The Thursday Murder Club: Totally delightful!

The Thursday Murder Club (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for occasional violent content, fleeting profanity and mild sexual candor

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.14.25

The talent involved here certainly is impressive.

 

Bringing British author Richard Osman’s 2020 debut novel to the big screen was one of the occasional “third rails” of cinema. The book is enormously popular: the UK’s best-selling title of the decade, and translated into 46 languages. Somewhat akin to the challenge of adapting J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Osman’s fans weren’t about to tolerate anything less than reverential.

 

With their new colleague PC Donna de Freitas (Naomi Ackie, center) leading the way,
she and the members of the Thursday Murder Club — from left, Joyce (Celia Imrie),
Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ron (Pierce Brosnan) and Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley) — confront
a rather nasty surprise.

They have nothing to worry about.

Director Chris Columbus and co-scripters Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote deftly retained Osman’s essential tone, atmosphere and mildly whimsical, British-dry wit. Of necessity, the labyrinthine twists within the book’s 400 pages have been condensed, with some minor sidebar individuals and distractions left behind, but the core plot and characters are solid.

 

The result is equal parts Agatha Christie and Downton Abbey, with a soupçon of Jane Austen thrown into the mix.

 

On top of which, you simply cannot beat a leading cast that features Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie and Naomi Ackie. They’re all note-perfect.

 

The setting is the sumptuous Cooper’s Chase retirement village, plunked in the midst of Kent’s (fictitious) seaside village of Fairhaven. The well-to-do residents include Elizabeth Best (Mirren), psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif (Kingsley) and former trade union leader Ron Ritchie (Brosnan), who meet weekly — on Thursdays — to discuss long-dormant cold cases.

 

How they settle on a given case is left somewhat vague, as is Elizabeth’s background; this film deliberately leaves that detail unrevealed until late in the third act. That said, she clearly has “connections” of some sort.

 

The trio quickly is drawn to new resident Joyce Meadowcroft, (Imrie) a retired nurse and compulsive baker, whose facility for lavish cakes immediately endears her to Ron.

 

As the story begins, they decide to investigate the unsolved murder of a young woman named Angela Hughes: a case originally handled by Detective Inspector Penny Gray (Susan Kirkby), now comatose in hospice care, attended constantly by her devoted husband, John (Paul Freeman).

 

Coincidentally, the local police force headed by DCI Chris Hudson (Daniel Mays) has just been augmented by PC Donna De Freitas (Ackie), recently transferred from London. Given that Fairhaven’s police force is “provincial” (read: mostly male), she’s initially relegated to trivial duties. A chance encounter with the Cooper’s Chase quartet prompts a much more interesting collaboration, which in turn grants the retirees access to police intel.

Love, Sarah: A scrumptious confection

Love, Sarah (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Not rated, and — aside from brief profanity — suitable for all ages

By Derrick Bang 

Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for a well-crafted foodie movie.

 

Particularly one that involves desserts.

 

Having decided to put their new pastry chef to the test, Mimi (Celia Imrie, left),
Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet, center) and Isabella (Shelley Conn) marvel at the
chocolate masterpiece he has prepared.

Director Eliza Schroeder’s Love Sarah — available via Hulu — is a gentle, low-key relationship drama (definitely not a comedy, despite what IMDB claims) set in London’s Notting Hill district. There’s nothing special or unusual in the script — co-written by Schroeder, Jake Brunger and Mahalia Rimmer — which follows a fairly routine path to an entirely predictable conclusion.

Here in the States, these ingredients probably would generate a puerile melodrama on the Hallmark or Lifetime channel. Happily, Schroeder and her cast are much better than that; the narrative may be conventional, but the execution is charming.

 

The story begins on a happy note that quickly turns tragic. Longtime best friends Sarah (Candice Brown) and Isabella (Shelly Conn) are poised to open their own bakery shop. Bicycling across London with the keys to the empty storefront where Isabella eagerly awaits, Sarah is killed in a traffic accident.

 

The world … stops.

 

Except that it doesn’t; it never does. 

 

Isabella, stuck with a business space she no longer wants anything to do with, despairs over trying to break the lease. Sarah’s 19-year-old daughter, Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet), numbly continues her dance training, all passion drained from her efforts. To make matters even worse, she’s dumped by her callous jerk of a boyfriend, leaving her nowhere to live.

 

In desperation, Clarissa turns to her estranged grandmother, Mimi (Celia Imrie), who — also grieving — welcomes the company.

 

Not long thereafter, having had time to process the situation, Clarissa realizes that they need a pathway out of their heartache. She confronts Mimi and Isabella, insisting that they must continue with the bakery plans. “It’s what Sarah would have wanted,” she implores.

 

But Sarah was to be the baker, Isabella protests. Fine, Clarissa replies, so we’ll hire a pastry chef.

A Cure for Wellness: Worse than any disease

A Cure for Wellness (2017) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for graphic nudity, rape, profanity, violence and highly disturbing images
By Derrick Bang

File this one under You’ve Got To Be Kidding.

Successful directors with runaway egos are to be feared. Sooner or later, many of them succumb to self-indulgent, often “long-nurtured” vanity projects that defy reason and emerge as ludicrously bloated and self-indulgent. Some badly dent or even ruin careers; others bankrupt studios.

Having been injured under suspicious circumstances, Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) decides
to explore the mysterious sanitarium where none of the resident clients show any
desire to leave.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas stumbled badly, respectively, with 1941 and Howard the Duck. Andy and Lana Wachowski blew their Matrix profits on Speed Racer. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman still get taunted for Ishtar. Eddie Murphy simply didn’t survive the fallout from The Adventures of Pluto Nash; director Renny Harlan suffered the same fate, after Cutthroat Island. Joseph L. Mankiewicz nearly took down Fox, with Cleopatra. Michael Cimino did destroy United Artists, with Heaven’s Gate.

There are many, many more ... and to their company we now can add Gore Verbinski, the arrogant driving force behind A Cure for Wellness.

Savvier Hollywood types should have known better, given that Verbinski already demonstrated his tendency toward wretched excess, with his recent update of The Lone Ranger. But the fact that he also helmed the first three wildly successful Pirates of the Caribbean installments apparently blinded Those In Charge to all the red flags that should have been waving, from their first glimpse of this new project’s misbegotten script.

I’ve a theory that “high-class horror” is an oxymoron. Successfully scary movies, by their very nature, seem to demand modest (even microscopic) budgets and the exhilarating momentum that results from ground-level, guerrilla-style filmmaking; this has been true ever since producer Val Lewton chaperoned his B-unit shockers for RKO Pictures, back in the 1940s.

Commercial success for such endeavors often is a happy surprise, rather than a specific goal.

But the moment an A-list director, armed with a prestige budget, tries to make a “serious” fright flick ... the resulting flop almost is inevitable. See Exhibit A: Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. Oh, it’s beautiful to look at, and Kubrick gets points for instilling a creepy atmosphere ... but scary? Hardly. Unintentionally funny, perhaps, but not terrifying; it’s too antiseptic and soulless to induce nightmares.

Which brings us to A Cure for Wellness, and its ponderous, insufferably calculated pretense of horror. Verbinski didn’t merely direct this bloated travesty; he also co-wrote the original script with Justin Haythe, who also collaborated on The Lone Ranger. (Ahem.) The result gets off to a reasonably promising start — to be fair — but quickly succumbs to laborious, overwrought theatrics and self-indulgently arty tableaus.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: Second-rate

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for mild profanity and sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.6.15

In this particular case, “second best” is ... merely OK.

It’s like visiting a friend you haven’t seen for a few years, only to discover that the friend has changed. And not for the better.

Able — if only for a moment — to forget the various issues plaguing his personal and
professional life, Sonny (Dev Patel, center) reflects on the warm bond he has established
with Muriel (Maggie Smith, at his immediate right).

The set-up is familiar, and therefore offers less of the first film’s delightful sense of discovery; the subplots are more contrived, giving a sense, at times, that all concerned are trying too hard; and Maggie Smith doesn’t get nearly as many of her deliciously piquant one-liners (echoing those she also flings so readily on TV’s Downton Abbey).

At 122 minutes, this sequel also is a bit long, and drags in spots.

Fortunately, familiarity isn’t an entirely bad thing. The entire cast has returned for this second outing, as have writer/director John Madden and co-scripter Ol Parker. They’re all seasoned pros, and while the ground on which they tread may be worn, they nonetheless step with alacrity.

There’s no question that the first Hotel’s success owes much to aging baby-boomers who tire of comic-book movies; we also can point to similarly delightful “aging relic” characters in recent films such as Quartet, Philomena, Pride and even the aforementioned Downton Abbey. Frankly, it’s refreshing to spend time with people who weren’t in diapers a mere decade ago.

That said, Madden and Parker shrewdly hedge their bets by including the much younger Dev Patel, even more familiar now, in the wake of his three-season run on HBO’s The Newsroom His Sonny Kapoor continues to be the hilariously over-enthusiastic glue that binds the residents of his Jaipur-based Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Patel also knows his way around a well-timed line delivery, and Sonny remains much like the dinner guest who invariably embarrasses himself, no matter what the conversational circumstances, by going one ill-advised sentence over the edge.

But poor Sonny endures more than his share of flustered setbacks in the second outing, and Patel struggles gamely to navigate these abnormal waters. That he mostly succeeds has more to do with his skill as an actor, than with the material with which he’s forced to work.

And “forced” seems the operative term. Much of the first film’s dynamic revolved around fish-out-of-water tension: the need for ex-pat Brits to navigate this exotic and wholly alien territory. Well, the territory has become comfortable, which means that Madden and Parker have to pull new narrative tricks out of their hats ... and the strain is noticeable.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: Make a reservation

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor and fleeting profanity 
By Derrick Bang 

Change can be difficult — sometimes heartbreaking — even when embraced willingly.

It becomes considerably worse when change is forced upon us.

Evelyn (Judi Dench, left) and Madge (Celia Imrie) bravely embrace the hustle
and bustle of Jaipur, the city where they've elected to spend their "golden years."
Some of their companions, back at the self-professed Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel, lack this adventurous spirit ... which, obviously, is their loss.

During the prologue to director John Madden’s thoroughly charming The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, we meet seven individuals who fear they’ve reached that point in their lives — “of a certain age,” as the fashionably polite suggest — when society deems them irrelevant. Worse yet, all these folks are further burdened by their own personal baggage, in some cases a soul-crushing weight that has dragged them down for decades.

Recently widowed Evelyn (Judi Dench) has just learned, to her humiliation, that her husband left her financially stranded and — by relegating her to the role of “companion” — unable to fend for herself. Graham (Tom Wilkinson), a High Court judge, finally has let cynicism overrule compassionate objectivity. Muriel (Maggie Smith), a fearful, reflexive xenophobe, needs hip replacement surgery.

Singletons Madge (Celia Imrie) and Norman (Ronald Pickup), refusing to gracefully accept their advanced years, continue to seek sexual thrills like thirtysomething sybarites. Tragically, marital bliss died long ago for Jean (Penelope Wilton) and Douglas (Bill Nighy); now she only snipes at him, while he patiently endures.

Fans of British cinema already realize they need read no further; with a cast like this, how could Madden’s adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s These Foolish Things — screenplay by Ol Parker — miss?

It doesn’t, of course. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a gentle reminder that life doesn’t stop at 60; that new experiences are to be embraced, not avoided; that fate truly does reward the brave; and that it’s never too late to make new friends or find new lovers.

Through chance, serendipity and design — and, in Muriel’s case, medical necessity (no waiting time for her surgery) — all these retirees find themselves on the same plane to India, responding to the skillfully worded promise of colorful brochures and come-hither Internet sites extolling the luxurious accommodations of Jaipur’s Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.