{"id":9519,"date":"2022-02-24T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9519"},"modified":"2022-05-05T08:22:11","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T12:22:11","slug":"weekend-movie-pick-death-on-the-nile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9519","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Movie Pick: Death on the Nile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If you\u2019re hesitating to see Death on the Nile because you remember Kenneth Branagh\u2019s previous expedition into the world of Dame Agatha\u2014Murder on the Orient Express\u2014and its tepid reviews, reconsider. The new film is enormous fun (trailer). You also may remember that many viewers couldn\u2019t get past the super-sized mustache worn by Branagh (who plays Hercule Poirot)\u2014such a contrast to David Suchet\u2019s neat, restrained, Poirot-like pencil-line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The extravagant facial hair just didn\u2019t seem to fit, but the producers aren\u2019t giving up. Instead, they give Poirot a touching back story that explains not only why he has the mustache, but links his adoption of it to his own heroism. Regardless, they\u2019ve attracted a stellar cast to this new film, which includes Annette Bening, Tom Bateman, Dawn French, Sophie Okenedo, and a whole array of memorable supporting players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s been a British society wedding. A beautiful young woman of great wealth (Israeli actor Gal Gadot) has married a man well below her financial station (Armie Hammer). His vengeful ex-girlfriend (Emma Mackey) follows them throughout their Egyptian honeymoon, making the new bride increasingly uneasy. To escape their pursuer, the couple entice the whole party of hangers-on to board a luxury Nile cruise boat where, as one gleefully anticipates, mayhem ensues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christie was a master at creating a closed world\u2014a stranded railway car, a party on a remote island\u2014throwing people with barely-masked resentments together, and letting audiences anticipate what happens next. In this film, the unraveling of motives, opportunity, and nerve doesn\u2019t disappoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loved the CGI scenery though, as you probably know, the Nile River does not run alongside the pyramids, but more than five miles west. A bit of geographic and artistic license, but gorgeous throughout. The scenes of the sun rising over the river were spectacular, bringing back memories of my own Nile cruise with my friend Nancy in 2019. Memorable, but many fewer dead bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes critics\u2019 rating<\/a>: 64%; audiences 82%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you\u2019re hesitating to see Death on the Nile because you remember Kenneth Branagh\u2019s previous expedition into the world of Dame Agatha\u2014Murder on the Orient Express\u2014and its tepid reviews, reconsider. The new film is enormous fun (trailer). You also may … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The new movie of the Christie classic Death on the Nile is a star-studded gem.\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,54,57,66,104],"tags":[904,1961,1936],"class_list":["post-9519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-detective","category-movies","category-suspense","category-the-morgue","tag-agatha-christie","tag-death-on-the-nile","tag-kenneth-branagh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2tx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9519"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9524,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9519\/revisions\/9524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}