Intersecting Planes Christie was probably our most careful student of the genre. She was all over the map, so to speak, trying all sorts of variations. Her twists on the genre were intended to complement the twists within the story. The most interesting and adventuresome were...
Sir Charles Baskerville dies on the moor under mysterious circumstances and rumors abound about a demonic hound. When the American heir arrives to take charge, a family friend calls in Holmes and Watson to get to the heart of the mystery.
The Elusive Core of the Genre you want to understand film, you need to understand the three main narrative types: noir, that genre derived from the musical, and the detective story. While the detective story in film essentially means Agatha Christie, you can’t understand that unless...
Despite her sheltered upbringing, Jenny is a teen with a bright future; she's smart, pretty, and has aspirations of attending Oxford University. When David, a charming but much older suitor, motors into her life in a shiny automobile, Jenny gets a taste of adult life that she won't soon forget.
Wonderful Soul, Unwonderful World story happens all the time, I suppose. A young woman is bright, much brighter than her peers. She deeply understands the forces and passions in novels, real literature. That means that she is not only smart, that she understands life, but...
Minority Report reader suggested that I watch this. So I engaged with a few episodes, enough to find the most appealing ones to me. The supposed attraction is the extended magical journey, sort of a cross between “Doctor Strange,” the best Marvel comic character and “Hitchhiker’s...
Shifty you can see the notes of the writer in a film. It is as if he or she sat down with the intent of accomplishing certain things and wrote a story. But instead of the story, we still see the unerased list of goals....
An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?
Inspecting the Story you want to understand film, the first thing on the list is narrative structure, specifically cinematically structured narrative. If I were teaching in film school, I would introduce this subject in a semester’s worth of detective narrative. Nowhere are more tricks pulled, more...
Emily Boynton, the stepmother to three children, blackmails the family lawyer into destroying a second will of her late husband that would have freed the children from her dominating influence. She takes herself, the children, and her daughter-in-law on holiday to Europe and the Holy Land. At a dig, Emily is found dead and Hercule Poirot investigates.
Multiple Appointments can come to films for the bubble of the film, as it presents itself. Or you can enjoy the film as a character in your life, your personal film and the narratives that change you. In this case, I chose the larger film. That’s...
The life of George Falconer, a British college professor, is reeling with the recent and sudden loss of his longtime partner. This traumatic event makes George challenge his own will to live as he seeks the console of his close girl friend Charley, who is struggling with her own questions about life.
Julianne’s Floating something offensive about this, and it is a rather delicious experience finding out what it is. Of course, there is the feint, the whole business about gay love being unremarkable. Even ten years ago, most of the American public would have struggled a...
In an isolated family mansion, a group of rich 20-somethings decides to play Bodies Bodies Bodies, a game where one of them is secretly a "killer" while the rest tries to "escape". Things take a turn for the worse when real bodies start turning up, setting off a paranoid and dangerous chain of events.
Hideous Sun Demon am not the intended target audience for this. That seems to be the kind of young folks that go to slasher films and that also like folded narrative and explicit twists at the end. But I am an engaged viewer in any...
Asher to Ashes came to this quite by accident. I was looking for recent appearances by Jane Asher. There is a bit, it turns out, at the end of the “bonus” collection, where she plays herself. But getting to that, I patiently watched this and tried...
