Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
There are times when I will be watching a film, really enjoying it, and suddenly feeling like something is off. I often cannot put my finger on what exactly the flaw is, but because I can’t put my finger on it I dismiss it and still say the movie is good. There are other times, however, when after talking with other people about the film, I understand exactly what the flaw is. Watching Murder on the Orient Express was one of those experiences. I love myself a good old-school mystery in the vein of Hitchcock films like To Catch a Thief , and my prior experiences with star and director Kenneth Branagh (in particular his four-hour unabridged adaptation of Hamlet ) as well as the rest of this star-studded cast made me very excited to see this film. I didn’t expect a fantastic film, but I was secretly hoping that it would revitalize this largely dead genre. Unfortunately, Murder has one really big flaw that makes it largely forgettable: it doesn’t know how to balance knowledge ...