-lite,” the 1948 Best Picture winning Olivier version as a traditional and solid version, and Branagh’s 19th-century reimagining as the best. This is not the first time I’ve hunkered down for Branagh’s 4+ hour version of Hamlet, and I was happy to watch it again because I think it’s the best film version available. I know there are others. I’ve heard the Ethan Hawke 2000 version is good or at least interesting. I may get there someday.

I’m not going to run through a plot summary of Hamlet. If you don’t know the story, shame on you or shame on the school system you came up through. You’ve had more than 400 years to familiarize yourself with Hamlet, so if what follows ends up being a spoiler, you have only yourself or your old literature teachers to blame.

Henry V (1989)

Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

Of all of shakespeare’splays, my favorite is MacBeth, which almost certainly means that Kumonosu Jo is my favorite film adaptation of a Shakespeare play. When it comes to the histories, nothing beats Henry V. For my money, the Kenneth Branagh version from 1989 is the best of these going. It’s got everything that I want in this story start to finish, and even pays a slight homage to the Olivier version at the start. It’s got the great speeches, great performances, badassery, and some great battle sequences. This is Shakespeare as it’s meant to be done.

In a nutshell, we have English King Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, who also directed) who is deciding to press his claim as the King of France. It’s only hinted at here, but before he was King Henry, he was Prince Hal, and he had as misspent a youth as possible. He hung around with thieves and gamblers and drunkards, making his eventual ascension to the throne a huge worry for the people under his rule. However, once king, Henry becomes a man of both action and decision, the sort of king that both the common folk and the nobles are willing to follow.