Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

Victor Frankenstein's experiments are given a David Copperfield jazz-magic vibe that I don't think Mary Shelley intended but by far the biggest deviation of this mostly faithful adaptation is the fact the monster is a re-creation, not a creation - Robert De Niro is a resuscitated organ recipient, - scarred but not a hideous daemon - with prior knowledge, not a birthling - probably because it isn't easy to translate to the screen Mary Shelley's caginess regarding Frankenstein's methods of bestowing life upon the inanimate (pretty much in the book a man says the word, 'galvanisation' and then a big yellow eye opens); there's also fewer deaths in a rushed ending: once this movie's grand climax is revealed (an inspired gothic moment that repulses and horrifies and finally hits the right note) the movie decouples from the book, turning into about seven minutes years of Frankenstein's madness and incarceration and anguish, as if everyone has tired of the whole exercise and wants simply to sail prematurely home.

★★★☆☆

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Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

The Orient Express is snowed in but Kenneth Branagh's movie, so fussily presented it looks more like the Polar than the Orient Express, is a runaway train ripping through the details of Agatha Christie's book at breakneck speed so that there is no weight to any of it, and at this pace no number of sweeping camera shots back and forth over the enormous cast helps commit any of the individuals to memory - they are all far less important than Branagh's overthought, spectacularly odd moustaches - and in the end it is left to an overbearing soundtrack to insist, ridiculously, on the profundity of end scenes.

★☆☆☆☆

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