'AGATHA CHRISTIE'S SEVEN DIALS'.....FAR FROM TOP DRAWER CHRISTIE, BUT LADY BUNDLE'S A BUNDLE INDEED......

 Agatha Christie's Seven Dials (Netflix 2026)

   

    As a lifelong avid reader, BQ remembers spending a summer consuming murder mysteries (including a bunch of Christies) at age 15 or so....but we don't remember ever getting around to 'Seven Dials'......

       So we can't make any comparison of the book to this 3 episode British produced Neflix mini-series.  (.....though from what we've heard, it takes its own enormous liberties with the novel.)

       It's quite an odd duck of a Christie adaptation that appears to attempt that genre-bending algorithm that Neflix is so fond of.......mixing Christie's stiff-upper-lip, lavish mansion, teacup mystery with early 20th century international espionage.....complete with a Hitchcock-type assassination (murder by angry bull) and moving on the death by silenced pistol. 

          By the time the third episode springs all its shocking surprises and shows all its cards, we'd come to realize the show was dedicated to setting up its own spinoff that has even less to do with Dame Agatha.....but more like preparing us for a stately, antique globe-hopping James Bond-ish series.

           Come to think of it, that does in fact sound like our kind of fun, especially if it continues to star this show's MVP, the elfin, adorable but yet quite formidable Mia McKenna-Bruce. 

         The delightful MMB plays young socialite Lady Eileen 'Bundle' Brent, nicknamed 'Bundle' from the popular slang of the day to describe a vivacious, bubbly and much desired 'it' girl.

         And amid the uppercrust nobles and gentry of 1925 England, quite the bundle she is, entrancing, outraging and confounding everyone who crosses paths with her. 

          Bundle shares a sprawling  country estate with her eccentric reclusive (and deadpan funny) mother Lady Caterham (played with wonderfully understated dry humor by Helena Bonham-Carter). 

            Lady C. can barely disguise her withering contempt at having to make ends meet by renting out the estate for a lavish party given by Foreign Office bigwig George Lomax. (Alex Macqueen). But Bundle doesn't mind, given how taken she is with that young Foreign Office fellow Gerry Wade (Cory Mylchreest), who's hinting he plans to propose to her.

             Fat chance for poor Gerry, who turns up dead the next morning, supposedly from a sedative overdose. This sets the irrepressible, fearless but now heartbroken Bundle on a sleuthing hunt for Gerry's murderer.....much to the consternation of her mother and Scotland Yard Superintendent Battle (Martin Freeman, matching Bonham-Carter with an equally sly end-up of British umbrage.) 

          In the interest of not spending another 5 hours describing the plot, we're leaving out the typically large Agatha Christie cast of characters surrounding Bundle. Naturally there's a host of various prime suspects and assorted folks who either help or hinder our indomitable ingenue on her way to uncover stunning revelations.....(some of which shake her world to its core and set her on a whole new path to......we dare not say.

         Frankly, we stayed with this show because like many of the male characters, we found ourselves captivated by Mia Mckenna-Bruce as the iron-willed pixie who could bend people to her will simply with her fetching smile.  She's really the whole show here and we didn't mind a bit.  (Her scenes with Freeman and Bonham-Carter are the very essence of stylish, understated British humor.)

          As for that finale......if Netflix actually greenlights a 'Seven Dials' second season, chances are it will contain minimum Christie and maximum  MMB. 

           Go for it, Netflix.....we'll be there for our new favorite girl.......3 stars (***).

'STRANGER THINGS'....WE ALL BID GOODBYE TO NETLIX'S HARDY BUT WEARY BAND OF SCOOBY KIDS

  

    When it comes pumping out those profits, Netflix acts no differently than any major movie studio.....

       If they catch lightning-in-a-bottle with a zippity zeitgeist whammer, a pop culture cash cow, you can bet the farm they'll  milk that sucker dry....until the very last penny drops from its udders.....

        So it's fitting we closed out the misery-filled 2025 with the fifth and final season of,,,,,,

Stranger Things (2016-2025)

       Like almost everyone else in the U.S. and around the world, we embraced the Duffer Brothers deep plunge into nostalgic Spielberg-ian, small town suburban sci-fi/horror......a series much like what J.J.Abrams  accomplished with his 2011 film 'Super 8', in which quirky kids right out of the 1980's Spielberg playbook take on an alien monstrosity. 

        So we all gathered 'round our various sized screens for "Stranger Things", as season after season regaled us with the perilous adventures of these charismatic kids from the once sleepy burg of Hawkins, Indiana. Every other year they slugged it out with Lovecraft-like monstrosities from the alternate 'Upside Down' nutty-verse,  and dark Deep State pseudo-scientific masterminds fond of kidnapping the kids for godawful experiments......

         And as fate (and constant repetition of the same tropes) would have it......this stuff started to get old, watching the Duffer duo pound out the same notes on the same worn out piano over and over and over and over....

          So it was with Season 5, capped off with a 2 hour Grand Finale, that rivaled Peter Jackson's 'Lord Of The Rings-the Return of the King' in breathless action spectacle followed by a touching leisurely epilogue that left no beloved character  without their own tear-duct wringing farewells. 

        While we got a real kick out that feature length finish, the seven hour long chapters that preceded it simply wore us out with the usual parade of deja vu moments and monsters from the previous four seasons. 

         (We felt overcome with the same exhausting ennui we felt when viewing the trailer for the latest 3 hour 'Avatar' bloat-a-thon.......a sleep-inducing feeling of "haven't we seen this same stuff before? Over and friggin' over again?")

     But credit the Duffer dynamos for wrapping everything up in slam-bang, crowd pleasing fashion.....with a final solid 126 minutes of thrills, spills, heart-wrenching sacrifices, blistering action and every emotional moment we ever could dream of. Well done, boys, but please don't you and Netflix wear out your welcome with misbegotten spinoffs....

       (P.S. memo to the Duff-meisters:   Brilliant idea, boys, casting 'Terminator's Linda Hamilton as a haggard, fanatical medical-military villain, except you forgot to give her an audience-cheering "Goddamn! I've been foiled by these 'effin' kids!" moment....tsk, tsk, tsk....)

       For the Season 5's seven episodes, 2 stars (**).

       For the Season 5 Episode 8 finale, 4 & 1/2 stars (****1/2)

          

           

'ALL HER FAULT'......DO NOT MISS THIS GEM OF A THRILLER MINI-SERIES....

All Her Fault (2025 mini-series, Peacock) 

     After the sheer hell of watching and reviewing the odious atrocity 'After The Hunt', we wanted to kick off the Thanksgiving holiday by leaving you beloved visitors with a genuine 5 star highest recommendation.

        We got one!  

         And what a riveting corker of a psychological mystery it is, brimming with twists, red herrings, blind alleys and final revelations to keep your jaw dropped to the floor.....performed by cast all working at the very top of their game. 

          Unraveling a maze of secrets, dysfunction and violence, this series' 8 episodes will leave you pinned to your flatscreens from start to finish. 

          Each episode, put together like a finely calibrated Swiss watch, delivers a massive twist and a red herring  designed to throw you a curve. We caution you not to waste time at arriving at your own 'Aha!' moment because chances are, the very next episode will pull the rug out from under you. 

         Set in Chicago, we're tossed into a sea of troubles facing an upperclass community, whose residents reside in glass and steel houses  and all send their toddlers to the same expensive private school.

         Marissa Irvine (Sarah Snook, giving an Emmy worthy performance, arrives to pick up her little boy from a playdate with a school friend at what she thought was the address of  the schoolmate's mom, Sarah Kaminski (Dakota Fanning).....a playdate Sarah had arranged completely via text messages, including Sarah picking up Marissa's son at the school. 

          But the address belongs to a total stranger who knows nothing of any of this....and neither does Sarah, who says she never sent any such text messages to Marissa. The playdate's revealed as nothing but a clever ruse to kidnap Marissa's son. 

          That's all you'll extract out of us. Now all you have to do is sit back and let this series confound, surprise and dazzle you with an escalating pile of 'What the actual ****!' twists and turns. And in the the last two episodes, brace yourselves for an avalanche of twists guaranteed to keep your mouths wide open in shock for so long, your jaw might start aching. 

           It's a pleasure to spread the good word about this one, before the long holiday weekend commences......a gold-plated bona fide BQ 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS. 

          Happy Thanksgiving.....see you in few days. 

'THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE' (1992 & 2025 VERSIONS).....33 YEARS YEARS LATER, SCARY POPPINS STILL FLIES HIGH......

 The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (1992)

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)

      Look out, here they come.....nannies from hell, insidiously inserting themselves into upper class households, gaslighting the hapless mom and making the clueless husband think his wife's gone all the way cuckoo.......

       In the 33 years that separate director Curtis Hanson's gripping thriller and director Michelle Garza Cervara's remake for Hulu, you can view a stark example of how much society and filmmaking have changed over three decades.

      Hansen's film, a huge hit upon release, functions as a lean, mean thrill machine, with minimal subtext and plenty of "ooo" and "uh-oh" moments for an audience to gasp, cheer and even enjoy a tension releasing laugh in a few places. 

       And as expected for Hollywood, the film ushered in a flood of copycats ....the'_____from hell' genre. (Fill in the profession - Neighbor from Hell, Cop From Hell, Landlord From Hell, Doctor from Hell....etc, etc.....) 

        Amanda Silver's script for the 1992 film started off with a killer set-up. An expectant mom (Annabella Sciorra) is groped and molested by her Ob-Gyn (John De Lancie).Her going public about the incident brings out other similarly attacked victims, prompting the doc's indictment and suicide. This abrupt reversal of fortune leaves his pregnant trophy wife Peyton (Rebecca De Mornay) flat broke, homeless and suffering an emotional and physically agonizing miscarriage. 

       So guess who's now fully psycho and looking for payback on the woman responsible for leaving her life in ruins?

        De Mornay, seizing the day here, becomes the beating dark heart of this movie, smearing on a thin veneer of normality..... under a new last name, she worms her way into the household to tear the happy family apart and steal their newborn. But whenever her Sweet Nanny mask slips off, the ferocious yet sly predator comes out to play.......and a cringing audience eats it up until the film finally delivers a satisfying comeuppance. 

          We're happy to tell you that all these years later, the film's still a hoot and a half to watch,with the added bonus of seeing Julienne Moore in a small but strong supporting roll.  A fun time and still a 4 star (****) popcorn munchin' theme park ride.

            And now we come to the similar in some basic ways but wildly different in others, remake.

            The cast, at least, couldn't be more perfect and ready to rumble......Indie Scream Queen Maika Monroe ("It Follows", "Longlegs") as the suspicious nanny and pulp horror veteran Mary Elizabeth Winstead ("Death Proof", "The Thing" 2011 sequel) as the victimized mom. 

        While we appreciate that Micah Bloomberg's screenplay for the reboot goes out of its way to give both actresses way more tragic backstory for their characters, the film's higher aspirations of serious drama only dilute it as a thriller.

       Unlike Curtis Hanson's full speed ahead pacing of the original film, the new 'Cradle' immerses itself in moody, gloomy unease. The film strains to link predator and prey together in equally shared horrific episodes of their past. The stakes are effectively deepened, but anyone expecting the wham-bam jolts of the first film will probably find this one a chore to sit through. 

        We cannot fault the performances, though. Monroe carefully avoids De Mornay's crowd pleasing theatrical villainy, preferring a more subtle passive-aggressive stance. Winstead, a seasoned player in chiller cinema, doesn't hold back on her escalating hysteria as Monroe slowly but surely takes her life and sanity apart. These two gifted talents do strike some sparks in their scenes together, but as we've already pointed out, overall the film never comes anywhere near the propulsive energy of its predecessor. 

        BQ's advice on these films (both available on Hulu).....all thriller addicts shouldn't miss the 1992 movie, a 4 star barn burner....(****).

       Devoted fans of the two actresses of the 2025 movie will definitely want to check it out. But for us, it's at best, a nice try 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).

       (Perhaps some enterprising film festival programmer will one day schedule a Nanny-thon, featuring  the two 'Cradles', the two Nanny Mcfee movies,  the two Mary Poppins movies, 'The Nanny Diaries', 'Uptown Girls', 'Mrs. Doubtfire', 'The Pacifier' with nanny Vin Diesel, and finishing up with murderous Bette Davis in the Hammer horror, 'The Nanny'....what a night that would be....bring popcorn and diapers (in case there's a shortage of bathrooms....) 

       

        

'WATCH THE SKIES' (A.K.A. "UFO SWEDEN")......WHAT'S UP THERE?....SAUCERS?.....NORTHERN LIGHTS?.....WORMHOLES?....SWEDISH MEATBALLS?

 Watch The Skies (a.k.a. UFO Sweden) (2022)

     Call it fate or serendipity-doo-dah, but we stumbled upon this film on Prime just after we picked up the first news about Steven Spielberg's newest film in production, due next year. 

      As much as we distrust internet showbiz bulletins these days, WE WANT TO BELIEVE the scoop that Spielberg's film is reportedly a UFO extravaganza in the style of his early crowd pleasing blockbusters....with John Williams set to write the score!  Oh be still our heart......please let it happen, for the good of all mankind....

       (We're not at all sure we could work up the same enthusiasm for subsequent news of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz re-teaming for another 'Mummy' movie. We can only pray that Fraser's willing to lose a few more pounds or else run the risk of internet wags calling the film, 'The Tummy'...)

          But enough idol gossip. Back to Prime, where we discovered 'Watch The Skies', a 2022 Swedish sci-fi thriller that went under the title 'UFO Sweden'. It arrived with its dubbed English dialogue tweaked and sharpened by AI to improve  the actors' lip synchronization. 

          (On that matter, we're far from technical experts, but yes, the dubbing looked as good we guess it can get....and far removed from Kung Fu movies where everyone's mouth kept moving long after their line deliveries stopped.....)

         'Skies' comes from a collective of filmmakers repeatedly billed as 'Crazy Pictures'. In the end credit roll, Crazy Pictures is listed for everything from stunt coordinator to multiple technical roles....wouldn't surprise us if they did the catering too.

       'CP', as we'll call them, obviously took their inspiration from 'Close Encounters, 'Stranger Things', 'X Files' and even bits and pieces from 'Interstellar' and '2001'. 

       The film centers around a motley crew of UFO believers (and chasers) who've been regularly derided by the press and government officials as Freaks 'n Geeks. (They're not far off.....you can think of this bunch as the 'X Files' Lone Gunmen, with about three more people added.)

         In a flashback, one of its dedicated members split off from the group to hunt down a UFO hiding on a mountaintop. He's never seen again, of course, leaving behind his young daughter Denise, who's convinced aliens abducted him. 

         Some years later, Denise (Inez Dahl Torhaug) is a fierce, fearless independent teen, determined to bring her dad back. And with cops and government SWAT teams always in pursuit, the UFO Sweden oddballs become her very own Scooby Doo alien hunting gang. 

        Propulsive hairbreadth chases and twists keep the movie in perpetual motion, leading Denise to her inevitable climactic close encounter with both her father and vast, dazzling galactic powers. (But fair warning here: Spielberg fans should not anticipate cute doughy animatronic creatures parading around. The 'CP' collective, to their credit, have their own ideas about how to present this stuff.)

        If you think this all sounds like silly, far fetched overheated melodramatics, than this is not the movie for you.  As for BQ......blatantly derivative as it is, we liked it a lot and and had a ball watching it, for all the films it recalls and samples. While the Crazy Pictures folks are unabashed in their influences, we could still sense the great affection and respect they have for their own distinctive characters and the adventures they're putting them through. 

        And let's tip our tinfoil hat to the film's star and MVP Inez Dahl Torhaug, a diminutive powerhouse with wide expressive eyes and a force-to-be-reckoned-with demeanor. She takes full command of every scene she's in and if there's ever an American remake of this film, we can picture the 'Wednesday' pixies Jenna Ortega and Emma Meyers battling to land Inez's role.  

       Anyone who's been or is now currently a devoted fan of all the films and TV series that 'Watch The Skies' references and pays homage to, head on over to Prime to check it out. 

        3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

'A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE'....OR: HOW WE LEARNED TO START WORRYING AND FEAR THE BOMB....

 A House of Dynamite (Netflix-2025)

     By now, you might have picked up on the angry buzz surrounding this film's deeply unsatisfying climax. More on that a little bit later in this review.

      Our instant impressions?  At least the first third of it is a superb white knuckle doomsday thriller in the tradition of Sidney Lumet's 1964 "Fail Safe". Once again, the clock tick tick ticks down on nuclear Armageddon, with the military, the NSA bigwigs and POTUS himself hopelessly trying to thwart the end of the world as we know it. 

     Director Kathryn Bigelow ("Zero Dark Thirty", "The Hurt Locker") knows how to pump up worldwide suspense and dread to the max. As the film restlessly bounces between its various desperate and alarmed high level players, we watch the inexorable trajectory of a nuke headed for ground zero Chicago. Who launched it? Who knows....since the Russians and Chinese claim their innocence.....

        A grand slam first third of the film, for sure. And then....kerflooey.....off the rails it goes.

        The film backs up all the way to its beginning and presents the very same events, only from different characters' perspectives. While Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim are no doubt patting themselves on the back for their cleverness, the rest of us are rolling our eyes and emitting deep sighs.....

          So the second third of the film becomes exactly a duplicate of the first, only from different angles and through the viewpoints of different people. This much we know......all efforts to stop the missile have failed, in a few minutes Chicago's toast and an anguished POTUS (Idris Elba) has those few minutes to decide whether to wait to see if any of our adversaries admit it was mistake or should our Prez simply retaliate and nuke the most likely suspect right away. 

        From this point, to continue to provide a comprehensive review of this film, we MUST discuss the ending. Therefore, major SPOILER ALERT coming up......so if you've yet to see it and would rather experience the film first, by all means go for it and then please return to read the rest of this post. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

         And now the worst is yet to come. For an overwhelmingly aggravating third time, the film backs up yet again......same events, different perspectives. This time we do get to see Idris Elba as the POTUS stuck with the fate of the world in his hands...(he only existed as a phone voice in first two thirds).....

         And here's what really set viewers on fire....for the third and final time, the film stops short of showing the President's ultimate, world shaking decision. Essentially, the film declares...."okay, YOU figure it out among yourselves......discuss."

          So anybody waiting for those 1099 CGI animators to strut their stuff and treat us to the sight of Chicago blasted, melted and vaporized, forget it.

        (Come to think of it, Sidney Lumet didn't show us New York and Moscow blowing up in "Fail Safe" either but nobody gave him a friggin' hard time about it....) (What a deep disappointment the "House of Dynamite" would be for Trump if he watched the film....denying him the joy of watching the Windy City reduced to dust in the wind....)

        Believe it not, we at BQ didn't have that big a problem with that deliberately coy conclusion. It's clear that director Bigelow and writer Oppenheim's intentions here were to pose an always looming, terrifying situation and force us to ponder it. 

         But the problem arises from Bigelow's being too good at what she does, bringing the audience to the seat-of-their-pants excited anticipation for an expected gut-punch, powerhouse ending. It should've occurred to her that her deliberate academic, conversation-piece finale would make an audience think she was flipping them the finger.

       As for Oppenheim, his ruinous triple-timeline structure only made us think he'd been flipping the finger at us from the very beginning. His work here will stand as one the most self-sabotaging screenplays ever written and produced.....a disastrous idea taken to destructive  extremes. He dropped a nuke on his own film. 

       Here's what scared us to death even more than the film's attempts to do the same thing......instead of Idris Elba's obviously intelligent, decent, empathetic POTUS, we imagined these events happening for real......with the real President in office now, a mentally and physically declining idiot sociopath, an utter fool whose decaying mind believes only in the greater glorification of himself. 

       A thought more terrifying than anything this film serves up.  1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2).

BQ BINGE-O-MANIA! WE STRUGGLE TO KEEP OUR SANITY THROUGH MULTIPLE SERIES BINGES.....

        In the midst of all our film viewings, we somehow (no idea how) squeezed in binging a variety of series......so for those perusing the billions of hours of streaming content available on various platforms, here's some brief impressions to help in your decisions.....

Alien: Earth (2025-Hulu/FX)

     Fans of the Alien-verse, here's a dream come true.....Eight ooey-gooey, slime-dripping episodes featuring not only our favorite Intergalactic abomination, but some all new horrific creatures to generate weeks of bad dreams......

       Yes, they've landed on earth to wreak disgusting havoc, thanks to two competing mega-corporations that rule the depicted future world. 

       Inventive, scary and, at more times than we could count, darkly funny. 

        Plenty of MVPs here, both alien and human. On the flesh 'n blood side, Sydney Chandler as the leader of a group of children who were once dying, but whose minds were transferred into superstrong teenage bodies......and Samuel Blenkin as the odious, insufferably smug Boy Kavalier (or "boy genius") who oversees one of the mega-corporations.

        On the alien side, there is of course our leading face-hugging, acid-dripping Xenomorph, once again running rampant, to everyone's horror. But watch out for the scene stealing Eye creature, an adorably terrifying spider-like whats-it who jams his own singular oversized eyeball into hapless humans and animals, replacing their minds with its own. 

        Brimming with ominous dread and slurpy gore, an 'Alien' fan's nightmare come true. 5 stars (*****).

Hanna (2019-2021/ Amazon Prime)    

     Propulsive, fast paced action suspense thriller based on the 2011 film with Saoirse Ronan and Cate Blanchett. 

        Esme Creed-Miles takes over Ronan's role as a practically feral teen, living off the grid in a forest with her father. They've escaped from a black ops experimental program where Hanna was born, raised and trained to become an international assassin. (and also genetically altered to give her extra strength and stamina.)

         The story spills out over multiple European locations, where Hanna ends up as both predator and prey against a continuing rotation of enemies, frenemies and all out adversaries (including Mirelle Enos, Dermot Mulroney and Ray Liotta.) 

           Jason Bourne lovers should eat it up and Esme Creed-Miles will grip you as the formidable but terribly vulnerable young warrior girl. Drags on a bit for 3 seasons, but delivers a satisfying conclusion. 4 stars (****).

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023/Amazon Prime)

     We hadn't signed up for Prime during all the years this show was collecting multiple Emmys, but at long last can agree with all the critics and viewers.....it's a non-stop delight, top loaded with unforgettable characters, situations, settings and the warp speed laugh-out-loud dialogue that's a specialty of the show's writer-directors, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino.

   

         The show's ambitious in its conception and re-creation of New York City and environs of the late 1950's and early 60's, when JFK's ascendence was right around the corner. And the two leads deliver performances beyond spectacular......Rachel Brosnahan as Midge Maisel, a whip-smart young Jewish woman who defies the tenets of womanhood laid down by her family, her religion and the1950's Patriarchy.

        In her Quixote-like pursuit to become a stand-up comedy star, Midge is befriended, mentored, and tormented by her equally fierce, fearless, hard-scrabbling talent manager Susie Myerson, played with riotous, laugh-out-loud, take-no-prisoners abandon by Alex Borstein. Along their crazy tortuous path to superstardom, you'll also savor superb supporting performances from a huge cast, including  Tony Shalhoub, Jane Lynch, Kevin Pollack and many, many others.

         If you haven't caught up with this one yet, put it at the very top of your list......5 stars (*****)

The Summer I Turned Pretty ( Amazon Prime-2022-2025)

     The very bottom of the YA teen angst barrel, based on the best selling novel by the show's producer-writer and sometime director, Jenny Han.

      As you might've already surmised, we watched at the behest of BD (Beloved Daughter).  For three agonizing seasons, the series dwells on that surefire trope that assembles and then waterboards the YA demographic.....the romantic triangle. 

       And a more spoiled rotten, whiny, self absorbed trio you'll never find......17 year old 'Belly' (Lola Tung) and from a wealthy family she's more or less grown up with, its two brothers Conrad and Jeremiah (Christopher Briney, Gavin Casalegno. They've been alternately teasing and crushing on her since childhood and now, with teen hormones fully raging, let the endless competition to finally woo and win her commence.

         Abysmal and tiresome on every possible level, with the show dragging out its "Who will Belly end up with" shtick until even its most loyal viewers lost patience with it. 

       

          We'll not waste any more time discussing this calculating soap-opera-ish slog. Zero stars (0).