Death on the Nile (2022)

Death on the Nile (2022)

4/10

 Starring

Kenneth Branagh

Tom Bateman

Annette Bening

Russell Brand

Ali Fazal

Dawn French

Gal Gadot

 

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

The claustrophobic setting of Murder on the Orient Express made it very appealing to see Poirot solve the case in such tight circumstances. Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of the film in 2017 was a joyful ride, even though it felt a tad dull at times. His portrayal of Poirot didn’t quite capture the magic of Albert Finney or Peter Ustinov in their respective adaptations. And while I believe both of them outshine Branagh’s portrayal, none of the three compares to David Suchet, who played Poirot to perfection for nearly two decades.

This new take on another Agatha Christie masterpiece sees Branagh once again working both in front of and behind the camera. Unfortunately, it shares many of the same flaws as his first outing as Poirot.

There’s something about this movie’s plot that frustrates me, especially in the way Branagh chose to adapt it. The film is overladen with needless CGI that’s far too obvious to ignore. Branagh also seemed determined to outsmart Christie by adding unnecessary elements, as though he wanted to upstage her in her own story. Christie’s genius lies in her ability to take complex plots and make them easy to follow without unnecessary detours. Branagh did the opposite.

For example, Christie’s book doesn’t delve into Poirot’s past, his time in the war, or how he got his mustache. Nor does it feature the overly dramatized sexual tension between two characters that Branagh decided to include. The scene by the Egyptian statue, meant to highlight the passion between Linnet (Gal Gadot) and Simon (Armie Hammer), felt forced and entirely unnecessary. It was a needless addition that didn’t serve the plot.

The original book and the previous two adaptations have a way of keeping you on edge with their intricate details—twin guns, nail polish, jewelry theft, blackmail, and murder all intertwining seamlessly. The story unfolds aboard a luxury steamer cruising along the Nile, where Linnet and Simon are on their honeymoon. Linnet, an heiress, had stolen Simon from her best friend Jacqueline, leading to a hasty marriage and an attempt to escape Jacqueline’s wrath.

The murder occurs when Linnet is shot in the head. Everyone on board becomes a suspect, as it turns out they all have a connection to Linnet and something to gain from her death. The setup is so carefully crafted that even Poirot must dig deep to uncover the killer—or killers.

While I prefer the 1978 adaptation of Death on the Nile, the 2004 version from the ITV series Poirot with David Suchet is unbeatable. Suchet’s performance as Poirot is reason enough to watch it if you haven’t already.

This film’s ensemble cast of A-list actors should have delivered stellar chemistry, but instead, it felt disjointed. The central relationship—Linnet and Simon’s romance—needed to anchor the plot, but Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer lacked any real chemistry. Their union felt forced, with Gadot often looking like she’d rather be anywhere else, a detail too glaring to ignore.

To Branagh’s credit, some tweaks to the story were made to add diversity, which I appreciated. However, the poor pacing and bloated runtime undermined the film’s impact. By the halfway point, Linnet was still alive, and I found myself impatiently waiting for someone to kill her already. The slow pacing and unnecessarily long buildup made it a wonder I didn’t fall asleep.

Cheaper by the Dozen (2022)

Cheaper by the Dozen (2022)

3/10

Starring

Gabrielle Union

Zach Braff

 

Directed by Gail Lerner

 

I am Black and fully African, and I spend way too much time watching movies. I am fed up with Hollywood trying to bridge the gap in the lack of racial diversity and doing it poorly. An all-white movie isn’t a bad thing when it delivers. A movie with all the racial diversity of a New York subway, poorly written and directed like a NickToon program for children, doesn’t solve the problem. The bad acting of the child actors was even worse; I’ve seen better acting in churches when children act out the nativity scene. "Boring" is an understatement for all that’s wrong with this movie. Then the ad placements by Cîroc and Cheetos—what happened to being subtle?

The political correctness and the whole idea of diversity have ruined movies for me. I have no problem with the new redesign of a movie. I had no problem with Cheaper by the Dozen adding children from one side, mixing in kids from another, with a little adoption and some unexpected pregnancies, and voilà, number twelve shows up. My problem was when this movie shifted from just being fun to becoming a current husband vs. ex-husband battle. Adopted dad vs. biological dad battle. The movie made absolutely no sense to me when this started happening in the early minutes.

As I said, the couple in question is Paul and Zoe Baker (Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union, who are not-so-great onscreen). This is their second marriage, each having children from their first marriages. Add some surprises, and they’ve got twelve.

From the get-go, we see that the way they keep their family going is by surviving on any cheap help they can find. Things aren’t magically going well when Zoe’s ex (Dom) decides to move closer to the married couple to be near his children. This doesn’t go well with Paul, who feels intimidated by Dom’s stature, money, and fame. Add to that, they’re facing financial challenges, and Paul wants to sell their family business. This new change, along with the personal challenge Paul is facing, makes it hard for the family to stick together and function as a unit.

Suddenly, I’ve found respect for the older Cheaper by the Dozen with Steve Martin. At least there, the children were his and his wife’s. We didn’t have ex-wives and ex-husbands having a say in anything. The fun was watching this family try to keep it all together, realizing they couldn’t all the time, and watching everything go up in smoke as they tried to make it fit again.

The fun there was in the dramatic element the movie brought to the game, not some racial differences and dad battles that stopped being funny in 2005.

This new Disney+ addition to the mix is a no-no.

The Adam Project (2022)

The Adam Project (2022)

 

7/10

 

Starring

Ryan Reynolds

Walker Scobell

Mark Ruffalo

Jennifer Garner

Catherine Keener

 

Directed by Shawn Levy

 

The Adam Project is a wow movie. I loved the assembly of many ideas, which I feel were well-placed together to give a cohesion that was slick and entertaining. With a solid cast, well-grounded visual effects, and a story that develops every minute you’re watching, this movie is entertaining, to say the least. I see no reason why you wouldn’t have a good time watching this flick.

You may find that the different parts taken from many movies you love give you déjà vu, but from where I was sitting, it was some cool nostalgia. This Sci-Fi action comedy about time travel has everything from the Back to the Future vibe, and it works well because this is what Ryan Reynolds does—he takes a character and makes you love it no matter what.

The character to love here is Adam Reed (Reynolds). Adam lives in a dystopian 2050 where time travel is a thing, and according to him, the world is all messed up. Time travel was achieved by creating a wormhole that links the present to the past. Adam wanted to travel back to 2018 but crashed in 2022. The significance of 2018 is that’s the year time travel was invented and the year the world was plunged into a dark place. In 2022, Adam goes to his home from twenty-eight years ago and visits his twelve-year-old self.

After some cool discoveries on who is before who, the Adams decide to work together to get future Adam back to where he should be. They soon discover how much danger they’re in as the hunt for Adam intensifies from the future by a lady named Sorian. Sorian wants to stop Adam from achieving his jump to 2018 because she fears he would discover her dealings with her past self and ruin her future.

The Adams manage to survive the Sorian attack with help from Adam’s past, who’s been stuck in the past for four years.

I do have some criticism. The movie starts, and after a while, it feels like there’s a chunk missing at the beginning. Even though the movie does its best to update us on the things we’ve missed that led to the present predicament, the feeling never goes away.

The movie focuses on the two Adams, with Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo taking more supportive roles.

You can catch this movie on Netflix, and you’ll be glad you did.

Turning Red (2022)

Turning Red (2022)

 

7/10

 

Starring the voices of 

Rosalie Chiang

Sandra Oh

Ava Morse

Hyein Park

 

Directed by Domee Shi

 

Turning Red is different from what we have been seeing. This coming-of-age work is very intense, with a strong story. The story is multidimensional, and it is created in such a way that you see the slight changes in the characters as they mature and as the movie progresses. You see behaviors that you will admire and the gentle building of characters in the young adults as they try to make things go their way.

I like the animation and voice casting. This development shows us a child trying to please a parent because she believes all her mother's hopes and dreams are placed on her. Then there is the mother, trying to make sure her daughter never strays by micromanaging her life to the last detail.

The strong plot with its emotions may be too much for kids to follow. Also, the actions of Mei and her crew may not be something you want your children to emulate.

Encanto had us by the horns in 2021, dragging us by the lips into 2022 because we don’t talk about Bruno.

This Pixar’s 25th production may not have the same strength as Encanto, but it is just as good. Set in the early 2000s, the animation is a coming-of-age fantasy comedy. The movie centers around a Chinese-Canadian family with a tricky past. One of their ancestors (like hundreds of years ago) was blessed with the ability to turn into a red panda to fight and save her family. The downside of that gift is that, now that the danger to her family has gone, the ability to change is still with her. She then passed the same ability to her daughters, which became a genetic trait that was then transferred to Mei Lee.

Mei Lee is the young thirteen-year-old girl whose story we are following and her struggles to live a double life. One life is an exact replica of her mother in almost everything, and the other is herself in front of her friends.

With a setup like this, you know something will draw the two lives together. That something becomes this genetic trait. Mei turns into a giant red panda anytime she is excited and must wait until the next red moon, while keeping the panda in check to free herself from this curse.

Her mother believes the best thing to do is to keep Mei hidden until that time comes. Mei and her three best friends have other plans. After Mei is able to master control of her emotions, she and her group decide to do whatever it takes to see their favorite boyband, 4-Town, when they tour Canada.

Without their parents’ help, these four must raise $800 and find a way to sneak out to go to this concert. This is a side note and not the current issue at hand. Mei has to keep the panda transformation to a minimum and in check until the next red moon, which is less than two weeks away from the time she first transformed.

I have no qualms recommending this to anyone to see. It is amazing and so much fun the moment the girls get together to make their dreams come true.

Uncharted (2022)

Uncharted (2022)

5/10

Starring

Tom Holland

Mark Wahlberg

Sophia Ali

Tati Gabrielle

Antonio Banderas

 

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

 

This movie is a live-action adaptation of one of Naughty Dog’s bestselling video game titles of the same name. As a whole, the movie sucked as much juice from the game as it could to make this movie. Video games don’t need to give you so many details into stories, but focus more on the gameplay to make users happy. Movies, on the other hand, are all about stories, and it is in this aspect that this movie is a letdown.

There’s this thing that movies do, where treasure seekers seem to have a link to one another. All of them have deep knowledge of history and are such great thieves. The first link-up between Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) and Sully (Mark Wahlberg) was just textbook heist-movie style setup. This lack of originality in the first thirty minutes of the film echoed throughout the entire runtime.

The movie, of course, did a good job of taking cutaway video clips from the game and employing them in the movie. The movie gives you the needed attention you want when it comes to adventure/action, but with poor thrills (other than the falling-out-of-a-plane scene). When you see movies like those of Jackie Chan and the Mission: Impossible series, the stunts bring exhilarating thrills. Here, the movie lacked it big time. I don’t know whether it’s bad editing or just weak cinematography.

I liked seeing all the players introduced in the first forty minutes. I really wished the movie had been done better, with a more solid plot that starts outside the gaming universe and steers into it. Tom Holland was pleasant throughout this movie, and for me, he kind of outclassed everyone else on set, except Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas). I don’t have much to say about Wahlberg—his work in this movie was just average.

Moncada in this movie is the only living descendant of the Moncada family, who bankrolled the Magellan expedition in the early 1500s when Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the world. The movie tells us that the Moncada family sponsored this voyage because of a deal they had with Magellan. Magellan was to seek gold on this voyage and bring it back to them. There’s a story that Magellan had amassed a treasure on this trip, and it was this treasure that Nathan and Sully were seeking. Funny thing is, Moncada, whose family paid for this treasure, is made to be the villain when the treasure is his birthright.

We get a first glimpse into Nathan's early life in an orphanage with his brother Sam. Sam was obsessed with finding this treasure of Magellan, which led to them being separated as children when they were caught breaking and entering. Nathan grew up to be an experienced thief, working as a bartender and robbing wealthy marks. That’s how Sully tracked him down and pulled him into his own treasure hunt for the Magellan gold. He tells Nathan that he’s been working on this with Sam before Sam vanished without a trace. Nathan agrees to help Sully, and they begin their adventure. They steal a cross, which Sully knows someone (Chloe) has the second cross, which they use to help point them in the right direction with the aid of Elcano’s diary to where the treasure hunt should start. Chasing them is Moncada, who murdered his father to make sure their family wealth became his solely. But the movie decides to change focus when it comes to the villain. I still always wonder about treasure maps and diaries with just clues—why can’t anyone just write the thing located here at so-and-so address?

If you feel the movie plot summary here is light, well, it’s because the movie itself has a light story. The movie’s plot is not well garnished to make you want to pay that much attention to what is being said. The plot is underdeveloped, and all the talk of a sequel is not appealing.