Death On The Nile (2022)

Kenneth Brannagh does a much better job with his adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death On The Nile than he did with his Murder On The Orient Express in 2019, but patchy acting (from Annette Bening, especially, and from Russell Brand, too, on the few occasions he is permitted to speak), wonky cartoony cgi environments, some important clues that couldn't be more clanging if they were delivered by a town herald, and some perverse embellishments to Christie's story (that absurd dancing, and that moustache backstory!) keep this from being a great or, given the excellent 1978 adaptation, even a necessary remake.

★★★☆☆

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Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017)

This biopic makes very cursory work of the early stages of the relationship between 40s Hollywood starlet Gloria Grahame, apparently once an actual person, and her much younger Liverpoolian lover Peter Turner, then wants viewers to invest themselves in that relationship's protracted death throes as Grahame, sick with breast cancer, returns to Liverpool an ailing Norma Desmond type - but quite sympathetic - seeking to convalesce in a room upstairs in Peter's family's home.

★★☆☆☆

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