The Movie Addict

After being very impressed with the Force Awakens and liking Rogue One, there were high hopes that Episode 8 would continue to good work but sadly this is a big disappointment and comes close to undoing all the great work that J.J. Abrams did in Episode Seven. The film sees Luke Skywalker return after his blink and you’ll miss it cameo at the end of the last film. He is basically living as a hermit on an island and Rey is trying to bring him back. It was good to have Mark Hamill back and was the best thing in this film. I thought that Skywalker’s reluctance to coming back was quite smart and helped build up to his big scene with Kylo Ren. The main problem is the structure of the film. It feels like it is going at half speed. I thought that the whole casino scene was thrown in to give Poe something to do. Poe was one of the driving forces in Force Awakens but is given next to nothing to do. Then there is the Rose character who just seems such a wasted opportunity. She always seemed like...

I’ve never been a big fan of Agatha Christie or her work. It’s not that I think they are terrible but I’ve never read the books and only seen brief parts of mainly Poirot played in the UK by David Suchet. However a big screen version of Murder on the Orient Express was something that I needed to see. The opening scene sees Poirot solving a crime and the way that he does it is very good and sprinkled with good humour. I think this does a good job of showing people new to the character what they can expect. It’s simple and brief. Soon the film progresses to the train where the lions share of the movie is set. As Poirot, Kenneth Branagh is very good. He manages the humour and shows the characteristics that are part of the character but I was never aware that he had been in love. That moustache is outrageous and I spent quite a bit of time watching the moustache instead of paying attention to what was going on. This film has an all star cast which is normally a dangerous thing but if you h...