Nooo! The bluray has been cut down to 16:9! (From 1.85:1.) Whyy!
*pout*
Anyway, I’m still sorta continuing my 80s arthouse movie blog series here, but skipping a bit ahead. In the early days, Branagh’s movies were shown in the Cinematheques — starting with his Henry V movie, he was sort of considered a serious director. I guess that lasted until 1994, when he did his Frankenstein?
But I’m skipping a bit ahead, just because I wanted to (re-)watch this movie now. I think I’ve seen it before, but I’m not quite sure.
The black and white is an arty choice.
Colour!!!
I love Emma Thompson. Did Branagh’s movies start sucking when they got divorced?
Yup; checks out.
Hey!
It took a while before I realised that Branagh is trying to do a US dialect.
This movie has all of the British actors!
But it’s just a bit… mawkish? I mean, it’s a goofy, amusing movie, but you feel Branagh’s ambitions — and it sorta falls short. Like in this shot, which looks great, but it’s so incongruous. It screams “look! somebody on the set can do lighting!” And it’s the same with the camera movements — they do all the possible camera movements — dollying around people, swivelling from one to the other and back again, etc etc. It’s like Branagh’s cinematographer is going through a list of fun things they could do.
But botching up quite a lot of them. Or rather — not getting them quite right.
And it’s not a tiny budget either — modest perhaps for all the stuff they want to do?
It’s a fun little movie — all noirish in parts, and properly Hitchcockian in parts. My main problem with this is really the performances — Branagh himself, of course, but many of the smaller parts just don’t quite work. Derek Jacobi is great; sure, and Mork is fine, but so many awkwardly directed parts.
It’s fine? I liked this movie at the time perhaps because it was an odd throwback movie, but watching it now, there’s no really no reason to watch it, really.
But I mean, it’s fine.
Dead Again. Kenneth Branagh. 1991. ⚃
