Ununnilium
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| 24 12% | The ABC Murders (2018) - Jul 26, 2020
"A hilariously obvious attempt at turning Poirot into Prestige Television. It shoves in an immigration metaphor which *should* work - prejudice against immigrants is one of the biggest issues of our time - yet somehow falls flat. It turns the murderer into a Hannibal-esque, or perhaps Joker-esque, nemesis to Poirot. But most ridiculously, it gives Poirot a backstory which belongs to a character who is monumentally different from any version of Poirot in any medium. Also it's just looooooooooooong"
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| 43 25% | Appointment with Death (1988) - Jul 26, 2020
"It's padded and draggy, with extremely '80s musical cues and a very imperialist engagement with Palestine. The presence of extremely good actors doing their thing helps, but what really sinks it is the ending - tonally all over the place, structurally confused, and seemingly built to deny catharsis. ...but it's still better than the made-for-TV ones."
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| 69 55% | Ultra Galaxy Fight: New Generation Heroes (2019) - Jul 25, 2020
"Pure spectacle, but concentrated. Rather than feeling like an underdone traditional narrative with too much blowing shit up, this feels like a blow-shit-up funtime with some nice narrative sprinkles on top."
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| 37 20% | Murder in Three Acts (1986) - Jul 19, 2020
"It's better-done in terms of story than the previous made-for-TV Ustinov Poirots, with a sunny locale and a sequence of events that's reasonably easy to make out. Unfortunately, it also features the addition of transphobic jokes, incredibly bad takes on mental illness, and most damningly of all, Tony Curtis in brownface. And yet, with all the changes and the modern-day-ification, we're still having little boys send telegrams and playing Happy Families with Egg."
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| 76 69% | Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue (1992) - Jul 17, 2020
"I feel like you'll enjoy this if you like '80s werewolf horror movies, even if you aren't familiar with Kamen Rider as a franchise. It starts as one (but with grasshoppers instead of wolves), and then adds mad science, spy tropes, superhero tropes, action movie stuff, and sheer weirdness. It's definitely gory, there's weird fridgey stuff with the female characters, and the action gets a little fatiguing towards the end. But it's enjoyably overstuffed and worth experiencing, if you're up for it."
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| 95 96% | Hamilton (2020) - Jul 12, 2020
"There are many things to say about Hamilton's flaws as a political and historical work. But. As a character piece, Hamilton is gorgeous, stunning and flawless. It's a Greek tragedy where every character is utterly sympathetic even as they're destroying themself, where concepts like "leaving a legacy" and "standing up for oneself" are shown as worthy only when you can let go of the toxic masculinity infesting them - and if you can't, you ruin the lives of others and one's own. Magnificent."
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| 42 24% | Dead Man's Folly (1986) - Jul 12, 2020
"Not as nonsense as Thirteen at Dinner, but still very bland (and not just the Inspector). Jean Stapleton has some fun moments, but Ustinov is slowly losing his gusto. The modern setting still doesn't make sense for a story about inheritance taxes destroying the old aristocracy, and the way the puzzle plot is conveyed is super sloppy."
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| 60 41% | Mrs. Columbo (1979) - Jul 05, 2020
"This weird spinoff is in fact three shows in one. The first season, where she's firmly Mrs. Columbo, isn't bad, but would be better without the Columbo tie-in. The first five episodes of the second season are an absolutely dire cop show where Kate is in constant peril, but the last three turn into a surprisingly good and sustainable take on the Columbo formula - just in time to get cancelled. If they'd just done a Columbo-inspired show with a female lead, this could be remembered fondly today."
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| 64 46% | 1776 (1972) - Jul 05, 2020
"The first two hours-ish are kind of a fluffy nothing, with a lot of superfluous musical numbers and way too much focus on how horny the Founding Fathers were. But then, it takes a hard turn into being about slavery, and the hypocrisy of Northerners who profited off it, and the question of whether independence was worth allowing slavery to continue, and the possibility that it wasn't, and this is all really good and important but the movie this was before just can't narratively support it!!"
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| 41 23% | Thirteen at Dinner (1985) - Jun 28, 2020
"Aggressively mediocre except where it's randomly weird, with a modern setting that only seems to have happened because they ran out of money for period props. Ustinov is fun as ever, of course, and David Suchet is a delight, even more so if you're familiar with his Poirot. But this fails to make the mystery coherent and fails to give us other reasons to care."
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