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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

hyped garbage

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The second episode of this ninth season of Poirot continues in the vein of the first episode. The framing is like that of a film more than a television episode, the tone is more serious, and the reoccurring supporting characters are not present (as they would be considered more televisual I guess). Similar to the previous episode, we open with a woman charged with murder before we then jump backwards in time to before it occurs. In this case Elinor Carlisle is the accused and we join her in the pre-court case days as she travels with her fiancé to see her wealthy aunt who is ill; they are motivated not only by concern, but also an anonymous note which says someone is trying to ingratiate themselves with the aunt and cut to the front of the inheritance queue. The couple take the advice of Dr Lord and engage Poirot to assist (he is bored with another case and agrees to look into it), but soon things go far beyond a threatening letter.With the pleasure of Five Little Pgs fresh in my mind, I did come to Sad Cypress with high expectations. On the face of it, all is well since we have a film with a similar approach and feel as the previous one, but unfortunately the same cannot be said of the film where it matters – which is in the script. Generally speaking it is well written and engaging, and it builds events and suspicions well, however I thought that the conclusion was a bit messier than usual, even if I did enjoy the final confrontation for doing something a bit different. Outside of Elinor, the characters themselves are not so interesting, and it did make me remember how well the previous episode had done this. Poirot seems inserted too early into proceedings, although he is always welcome, but is not always seeming at home.The production values remain high; the bigger scale of the series does appear to have also changed the set design and locations to be larger and more spacious in nature, but the period detail is still there and well captured. The film looks and sounds sharp too, with a good use of one special effect in a particularly memorable nightmare sequence. The cast are variable. Suchet maybe doesn't have the spark he has in other episodes, but is ever reliable and has some nice "Poirot" moments and lines, whether they be comedic or more reflective. Dermot Walsh is by far the best of the supporting cast, although McGann, Penry-Jones, Reilly and others all do decent work.Sad Cypress continues to high standards of the series, however it is unfortunate that it follows the much better Five Little Pigs, because by contrast it is less effective at building the mystery, developing characters, and revealing who and how it was all done – all of which are pretty fundamental. It still engages on a level that I was happy with, but it didn't match the standard of the season opener.

Hercule Poirot looks into the case of a woman accused for two murders: there is overwhelming evidence against her, her dislike for one of the victims - the girl who stole her fiancé's heart - is well-known, and she doesn't express any feelings of regret. Despite all that, a doctor, who is secretly in love with her, is convinced of her innocence and asks his old friend Poirot to help him prove it.Let me put it simply: the story, direction, performances, music, and set design of "Sad Cypress" are of higher quality than approximately 90% of what is available out there. Dropping the (highly entertaining, it must be said) sidekicks, changing the tone to almost completely serious, and reducing Poirot's screen time in favor of the other characters (in fact, it could be argued that the beautiful Elisabeth Dermot Walsh is the central figure here) are all bold moves, and they pay off brilliantly, in this case at least. Up to this point in the series, and without having seen "Five Little Pigs" yet, the only episodes I would rank above this one are "Wasps' Nest" and "Lord Edgeware Dies".A must-see if you love good cinema, even when it's made for TV. (***1/2)

You know, some of these Poirot adaptations are palatable. And some are dreadful. This is one of the dreadful ones. I'll concede one thing: the casting is near perfect, considering the limits of TeeVee. The faces and bearing of the characters are apt, though Suchet bothers me more as his years in to role dragged on.It had already been more than a decade by this one, and you can see that where Christie's character was playing with aggressive intelligence a character imagined in his home land, Suchet is merely copying motions he made before that were vaguely comic.(Its part of the joke. Sherlock Holmes cared not a whit about how he looked or whether his mental feats were ever known. Indeed, in several stories he hides his accomplishments. But Poirot is obsessive about his appearance, his food and how he is perceived. He is motivated to solve crime not because of an inner conflict with evil, but in how he can best evil in order to advance in the battle against himself.) But what kills this is the script. It takes away the magic of the standard final confrontation where Poirot confronts all the suspects and explains how each of them "did" it, settling on one who really did. In that instant, we are supposed to see how all we have seen now makes sense.But in this case it doesn't. Little of it makes sense. We don't discover why any of the characters acted as they did, and surely not the murderer. We don't know why the elevator went up and down mysteriously, nor why "sandwich paste" figures in at all.Its the least complete of any I have seen. The whole room of viewers I was with had no idea what had happened after it was over. You need to avoid this one.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

A quite engrossing if, as usual, contrived mystery. I do agree that David Suchet is the ultimate Hercule even if he's losing much of his energy. In fact, I think that "Curtain" would be the ideal Hercule for him to do at this or a little later point.I disagree with a review that said that it was more fun with Japp, Hastings and Lemon. I thought they were brought into the earlier productions by the short hairs and not convincingly all the time.I do agree that the Suchet "Death on the Nile" was disappointing but I'd recently seen the Ustinov again (I didn't really like him in the part.) and was only too familiar with the story so I gave up early on.I thought the acting was generally good and everyone was well-cast.8 out of 10.