See How They Run (2022)

It is 1953 in the West End of London where a celebration is being held for the 100th performance of The Mousetrap, adapted from one of Agatha Christie's mysteries.  The success of the show has brought Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody), a Hollywood director, to London with plans of doing a film version.  During the party, it becomes clear that he has not endeared himself to anyone.  Thus, it is no surprise at all when he is murdered.  There are plenty of suspects.

Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) arrive on scene to begin the investigation.  Stalker is an avid note-taker, having missed her calling as a court stenographer.  She also has the problem of deciding that the latest person to be interviewed is the guilty party.  "Don't jump to conclusions," Stoppard counsels.  While Stalker is eager and full of energy, Stoppard is world-weary.  He is clearly not pleased to have Stalker - a woman constable - as a partner.

Some historic people are among the cast.  Notably, Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) is the star of the play.  Why was a 6'2" Dickinson cast to play the 5'6" Attenborough?  Also, Agatha Christie (Shirley Henderson) appears in the final act.  Other casting choices show the diversity requirements of the modern movie industry rather than an accurate look at 1953 London, just like Death on the Nile.

Definitely funny but not uproariously so.  The laughs are mostly regarding the awkwardness of the characters in particular scenes, not laugh out loud jokes.  As is common in many such mysteries, much is telegraphed in earlier scenes.  However, some of this is misdirection.

Good popcorn fun.

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

World History: A Social Justice Warrior Interpretation.

Lord Randolph is a black man.  Scotsman George Dalgleish is black.  Andrew Ker is black.  Bess of Hardwick is Chinese.  After this, I don't want to hear another complaint about Mickey Rooney playing Japanese, Johnny Depp as Tonto, or John Wayne as Genghis Khan.  This movie screams out that it is not history.  The slave trade that brought blacks to Europe had barely begun but this movie proposes that blacks are long integrated into the society and have risen to the nobility.  If this was a high school or college play, that's fine.  But big budget film?  No.

 

David Rizzio, who served as a secretary for Queen Mary, is openly gay.  Also, he has an affair with Henry Darnley - Mary's husband - on their wedding night!  Right.  Well, it is true that Rizzio was accused of impregnating the queen because of his close association with her and Darnley was estranged from Mary very soon after the marriage but this is an interesting bit of fiction.  The brutal murder of Rizzio takes on a new meaning when he is homosexual.

 

Mary Stuart was raised in France.  She was married to the King of France, Francis II.  He died young and she returned to Scotland, where she had been queen since she was a week old.  She should not have an Irish accent.  The movie is more interested in listening to Mary titter and squeal with her ladies in waiting than ponder the decisions and crises that led to her abdication, English imprisonment, and execution.  Her menstrual cycle figures in the story because that's unique to Reformation royalty.

 

The characters are mostly unlikeable and I cared not a whit when Rizzio was murdered or Darnley strangled.  Even Mary seals her fate in an exchange (entirely fictional) in which she tells Queen Elizabeth that she is her superior.  No, Mary was quite clearly Elizabeth's inferior except that she managed to birth a child.  Mary's son became King of England and Scotland upon Elizabeth's death.

 

This is crap.  I was very tempted to walk out.  Avoid this turkey.

Lady Bird

Lady Bird is the story of a girl's senior year at a Catholic high school in 2002 and 2003.  Though her name is actually Christine, she introduces herself as Lady Bird.  This is a coming-of-age story that mostly focuses on the relationship with Lady Bird and her mother.

Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) is in full rebellion mode for most of the movie and usually playing the alpha male in her love life.  She courts the men who interest her and they are mostly indifferent lumps who don't protest at being her boyfriend.  Of course, perhaps she is finding men like her father who is also something of a lump.  At one point, Lady Bird's mother (Laurie Metcalf) starts explaining how her father is depressed and he is sitting silently in the room as this discussion takes place.  Even her brother Miguel - obviously adopted though that is never openly stated - works as a checker at a local grocery store despite having a mathematics degree from Berkley!  She lives in a world of passive or underachieving men.  She abandons her old clique - notably best friend Julie - and joins the 'popular' group.  She eventually regrets the move.  She also regrets surrendering her virginity to one of the lumps mere moments after the act.  She lies, cheats, and steals.  At her Catholic school, she laments that a pro-life speaker's mother didn't have the abortion and thus spare them from that school assembly.  Lady Bird offers nothing but contempt for her hometown, Sacramento.  Her fondest wish is to go to school on the East Coast.  By the end of the movie, she is attending college in NYC and realizes that she misses Sacramento.

 

This is obviously autobiographical for writer/director Greta Gerwig, who was born in Sacramento in 1983, attended a Catholic School, whose mother was a nurse, and attended college in New York.  Clearly some poetic license was included to spice up the story or maybe she squeezed several years worth of antics into a single year. 

 

Lady Bird herself is not a likeable character.  There is a combination of self-loathing and constant rebellion that makes it difficult to like her.  This speaks well of Ronan's ability to bring the character to life.  Her mother (Laurie Metcalf) is a far more sympathetic character.  Julie (Beanie Feldstein) is the only other character to be realized, a shy but talented girl that Lady Bird abandons for the popular kids only to reconsider later.

 

There are some SJW moments like Lady Bird's pro-abortion stance.  She sees a poster of Reagan at the house of her boyfriend's grandmother and he offers an embarrassed shrug.  Soon thereafter, we discover he is gay and is terrified of telling his Catholic, Republican family.  Another character is reading Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States, a book that looks only at the warts of American history and laments that socialists and communists were suppressed.

 

Skip this one.