<i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> Is a Ride Worth Skipping
In cinema, as elsewhere, there can be too much of a good thing. Quick: Do you remember the film several years back that starred Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman, among others? If you recall that it was Nine, the director Rob Marshall’s musical follow-up to his Academy Award–winning Chicago, well good on you. I can scarcely summon any memory of the film myself.
The director Kenneth Branagh’s remake of labors under the same delusion that cinematic quality is arithmetical: Dench and Cruz are both here again, as are Branagh himself, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, and God knows how many others who are currently skipping my mind. If movies truly were math, this would be a masterpiece.
