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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Get Him To The Greek (2010)

The plot of this follow-up to the 2008 Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a music industry intern escorts an irreverent, drug-addled rockstar across America to revive his career in a big-deal comeback concert) calls for real chaos but chaos never really comes - instead we get an unfunny half hour in Las Vegas that is more farcical than chaotic and needs simply to be cut out of the overlong movie - but Russell Brand's Aldous Snow, the rockstar - essentially Brand playing himself - is a fun creation worthy of this second (and even a future third) movie and the comedy for the most part (minus that woeful Las Vegas sequence) is really funny.

★★★☆☆

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Hop (2011)

Cashing in on Easter but wholly unEastery, this religion-free kids movie features, would you believe, a magic candy factory on Rapa Nui (!) where a Russell Brand-voiced animated rabbit shirks his annual Easter responsibilities and instead goes to Hollywood to be discovered as a drummer on a talent show hosted by David Hasselhoff, receiving help along the way from a goofy human played by James Marsden.

★☆☆☆☆

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Jason Segel is a likeable presence on film and his willingness to appear ridiculous - for example, here appearing in regular and unflattering full-frontal nude scenes - helps ground this ensemble comedy about a breakup complicated by celebrity; it's a film that easily could have been a puerile mess but thanks enormously to Segel's shamelessness it is actually very funny.

★★★☆☆

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