Murder on the Orient Express. Kenneth Branagh. 2017.

Oh, Branagh. Wherefort art thou no good any more.

I mean, we all loved him in the late 80s. Quirky entertaining movies and Henry V! Fun! But then the 90s happened and he never quite recovered. A major problem he had, of course, was that he took US money and had to use a bunch of famous American actors to hilariously disastrous effect, but he also just seemed to lose the fun of it all.

This movie certainly has the fun bit: The moustaches are magnificent. But other than that, it’s … so … standard. I mean, I love me some Standard Christie, and that’s what this is, but…

And, of course, this movie is plagued by big name actors hamming it up, too.

Oh, and then suddenly Poirot is an action here. Well, why not.

Behave Yourself!. George Beck. 1951.

Another public domain oldie.

Oh! Farley Granger! He was that guy in Rope. He’s better here in this broad, silly comedy.

Was he hot shit at the time? There’s this:

Which seems to imply that he was.

Shelley Winter’s great here, too.

And there’s a dog.

OK, you can’t have everything, but I found myself enjoying this quite a bit more than perhaps is strictly warranted. It’s a solid screwball comedy, and they don’t get much screwier than this.

Wild Guitar. Ray Dennis Steckler. 1962.

Hm… Ray Dennis Steckler… that name seems familiar. Is he the guy who made all those movies that MST3K makes fun of? Yup. But this isn’t one of those movies.

But it’s bad.

But it’s not, like, bad bad. It surprisingly well shot. It’s uneven, but there’s some nice-looking scenes in here. The dialogue is totally corny, of course, and it’s boring, but I’ve seen worse.

But half-way through I got so bored that I just ditched the movie.