A Haunting In Venice (2023)

With his third Agatha Christie adaptation (the first being Murder On The Orient Express; the second, Death On The Nile) director, lead actor, and likely infatuated-starer-at-self-in-mirrors Kenneth Brannagh delivers another big glossy star vehicle (this one has Tina Fey, terrific as Poirot's mystery novelist friend Ariadne Oliver, and Michelle Yeoh appears) but he again mishandles the all-important mystery, this time transforming Halloween Party into a supernatural horror, forgetting that to solve a mystery Hercule Poirot needs clues, not just to simply float around a crumbly Venetian mansion in extreme close-up; in the end, Brannagh's Poirot looks ridiculous presenting grand revelations magically-gleaned from two clues: flowers and a ringing phone. 

★★★☆☆

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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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