Am I Missing Something?

Absolutely amazing

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

I bought this boxset of Agatha Christie thinking that Hercule Poirot is in all of the movies of Agatha Christie. I kept waiting until halfway through the movie, I gave up. But watching Jayne Ashbourne still made it worth watching. Her character here is so lovable. Anyone knows about a fan club of Jayne Ashbourne? I fell in love with her in this movie.... Anyway let me know where can I find any other details about Jayne ashbourne. I was only able to get a handful of her photos in the web and I don't think he has a facebook or twitter account...Anyone who can help me out will be much appreciated. I will be watching the second disc in the boxset tonight and I'm pretty sure I won't be disappointed.

This would have been better without some completely pointless changes brought in to the plot. At the start there is a completely implausible attempt to suggest that Mark is suspected of being the killer. Nothing in the show suggests the police would suspect him in this way and the plot line dies quietly, having wasted a fair amount of time. Most of the performances are adequate at worst but the dialogue is often poor. One of the things which made the book successful was the way it at least played with the idea of the supernatural. No one could be fooled by the witches here. Agatha Christie was usually luckier than this in her adaptors for the screen.

We rented this expecting to have a cozy evening at home. I came away very disappointed. Most Agatha Christie adaptations are very good, and I was not familiar with this particular story. The first 15 minutes promise an entertaining experience, but then it more or less runs off the tracks.The writing is pretty poor and should have provided additional exposition. Watching this was like reading a novel and skipping the even numbered chapters. I had only a faint clue as what was going on and could not figure out why the characters were doing or why they were doing it, mostly the latter.In the future, I will stick to the Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple stories. With them, you know what you are getting and won't be disappointed.

Spoilers herein.Christie isn't appreciated much these days. She wasn't great at evoking the tone of a place, nor creating fully dimensional characters. She wasn't a master of the language. Today, we seem to prefer florid language, novel insertions into situations, (cats, priests, exotic locals and professions) and `psychological' weight.But where she excelled was at understanding the elements of the mystery and devising plots that were not just clever but clever in ways that recognize the fact that it is a mystery story. Often the characters include a writer (or someone in showbusiness). And the twist would be an artifact of the telling of the story rather than the action within the story. She might have the narrator be the murderer, or have the murder victim be misidentified by the reader (and incidentally the people involved). Reading her work, at least in the middle years, is a lesson in understanding the form and bending the content to suit. It is a postmodern idea not appreciated in our postmodern times. That is especially so when films are made of her stories. The BBC usually does a `faces and places' treatment, where characters and settings are supposed to amuse us until the end when we are surprised. The ending isn't the resolution of a puzzle, a tussle between writer and reader, but rather an expected but undeserved gift.This particular production is less offensive than the BBC ones, especially the Poirot ones. It bears little resemblance to anything she wrote. But the spirit is dimly there: we have a confusing barrage of individuals and situations. The clues aren't presented fairly enough, but in a story this abbreviated they cannot be. I think there is a lesson here. This script is close in tone to the overwhelming possibilities and suspended clearances of the books. But it is a dreadful film because we expect to know where we are and where we are going. I am convinced that mixing Christie books and film is quite a challenge. I have not seen it done well, and imagine it to be a fruitful filmschool exercise.The business of the MacBeth witches was too clumsy to have come from anyone who actually knows the play.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.