Death on the Nile & The Batman: Fictional Fan Favorites

I love Agatha Christie's novels and I love Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. So now you know where I stand and you should not be very surprised by the reviews that follow. You have been forewarned. 

Death on the Nile: This is not a "good" movie per se. But this is a movie that delivers exactly what it promises, i.e. famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot on a Nile river cruise, solving a murder using the deductive reasoning of his "little gray cells." The murder doesn't happen till halfway through the film, so part of the fun is wondering who is even going to get killed. And then in classic Christie style, every single person on the boat has a motive. Will Poirot find the murderer? You bet.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as Poirot, this feels like a TV movie except for the fact that they spent a lot of money on production design, costumes, and getting together an insane cast, including Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Annette Bening, Letitia Wright, and even Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders in some rather fun stunt casting. These actors are clearly having a grand ol' time swanning around in fabulous costumes and taking in the sights on this spectacular Nile cruise. However, remember how I said they spent a lot of money? Well yes, they did, but none of it was spent particularly well. The whole film was shot in England, not in Egypt, and there's this bizarre green screen-ish quality to all the proceedings. They recreated the Temple of Abu Simbel for a big set piece, and while that's impressive, it's also fairly obvious when you watch this movie on the big screen that this is all just elaborate set dressing.

To be fair, even though this movie does feel a bit fake and bombastic, it certainly made me want to go visit Egypt for real. And it was entertaining to watch the proceedings as Poirot interrogated everyone and whipped them all into a frenzy before the final denouement. I read the book years ago and had completely forgotten the details of both the killer and the killed, so I still got to enjoy watching the events unfold and piecing the mystery together. But the fact that Branagh keeps trying to give Poirot a whole romantic back story is utter hogwash. These movies are way too Hollywood, but if you are in need of some cinematic comfort food, this film goes down easy and is a perfectly pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

The Batman: This movie is three hours long. But if you are a fan of Batman and his many iterations over the years, those are three hours you will comfortably spend glued to your seat, enjoying all the swashbuckling antics on your screen. And surprise, surprise, Robert Pattinson is a brilliant Batman, something that I absolutely did not expect going into this film. If you were expecting a glittery waif of a vampire, think again. You're gonna get a hulked-up superhero who beats up everyone in his way and has chiseled cheekbones that should be registered as lethal weapons in their own right.

This movie is simply fan service from end-to-end. You won't just see Batman battle against one classic villain. Instead, you'll get to see him puzzle out clues with the Riddler (a marvelously creepy Paul Dano), go head-to-head with the Penguin (an absolutely unrecognizable Colin Farrell), and team up with the kick-ass Catwoman (the always beguiling Zoe Kravitz). I would say that it's impossible to be bored, but that's because I'm a fan. The movie definitely suffers from some Lord of the Rings: Return of the King-style finale problems where it simply doesn't know when to end, but I was ready to stay and watch every single scene. 

The aesthetics of this movie are particularly fun, with great care being paid to every element of the iconic costume and associated Batman accessories. Yes, this is an extremely dark and grim movie, but unlike some action films, where darkness has been used as a way to cover up a low budget and not invest as much in action sequences, this film uses darkness to enhance the ominousness of gun battles and emphasize Batman's ability to wreak havoc in the shadows. This is also a story about revenge (he doesn't even acknowledge his identity as Batman until the end - for most of the movie, everyone is just referring to him as "Vengeance") and the fact that Batman is the most antihero superhero we have. It's a very James Bond-esque performance, where Pattinson gets beat up almost as much as he beats other people up, and I was completely here for it. And to round things out, there's a brilliantly atmospheric score from Michael Giacchino that sets the tone throughout. I'm not going to pretend that The Batman is the greatest movie ever made. But it was exactly what I wanted, and it delivered the goods. Consider this fan fully serviced.