Posts Tagged ‘Kelly Reilly’

A Haunting in Venice

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Dornan, Riccardo Scarmarcio, Camille Cottin, Jude Hill, Kyle Allen, Emma Laird, Ali Khan 

Running Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Based upon the bestselling Agatha Christie novel Hallowe’en Party published in 1969, screenwriter Michael Green adapts the murder mystery for director Kenneth Branagh’s new film A Haunting In Venice starring an ensemble cast including Belfast stars Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill plus Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh (Everything, Everywhere all at Once).

So let’s set the scene: a séance on Halloween at a haunted palace in Venice in 1947. What could possibly go wrong?

Famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is lured to another complex murder mystery by the ambitious writer Ariadne Oliver superbly played with dashes of wit by comedy star Tina Fey to a séance hosted by the doomed Opera star Rowena Drake expertly played with a crisp British accent by Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly (Pride and Prejudice, Flight).

The Femme Fatale Rowena Drake has a host of eclectic guests over for the séance in a bid to bring back the spirit of her dead daughter who drowned in the Venetian canal a year ago. Poirot suspects a far more scientific yet murky plot is afoot despite various inexplicable terrifying occurrences and sightings of potential ghosts.

When the psychic Mrs Reynolds appears with a cloak and a Venetian mask, trouble starts brewing as she expertly assembles her guests in a bid to conjure up the spirit of Rowena’s dead child, but tragedy strikes when not one but two murders occur around midnight on Halloween.

Unlike the dazzling Death on the Nile, Branagh choses a more atmospheric look for A Haunting in Venice taking all his visual clues from classic film noir, with dark shots of the floating city and all the allusions to what Venice as a city represents cinematically: forbidden desire, unfathomable motives and beauty which is deceptive and dangerous.

Branagh keeps the action tight and his ensemble cast including Camille Cottin as Oleg Seminoff and Italian star Riccardo Scamarcio (John Wick 3, Burnt) as corrupt policeman Vitale Portfoglio, all perform perfectly in their roles.

A Haunting in Venice is an extremely dark film, making the entire narrative very murky and difficult to distinguish much like the real motives of the murderer. Branagh possibly had a constrained budget compared to the lavish two previous films: Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile as most of this film takes place in the haunted mansion.

Claustrophobic and scary, A Haunting in Venice is tonally brilliant and fortunately saved by some intelligent screen chemistry between Tina Fey and Kenneth Branagh and will appeal to all those that love a stylish murder mystery. Audiences should look out for an entirely creepy performance by Jude Hill as a precocious boy Leopold Ferrier reading the American Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe while the other kids are trick or treating.

With richly dark colours like black, red and grey, A Haunting in Venice is pure film noir with a creepy twist and gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10.  

SHERLOCK HOLMES

The Dark and Sexy 1890s….

Picture the Victorian age, and most people imagine a British society  with strict morals and closeted virtues, governed by an immovable Queen, who managed an Empire, whose centre was London and radiated out to the four corners of the globe, from South Africa, to Hong Kong, to New Zealand and Jamaica. But by the 1890s that Victorian society was slowly unravelling by the very constraints that were tying it together. Under that epitome of London fortitude, that epicentre of British colonialism, Oscar Wilde was flouting his homosexuality in the mid 1890s and was soon to be tried for his alleged affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, culminating in one of the most famous trials in British legal history. Jack the Ripper was prowling the East End, slitting the throats of Cockney prostitutes and opium dens were rife in the less savoury parts of the City. Under the veil of conservatism, the late Victorians were a quirky bunch, many sects were popping up exploring the occult and challenging the grip of the Church of England, spiritualism was rife, as was the certainty that Victoria’s steel reign was coming to a rapid and abrupt end. England was emerging from the industrial revolution and slowly entering the edges of the modern era. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, lived at a very interesting junction in history and his most famous literary creation from 1890-1905, Sherlock Holmes was a mixture of bound up fanaticism and heroic individuality, a brilliant mind, a borderline addict and an overwhelming eccentric living in an age well before forensics was perfected…

Ritchie Returned…

No other director but the London born, Guy Ritchie (Rock n Rolla, Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) could have brought a 21^st century take on the most filmed literary character, and no better actor than Robert Downey Jnr could have pulled off all the perverse complexities as the Victorian super-sleuth, Sherlock. Downey’s performance was reminiscent of his Oscar nominated role in Richard Attenborough biopic, Chaplin.

Hollywood iconic…

Jude Law is superbly cast as the unassuming but more stable companion Dr Watson whose repartee with Sherlock is bordering on between British Machismo and pervading homo-eroticism. In this version, Holmes and Watson bicker like an old married couple and Holmes sensing separation anxiety at the thought of Watson leaving London to take his bride to go and live in the country, engages Watson as his ever faithful sidekick to destroy the plans of an occult aristocratic. It’s an enabler-rescuer relationship of note and the male bonding that ensues between them penetrating secret societies and separating the mysticism from the science can be read at deeper levels if a viewer wishes. For besides the central Holmes-Watson relation which is central to the film is a fascinating plot which has the duo pitted against the evil and enigmatic Lord Blackwood, another wonderful role by Mark Strong and his ring of henchmen including a French giant.

A Trio of Triumph….

Sherlock Holmes is at home in the 21^st century thanks to the adept eye of Guy Ritchie who steers the plot away from glamorous American commercialism and keeps the film, gritty atmospheric, dark and downright British, even to tea in the afternoon, bulldogs and Big Ben. Judging actors and directors by their personal lives is misleading especially with the private affairs of Ritchie, who was going through a divorce with Madonna, Downey who has had an eventful ride to fame, from the early days of Less than Zero to the brilliant Iron Man and Jude Law himself, whose extra-marital affairs have kept him in the spotlight. This trio of talent is brilliant as a team and Guy Ritchie with the extraordinary power of his leading men, create a muscular, engaging and quirky cinematic Sherlock Holmes for the 21^st century, leaving a whole generation to discover the very complex and fascinating era that was Victorianism with a twist.