CINEMA TOAST: ‘Columbus,’ ‘Daddy’s Home 2,’ and ‘Murder on the Orient Express.’

Columbus (PG-13) 

Starring: John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey, Rory Culkin, Michelle Forbes

Directed by: Kogonada

This is a film to watch in the early afternoon, so you can spend some time afterwards appreciating what you have just experienced. The story involves what happens when a world-class Korean architect, slated to give a talk about the celebrated modernist buildings of Columbus, Indiana, is hospitalized. His grown son is stuck in the Midwestern city, but finds companionship with a young librarian as they both try to cope with what life has dealt them. But this film is so much more than that: a poignantly beautiful piece of conversational filmmaking where buildings become part of the cast.

4 pieces of ‘just when you thought you had seen everything’ toast

Murder on the Orient Express (PG-13)

Starring: Kenneth Branagh Tom Bateman, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, Marwen Kenzari, Olivia Coleman, Lucy Boynton, Daisy Ridley

Directed by: Kenneth Branagh

Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot boards the elegant “wagon lit” sleeping cars on the Orient Express for a relaxing train journey. But a mysterious murder in the middle of the night tasks his “little grey cells” with too many clues - and a baker’s-dozen suspects. Those of us who recall Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version with fondness, may wonder why there needed to be a remake. What Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins and Vanessa Redgrave added to that version was a sense of lightness, a balance to the often quite talky goings-on. In contrast, the new version bogs down as soon as the train is stopped by a snow storm, and we are stuck watching A-list actors try their best to figure out what tone their director (and the movie’s mustachioed star) wants them to project. 

2½ pieces of ‘another movie star unwisely directing himself’ toast