mweratcliffe

Great production values and some great performances - if you like lots of overly dramatic speeches full of irony spite and venomous jibes that don't actually move the story forward or tell us anything new about the characters. Otherwise while there may be some original bits to the overall tale, there is little in it that we haven't all seen or read before in other books or productions about a real or imagined struggle for some Kingdom set in the middle ages. 5 stars for the production. Zip for the rest of it as it is essentially a big waste of the viewers time.

The reality is that if you don't come into Venice along the Grand Canal or grab one of those drones fir an arial view - and you don't have an unlimited budget and you don't have private tour guides - you miss the best of what Venice has to offer. You also need a very Sunny Day. The real way to get lost in Venice is not to take a gondola - it is to walk "inland" from the Grand Canal and try to find anything on a tour map like the Leonardo Da Vinci museum. Never did find it on that cold wet day I was there. I saw very narrow streets walled in by deteriorating walls looking for street signs where you eventually discover that the names of the streets are high on the wall near wgat we would call the second floor. Eventually found a great restaurant by taking a chance - had great food and wine. Wound our way to St Marks Square saw the Grand Canal again and fought our way upstream against the inflow of arriving tourists with there luggage and back packs to get back to the train and off the Islands. I can say I saw it. Wasn't much - stick with travelogues for this city - you will see the best but if you go you may like me never experience it. Not a city I would waste any money or time on again. See Verona see Trieste see Florence. Skip Venice.

In the hands of this director, Agatha, Christie's original story ordeal by innocence is regretfully turned in to a bad film noir. Dave Brubeck was a great jazz, composer and musician no argument. Dave Brubeck's music does not fit this film, which would have been much better without it. The music is jarring and far too modern for the story giving it , along with the editing, that film noir quality and the two narratives, story and score, are constantly fighting each other. It's clear that the Brubeck soundtrack was important to the filmmaker because it often plays over the dialogue, informing the audience that the story they're watching is less important than the music they're listening to, which is not the purpose of a film score. Whit a different score and editing it may have been a much better, although arguably a more conventional film of a familiar story, but at least there might have been more room for better writing and more evidence of good acting.