Thread by @OSPyoutube

In order to avoid compulsively checking the news tonight, I'm thinking of doing a bad movie night! Anyone got any suggestions for a terrible movie? Maybe one that could have and SHOULD have been good but somehow absolutely crashed and burned? -R

Hokay let's narrow this sucker down -R

oooookay lemme just get my snacks ready for this one, be back soon

my favorite quirk of Kenneth Branagh is how he always casts himself as the most interesting character of every movie he directs. Hamlet, Iago, Gilderoy Lockhart, and now our boi Poirot

It's been a while since I read it, but Poirot is… short and round, right?

I do like this little intro deduction scene, with him figuring out the relic thief was the chief of police, but I can't say I like this wistful, angsty "I see ze world as it should be… it makes ze life unbearable……" exchange immediately after

"…I'm shouting at you in english… and now I'm doing it louder and slower."

Oh yeah, I also ominously discuss how "when it's all over… then NOTHING can touch us……" in front of the man I just clocked as a brilliant detective

Okay maybe it's cuz it's book dialogue that's naturally designed to flow on the page and not to be spoken, but some of the lines sound a little TOO snappy to me

so there's this thing in old detective shows where you could sometimes identify the killer by who the most well-known, expensive actor in the cast was. So I like how EVERY actor in this movie is some big-name all-star. It's kind of a cheeky nod.

I literally have no idea what just happened with this intro scene. I know I'm not SUPPOSED to know at this juncture, but that was still quite the frenetic pace

this may be the most normal Depp has ever looked and sounded in a movie

…I miss trains :(

not to sass this threatening cutout-letters note but could they really not find a second "E" for "bettr"? the most common letter in the english language??

okay I can hear some of the dialogue weirdness now - these actors are trying to naturally deliver lines that worked on paper but sound unnatural in their tone or accent, like "it is just so" in a thick american accent

this movie is hornier than I expected

there's less shot-reverse-shot in this movie than I expected, some of these dialogue scenes seem to go on a bit longer than average because of that

"I like a good rosé" is the woke catchphrase of the new millennium

would you guys finish that patisserie already I'm about to reach into the screen and take it

the environmental shots in this movie are gorgeous and I miss trains :c

mon dieu it is en avälaenche

ahhhh, THERE'S the dutch angle. branagh does it again

who is this ominous lady constantly talking about sin and lucifer? she sounds like the life of the party

iiiiinteresting directorial choice not showing us the body at all and doing this whole discovery scene as a top-down long take

it feels like a directorial flex showing that they COULD do the shot, but at the cost of the actual impact of the shot

Poirot: someone haz been meurdëred
The passengers: …"not the dickhead"? What do you want me to say-

poor josh gad. "you finally get to play a serious role! but you're a super racist alcoholic"

there are so many long shots in this movie. characters stand in a static location and talk about things they're observing that are either too small in shot to see or purposefully out of frame. directorial flex of the long shot sacrificing clarity of framing.

cool, so apparently "dickhead" is a bit light for ratchet

"He… made a rather overt overture" sounds pretty wack in a modern american accent

the general mystery format of "colorful cast of characters, all with their own quirks, clash in an exposed space" is definitely fun. maybe I should watch knives out

another set of dutch angles! and it's on the racist german doctor being racist!

kung-fu boxer missionary lady is my favorite character right now

I do really love the writing in Poirot. "Crime is the anomanly. I believe it takes a fracture of the soul to murder another human being." It's a wistful, optimistic perspective on humanity for a murder mystery.

did… did the princess LIKE-like that lady? the music is getting very wistful. am I just missing something? was it an actual case of gal-pals?

does poirot even need that cane? this chase scene is getting ridiculous

"ze FUDGE! It is FULL of ze fudge!!"

seriously there are so many long shots in this movie

honestly josh gad's acting is really impressive here? I feel bad he's pidgeonholed in comedy

oh, so this lady is ACTUALLY high, not just acting like a disney villain

this story puts a lot of focus on race and heritage, but I guess it was the turn of the millennium

whaaaaaat willem dafoe is a non-german non-racist detective????

the cool thing about this movie is I DID read the book but it was a very long time ago and I don't remember anything except the final twist, so this is all very new

Angsty Sadboi Dead-Wife Poirot is not an angle I'm particularly interested in seeing explored tbh

honhonhon, so many tweests

kind of cool how this one guy inadvertently fucked with so many people they formed their own Clue-style ensemble cast

I don't remember this many action scenes in the book

the dutch angle returns with a vengeance

I like how movies need to play a little "clack" noise whenever someone reveals a gun so we know they have a gun

I like the conductor friend, he's like an audience proxy going "no wait that shit don't make sense"

"I was colonel armstrong's Batman in the war."

Okay, I really like the bit where Michelle Pfeiffer pulls off the blonde wig revealing herself as a brunette. That's clever, cuz we all know she's a natural blonde!

ok I know it's serious but everyone filing out of Ratchet's room post-murder is unintentionally hilarious clown-car style

Welp, that was emotionally loaded

unlike the gun

hey, finally, a long take that's well-used! hercule walks out of an apparently empty train, internally monologuing about how fucked up this case was - and then he reaches the final car and we see that everyone's still on the train, meaning he didn't report their crime

cheeky, setting up death on the nile

Welp, definitely a bit silly in places, but could've been way worse!

The pacing was definitely VERY odd, though. Thinking about it, the all-star cast got almost no time to shine. -R