Atin Ito First Filipino Community Newspaper in Ontario
Two recent drops on our favorite streaming channels provide enough Entertainment to keep us occupied. I wouldn’t call them anything near masterpieces, but they help while away the hours via engaging casts.
Death and Other Details (Disney+) – This new Limited Series has your name written for those who miss Knives Out and think of Agatha Christie’s locked room mysteries as the perfect nightcap. It’s a New Year gift especially packed for your delight and consideration. In this version, Rufus Cotesworth (a grizzled Mandy Patinkin) is your Hercule Poirot, the detective on the case of a passenger on a luxury cruise who’s been mysteriously speared to the wall of his cabin. Imogene (Violet Beanne) is our intrepid heroine, and while we share the knowledge that she surreptitiously entered the victim’s cabin for her amusement, we’re meant to be on her side. She may have been an unwelcome interloper in the cabin, but she’s not the murderer and is being framed.
This Rufus knows only too well, as serviced by flashbacks when Imogene’s mother died in a dubious car accident. Rufus interrogated a young Imogene and promised to solve the mystery. This tension between the two makes this series different from being an outright rip-off of Christie mysteries or even the film Triangle of Sadness – given the ship’s crew’s diverse ethnicity and the passengers’ entitled behavior. And the chemistry found whenever Rufus and Imogene share a scene is worth the price of admission. It’s nice to note that Patinkin portrayed Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride and has received Tony’s for his starring in Sondheim musicals on Broadway. This Rufus is a diverting performance, and we can expect that he will reprise the role if this is successful.
Role Play (Amazon Prime) – If we didn’t know better, we’d chalk this up to the writer’s strike and how, given this plot line has been done countless times, AI may have come up with the concept and script for this new action comedy outing. Emma (Kaley Cuoco) and Dave (David Oyelowo) would seem to be an ordinary couple and family – but it’s Emma who leads a double life as an international assassin. There’s even a cute daughter caught up in this plotline that we’ve seen too many times. What’s interesting to note is how they corralled Bill Nighy to play Bob, the ‘mysterious stranger who has an encounter with the couple.’ I don’t think it reveals too much to say that if they had somehow extended the life of this Bob character, this would have been more interesting.
As it is, the narrative’s episodic nature carries the film to its inevitable and predictable conclusion. I will credit Cuoco and Oyelowo for making the most of a paltry situation and investing in the characters much more than the screenplay deserves. The premise of the couple indulging in some role play on their wedding anniversary date and getting more than they hoped for can pique the interest of some. But after just having had films like Ghosted come our way late last year, this one looks like it’s made of the same cookie cutter, hence my mentioning AI or ChatGPT as the culprit screenplay writer in the previous paragraph. I have found Cuoco and Oyelowo to be more than competent actors, so it’s a shame they had to work together on something as flat as this comedy. — Philip Cu Unjieng
*****
Credit belongs to: www.mb.com.ph
