Surprisingly great, surprisingly real, and surprisingly… current? Sony Pictures Animation, the studio that brought you Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse brings its latest and greatest animated film to Netflix this weekend. It’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines–a sci-fi, apocalypse, coming of age, story about a weird family that ends up being the last family on the planet to be exterminated from the planet by the very technologies humans are so addicted to. Gravity Falls creators Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe wrote and directed this story, a visually stunning spectacle reflecting life as we knew it in 2020… and may know it again, with contributions by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (both known for the LEGO movies and Into the Spider-verse). The themes are influenced by Tron and Tron: Legacy,National Lampoon’s Vacation, and the Terminator movies, leaning hard on the plot of Terminator: Genisys. It’s loud, colorful, crazy, and it gets family relationships just right, at least of the 21st century variety. It’s also the movie I was hoping for with The Incredibles 2.
If you haven’t experienced it yet, you’re missing out. It’s the family cross-country roadtrip. And consider it a bonus if you take your dog. That plus the imposition of modern technology on family time, and the other downfalls of technology take center stage in the late summer release, Connected. The new animated film hails from Sony Pictures Animation, the same studio that created the powerhouse Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and The Lego Movie.
But you don’t need to look too close to find the framework of The Incredibles–that quirky family doing the things that all families do–which invariably is fun to laugh at. Plus robots and, better yet, robots gone amuck. Sci-fi plus comedy plus family fun sounds like a win to us.
The cast of voice actors is not so much a major celebrity cast as found in many animated movies recently, but some will be familiar. They include Maya Rudolph(Saturday Night Live), actor and Halloween series screenplay writer Danny McBride(Despicable Me, Alien: Covenant), Abbi Jacobson (The Lego Ninjago Movie),Eric André (The Lion King, Two Broke Girls), the film’s director Michael Rianda(Gravity Falls), and Academy Award and BAFTA winner Olivia Colman.
Many have asked: Why make another Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express? You could just as easily ask: Why adapt another Shakespeare play? Or Why make another Sherlock Holmes series? When your story is great, and becomes as classic as Agatha Christie’s famous, timeless 1934 novel, it’s sort of the point of cinema, isn’t it? From an actor standpoint, being in one of the film versions of Murder on the Orient Express, and portraying such iconic roles, is something like being cast as King Lear. And who better than Kenneth Branagh to inject his own vision of the story into a new snapshot of acting greats for a new era of audience members? Of Branagh’s twenty directorial pursuits, you must go back to the early era of Dead Again and Peter’s Friends to find Branagh not serving as puppetmaster of someone else’s well-known world, whether it’s Shakespeare in Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet (and the list goes on), or adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Marvel Comics’ Thor, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Branagh is the king of directing adaptations and remakes. Add Murder on the Orient Express to that list, a faithful adaptation of the book, stylishly filmed with lavish, sweeping sets and landscapes courtesy of cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, Branagh’s choice cameraman on four of his past films.
The year’s casting award goes to Lucy Bevan for bring filmgoers back to the age of the all-star cast, where you’d look to 1970s disaster movies (Airport ’76, Towering Inferno, Earthquake) or the odd comedy (think It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) for a pantheon of stars like that found in Orient Express. Branagh as Hercule Poirot sports that classic era moustache with confidence (Christie herself called Poirot’s moustache “magnificent” and “immense”) and he adds his own quirks and humor to Christie’s legendary greatest detective, providing a new twist on the Holmes/Monk/House, M.D. frustrated genius detective archetype. So many of the cast members appear every bit like Golden Age film stars here, including Branagh, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Derek Jacobi, and Leslie Odom, Jr., with a particularly engaging performance by Tom Bateman as Poirot’s friend Bouc, in what will no doubt be seen as a great breakout role for the actor.
The film will be best for those unfamiliar with the story. A famous detective receives a message requiring him to squeeze onto a full train at the last minute with a little more than a dozen passengers aboard. When one passenger who fears for his life and requests assistance from the detective winds up dead in a brutal, bloody murder, the whodunit begins. Once a snowy avalanche blocks the path of the train, the game is afoot as the delay provides enough time for Detective Poirot to begin interviewing the passengers. The mystery is laid out with several clues, including just enough to allow the viewer to figure out who killed the victim if he/she is paying close attention. And Branagh stages the investigation like a game of Clue/Cluedo–including overhead angles that at times make the viewer feel like Murder on the Orient Express is indeed a virtual reality version of the board game. We know the murder weapons and the location, but who is responsible for the death and why?
So long as you have a compelling story to tell, sometimes having all the right people on the big screen is enough of a reason to sit through a movie. But Agathie Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is like watching a play by Shakespeare. You already know the story is excellent, and the challenge is how creatively the latest director will manipulate the strings and how deftly the actors will portray the characters.
The latest adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express has all the right components for a movie-lover’s two hours of bliss. How will Kenneth Branagh orchestrate his next opus? Like the magnificent Henry V or Much Ado About Nothing? We can hope. How will this room full of master thespians of the British and American schools play off each other? Aren’t you inkling to find out?
This latest trailer for the film (see the first here if you missed it) expands the reach of the first, giving us a good look at Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, and Branagh directing Branagh as Inspector Poirot. Other stars include Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Leslie Odom, Jr., Willem Dafoe, Penélope Cruz, Josh Gad, and Olivia Colman. And don’t forget, publicity for the film has indicated that the clues of the crime are everywhere, including in posters and the trailers for the film.
Here is the second trailer for Murder on the Orient Express:
Everyone is a suspect. The clues are everywhere. For mystery lovers, it’s a staple. It’s Agatha Christie’s most well-known 1934 novel come to life, Murder on the Orient Express, the fourth major production for film or television of the classic whodunit in the English language–the 1974 Academy Award winning Sidney Lumet film being the best known. For the older generation the story is known, but for a new generation the stage is set for a big screen version of Clue/Cluedo. As with the 1974 version, the cast of the 2017 version is extraordinary.
So how do you cast a film against the last generation of film greats? Leading a bevy of thespian knights and dames, Sir Kenneth Branagh both directs and stars as master detective Hercule Poirot, the world’s greatest detective, played previously by Albert Finney (who refused a knighthood in the year 2000). Sir Derek Jacobi plays the butler Edward Henry Masterman in a role played by Sir John Gielgud in the earlier version. Dame Judi Dench plays Princess Natalia Dragomiroff, formerly played by Dame Wendy Hiller. In an update for the new version, American actor Leslie Odom, Jr.(Supernatural, Gotham) takes on the role of Doctor (formerly Colonel) Arbuthnott, played previously by Sir Sean Connery. Star Wars: The Force Awakens star Daisy Ridley as governess Mary Debenham, formerly played by Dame Vanessa Redgrave.
The list of American actors includes a fascinating mix of genre favorites old and new. Academy Award nominee Johnny Depp takes on the role played before by Richard Widmark as the debonair businessman Edward Ratchett. Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer is widow Harriet Hubbard, a role played in the 1974 film by Lauren Bacall. Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe is Professor Gerhard Hardman, played earlier by Colin Blakely. Academy Award winner Penélope Cruzplays a newly named character, Pilar Estravados, a missionary, in the part played before by Ingrid Bergman. Rounding out the cast is Josh Gad (Frozen) as Ratchett’s assistant Hector McQueen (played before by Anthony Perkins), and British TV regular Olivia Colman (Broadchurch, The Night Manager) plays the maid Hildegarde Schmidt (previously played by Rachel Roberts).
Take a look at this first trailer for the new Murder on the Orient Express:
