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Pretty Good

I wanted to but couldn't!

Absolutely Fantastic

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

"Dead Again" slipped under the radar in the early 1990s, and since then its director and star Kenneth Branagh has become somewhat of a controversial figure, primarily for the (over?)ambitious nature of the projects he tackles. This "smaller" but still audacious early effort is worthy of re-discovery: the script is cleverly twisted, tightly constructed and has a sense of humor, the direction is measured and balanced, the casting is expert (has Emma Thomson ever been more gorgeous, and more casual, than in the present-day sections of this movie? Also, Derek Jacobi is perfect and Robin Williams' cameo appearances are hilarious), the music score is lush and extravagant, and the payoff is satisfying. Perhaps you can find small faults here and there, but they don't seem to matter in the larger picture. *** out of 4.

This sounded like a really good movie for me. A mystery. Reincarnation mixed in. Three really fine actors. What could go wrong? Well, it depends on how one likes a film mystery to progress. There really are 2 styles -- setting out the basics of the mystery early on and then letting the viewer in on the resolution...OR...keep the viewer in the dark, allowing him to see just one clue at a time and then resolve the film in the last few minutes. I'm a fan of the former style, but this film is of the latter style. So it was not until almost 90 minutes into the film -- when we got the key clue -- that I really began to enjoy and appreciate this film. A better film would have sprinkled some of these clues earlier on in the film. And the ending is a humdinger! Kenneth Branagh is good here. Emma Thompson is really good. But, at least for me, Derek Jacobi (as a psychic) really steals the show! So for me, you've got a D film for the first hour, then an A film the last half hour. Comes out to a C (7).

This film tells the story of a private detective who enlists the help of a hypnotist to help a woman who suffers from amnesia.The title "Dead Again" gives the plot away a bit, but there is still a lot of suspense and thrill in the plot. Emma Thompson is great as an amnesic woman, she looks genuinely distressed by her amnesia, while looking completely different when under hypnosis. It is a little confusing to have Emma Thompson in both the past and the present. The presence of Robin Williams is a nice surprise, and reminds me of the other film "Shrink" in which he also plays a psychiatrist. The ending has another twist which is unpredictable, and keeps the film entertaining.

Mike Church is a private detective who specialises in finding missing people. He takes on the case of a woman who he calls Grace. She is suffering from amnesia and keeps having nightmares involving the murder of a pianist, Margaret, by her husband Roman Strauss in the late 1940s. Church seeks the help of an antiques dealer with the gift of hypnosis. The hypnosis sessions begin to reveal some surprises that connect Mike and Grace, and reveal the truth about the murder in the 1940s.....Branagh attempts to do a Hitchcock, but with all the red herrings and barmy narrative, it ends up more like a Brian DePalma homage, which isn't a negative, because DePalma is a genius.But Hitchcock was more of a straight director, more or less getting to the point, and never really made you guess of who, why, and where.Here it's very twisty and turny right up until the last moment, and more or less every character introduced into the film is suspect.But it's expertly done, and looks fantastic, and even though Branagh is miscast as Mike, he excels in the directors chair and as Strauss. The black and white scenes are the best thing here, and have a really Kubrickian element to them.All in all, if you like whodunnits, this is a little treat that hasn't really been seen.