POWER RANKING - The Many Faces of "Death on the Nile"

By Christopher James

Which member of the "Death on the Nile" is capable of murder? Only Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) can crack the case.

Who doesn’t love a good murder mystery? Kenneth Branagh returns to fill the shoes (and moustache) of the legendary Agatha Christie character Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile, which opened in theaters this past weekend. Branagh’s stern detective finds himself aboard a glorious ship, S.S. Karnak, chartered to celebrate the nuptials of Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) and Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer). Their event is marred by death, and everyone is a suspect.

A murder mystery is only as good as its suspects, and Death on the Nile is bursting with persons celebrities of interest. So which suspects turned up the heat, and which others floundered about? Read for our power rankings of the cast (some spoilers ahead)...

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First images from the surely misbegotten remake of "Rebecca"

by Nathaniel R

Armie Hammer and Lily James as Mr and Mrs de Winter

Netflix has released the first four images from their remake of Hitchcock's Rebecca which begins streaming on October 21st ---  Excuse us, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. People will be quick to note that it's less sacrilegious to adapt the novel than the 1940 best Picture winner. Now, we understand that remakes are not automatically "bad," but there are numerous reasons why remaking Hitchcock films, of all things, is a spectacularly dumb thing to do. For one, auteurs that get adjectives named ever them are inimitable and so you lose the distinct personality. For another, Hitchcock movies have (mostly) aged terrifically well; there's a reason people still watch a wide swath of them and so many are still easily available to the public, referenced in so many modern movies, and an intrinsic part of culture...

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Review: Hotel Mumbai

by Jason Adams

What scares us -- the communal us -- shifts through time. The 70s gave us Vietnam allegories like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, while in the 80s Slasher Movies were all the rage as divorce numbers went up and women asserted their rights. Then there was so-called Torture Porn, which was all the rage while Bush & Cheney were throwing their waterboarding parties. So what now? It's hard not to see Grief as the theme of our current moment -- the great horror films of our age, films like The Babadook and Hereditary, are profound ruminations on a world that's already slipped through our fingers -- a madness so close its breath is hot on your throat, and a knowledge that its our own failures, our own shortcomings, that brought this all down upon us.

Hotel Mumbai is technically not a horror movie (look to Jordan Peele's Us, which Chris just reviewed, for this weekend's official entry in that genre) but it sure operates like one...

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Linking Neverland

• /Film the Wicked movie has a new release date, December 22nd, 2021. We'll believe that once we see actual casting news or a start date for filming. So should we start talking about the 94th Academy Awards yet. LOLOLO no. No we shan't.
• Library of America Sheila O'Malley's great essay on East of Eden (1955)
• Deadline Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect, True Blood) gets a leading sitcom role. Yay, it's about time since she's always hilarious. The comedy is about a church choir that gets a new director (Bradley Whitford)

• IndieWire interesting quotes from indie filmmakers trying to diversify their crew to have more gender parity and multiculturalism and the obstacles they do and don't face.  
• LA Times women over 70 are killing it right now: Glenn Close, Betty Buckley, RBG, Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda, etc
• AV Club Black Panther's Michael B Jordan is attached to a film adaptation of the popular new fantasy epic Black Leopard, Red Wolf set in an alternate reality Africa. (Hmmm, can he also make movies called Black Tiger, Black Jaguar and Black Lion for a full set of big cats?)
• /Film Aquaman's gross has gotten so big that Warner Bros is going to do a spin-off horror film The Trench set in the kingdom of the film's most memorable sequence
• AV Club Steve Buscemi learns about that viral 'deepfake' video of his face superimposed on Jennifer Lawrence's body
• Pajiba explains the whole Jeff Bezos vs National Enquirer business. My god what a mess (but a fascinating one)
• MNPP's obsession with Armie Hammer really does make us love Armie Hammer more
• Towleroad Ellen Page drags Chris Pratt over his homophobic church
• Variety controversial Michael Jackson Sundance doc Leaving Neverland premieres on HBO on March 3rd 

Oscar Shorts Alert
Don't forget that all 15 Oscar-nominated short films are now in theaters. If they're not in your city, they'll be available On Demand on February 19th.

Double Feature: On the Basis of Sex & RBG

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

It’s not uncommon for documentaries and narrative features about the same subject to be released around the same time. In some cases, the impetus for a narrative film comes from the success of a documentary, as with recent Robert Zemeckis' movies the The Walk and Welcome to Marwen, which told the same stories as the hit docs Man on Wire  and Marwencol, respectively. 2010 saw concurrent releases of documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money and the feature Casino Jack.

This season's double feature is undeniably inspired by the need to champion strong women in the face of divisive times. Who better than civil rights icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second female justice appointed to the Supreme Court, to serve as the figurehead for two very different movies in 2018?

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