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Reviews
The ABC Murders (2018)
An excellent case, with one exception
This is a classic high quality British production of an Agatha Christie mystery. The whole cast is good. The production is gorgeous. This might also be a breakthrough role for Rupert Grint, who heretofore had not yet fully shaken off his JK Rowling persona -- until this role.
The problem is John Malkovitch. He has not really ever been famous for doing accents of any sort, and his Walloon-by-way-of England accent is dreadful and distracting. And the performance is generally close to inert. Of course, it's hard to avoid thoughts of David Suchet in the role. But I think there must be hundreds of actors who could have delivered a performance that was both less robotic and more convincing on a line-by-line level. What's weird is that Malkovitch's French is quite good, but his English has an accent that is neither British nor French.
Kevin Can Wait (2016)
The hottest new sitcom of 1992 -- with a laff trak
This show is just dreary. James is not without talent, but he needs to give up the pattern of the 1990s sitcom. Remini is clearly an intelligent actor, but trapped in terrible scripts. The laff traks have a reverse effect. The laff traks instruct us where to laugh at incredibly lame jokes that were probably drole when Plautus copied them in the reign of Julius Caesar, while simultaneously destroying the timing of talented actors.
Go look at "Life in Pieces," "Archer," and "Speechless."
This show was not even good when it was called "The King of Queens."
Zen (2011)
Quite astonishingly bad
I generally like British mystery movies as being competently written and competently acted. This is a huge exception.
Posing British actors as Italians just does not ring true. I know that they are trying to be fake Italian as best they can, but anyone who is of Italian origin or has even been to Italy will laugh it off as if they were pretending to be Chinese.
Rufus Sewell rivals Nicholas Cage for his inability to form facial expressions.
This is worth watching for its terribleness factor. You will keep asking yourself, "How could this have been made? With this terrible actor?"