Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

Death on the Nile

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If you are a fan of Agatha Christie, whodunits, Egypt, glamorous globetrotters or Kenneth Branagh; I have just the movie for you.  Sir Kenneth once again plays Hercule Poirot (returning as the classic Belgian detective with the little grey cells whom we last saw in Murder on the Orient Express),  He is taking a break from sleuthing by embarking on a relaxing vacation in Egypt.  Vacation abruptly turns into a murder investigation when one of the passengers on a private yacht is murdered.  It is obvious that someone on board is guilty of course, but who?  Therein lies the fun of the movie.  A myriad of characters and suspects are introduced.  All have hidden secrets and motives. There is the glamorous Linnet Doyle (Gal Gadot) who stole her girlfriend’s (Emma Mackey) fiancée.  The latter is stalking Linnet and her ex fiancée.  Armie Hammer plays the sleazy playboy – who may or may not only be after his new wife’s money.  Then there is Hercule’s old friend, Bouc, and his snarky artistic mother Euphemia – as well as Linnet’s ex fiancé, her personal maid and her lawyer, who all have something to hide.  The writer has added a backstory to explain why Poirot wears such massive moustaches.  This was not in any of the books I have read (I think I have read just about all of them), but I felt it was well-done and added to Poirot’s character.  Also two additional characters have been added:  Jazz singer Sophie Okenedo and her manager played by Leticia Wright, both with their own suspicious pasts.  There are so many characters, though, that some really get the short end of the stick as far as time on camera:  Russell Brand, Rose Leslie, Dawn French, and Jennifer Saunders immediately come to mind.  Anyway, this movie is exactly what you’d expect out of a whodunit – great scenery, lavish sets and costumes, tons of red herrings, a plethora of suspects and a twist ending.  The thing that keeps me from giving this movie my highest rating is I do think it was too long and dragged in the middle.  But still, I am a big fan of whodunits, and if you are too, you are still going to want to catch this one (and hopefully the next one).

Hotel Mombai

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This is a very hard movie for me to review.  It is definitely well-made and tries to stick to the facts as much as possible.  However, by the time the movie was over, I felt depressed and hopeless.  A movie that tells us a tragic story about horrible events usually tries to  lift us up in some way and give us hope for the future.  I did not walk away from this movie with that kind of feeling at all.  “Hotel Mombai” tells the story of a series of terrorist attackes that rocked the city of Mombai in 2008 and left over 178 people killed and many more injured.  Several public buildings and areas were targeted, but the movie concentrates on the seige of the Taj Mahal Hotel.  Dev Patel  plays one of the luxurious hotel’s waiters who misses out on a lucritive (but eventually deadly) plum job because on his way to work he accidentally dropped a shoe  and was not properly attired (this hotel is very much the upper class hotel usually seen in British period pieces).  I usually love Dev Patel, but he really didn’t have a lot to do other than run and hide while trying to guide the guests.  Other actors you might recognize are Armie Hammer as the husband of a wealthy socialite and Jason isaacs as a retired Russion Special Forces agent.  Their characters didn’t have much to do than get killed, and there was no opportunity to develop them in a way that you are involved in them. The movie is at its best showing the devestation, terror and bloodshed the terrorists inflict on their innocent victims, and their motivation-religious fanaticism inspired by a shadowy Pakistani leader known as “Brother Bull.”  As usual, men like him avoid any actual involvement on their own.  They send the desparate young men, fired by misplaced passionate anger and religious fanaticsim  directed at the ones they think are responsible for their lot in life.  It’s really not anything new for these events.  This movie definitely earns its R rating as the violence looks very real and it seems overenthusiastic, if that is the word, in showing the dying, and the heartless, religion driven hatred and spite of the perpetrators.  I had to avert my eyes many times.  The movie did include some of the heroics, especially by the hotel staff, many of whom risked their lives to help the guests and fullfill their mantra, “Guest is god.” It clearly depicts a government, local or national, clearly unprepared and utterly inefficient in responding to the crisis.  I really wanted to see more of the positive stories  and less of the blood and body parts.  In fact, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to you if you are not a fan of realistic violence.  In the wolrd today, with these kinds of attacks frequently in the news, this movie was a little too real for me.

On the Basis of Sex

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I didn’t know anything about Ruth Bader Ginsberg before going into this movie except that she seems like a Bad Ass.  After seeing this movie, I have concluded that she IS a Bad Ass!!  “On the Basis of Sex” follows the life of RBG from her time at Harvard Law School as a married undergrad to a ground breaking case that got her career going.  That case helped to toppled decades old laws that discriminated against men as well as women.  Her case, Moritz vs. the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, was distinctive for involving sex discrimination against a man.   Charles Moritz was denied a $600 tax deduction because it was ruled that a man could not be considered a caregiver.  Ruth knew all about discrimination as she faced prejudice, condescension and ignorance in her pursuit of a degree and then a career in law.  As a lot of women back in the day found out, a woman had to work twice as hard to succeed in traditional male occupations.  Once she got her degree, she had a hard time finding a law firm that was willing to hire a woman, even one who was at the top of her class. One prospective employer assumed she would get pregnant and quit while another told her that women were too emotional.  Through it all, her husband Martin, a successful tax lawyer, supported and believed in her.  One potentially tragic  episode in her life occured while she and her husband were both in law school; and Martin ( played  by Armie Hammer) is diagnosed with testicular cancer.  At the time there was about a 5% survival rate, yet they pulled through it all, and he subsequently was a great helper in her reaching her goal. Though the focus of her efforts was sex discrimination (a term they modified to a less aggressive gender discrimination-it was the 60’s after all), she and her team (including her daughter and the ACLU) attacked the issue using the test case involving a man. Ruth, in a fine performance by Felicity Jones, manages her classes, his classes(while he battled cancer) and their daughter as they get through this trying time with an even stronger marriage.  While I found this movie interesting and extremely topical, it is a little slower paced than most movies and I found my self losing interest here and there.  But the performances are great and the plot is full of information that was new to me.  I came out of this movie with a greater respect for the justice that some have nicknamed The Notorious RBG.