The Thursday Murder Club plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: In an upscale U.K. retirement community, Coopers Chase, a small group consisting of ex-government spy Elizabeth (Dame Helen Mirren), former trade union leader Ron (Pierce Brosnan), and psychiatrist Ibrahim (Sir Ben Kingsley) meet on Thursday afternoons to attempt to solve cold case murders (they have to be economical with their time, though, as their meeting place is reserved for later in the afternoons by a knitting group). Their current fascination is about the 1973 death of Angela Hughes (not in cast list) who seemingly expired after being thrown through a high-rise window with her boyfriend, Peter Mercer (Will Stevens), futilely chasing the killer, a masked man. What info they have on this crime came from their former Club member, Detective Inspector Penny Gray (Susan Kirkby), now in hospice, silent from dementia, looked after daily by husband John (Paul Freeman). After the group (along with the other residents) has a visit from Police Constable Donna De Freitas (Naomi Ackie) who’s recently been transferred from London to this rural area, finds her work rather boring (her lecture is about safety strategies, an old topic for her audience), she becomes recruited by the Club to be their inside woman for non-public police info, even as the Club takes in a new member, retired nurse Joyce (Celia Imrie). A more immediate concern than the Hughes homicide, though, is Coopers Chase co-owner Ian Ventham’s (David Tennant) plan to close the home, use the land for luxury flats, a move obviously opposed by the residents with the other co-owner, Tony Curran (Geoff Bell), determined to support them. Suddenly, however, he’s killed so the Club swings into action in hopes of finding the murderer, which leads them—with Donna’s help—to discover there’s another (secret) co-owner, crime boss Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant), who could inherit the property. Ian’s a suspect in Tony’s death, but then, during a protest about the end of Coopers Chase, he mysteriously dies of a fentanyl overdose. What a plot!
Liz makes friends with Ian’s handyman, Bogdan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), who’s following Ian’s order to start digging up the graves in the Coopers-connected cemetery when he finds a skeleton on top of a coffin, turns out to be Mercer. Then Liz and Donna find Tanner’s been trafficking migrants, including Bogdan, seizing their passports so they’ll have to work for him. ⇒Bogdan plays chess with Liz’s husband, Stephen (Jonathan Price), who’s in the early stages of dementia (I wish I had a photo of Bogdan [left above] with Stephan, but no such luck), admits he killed Tony (unintentionally) while arguing with him over getting his passport back, finds himself arrested due to Stephen’s habit of keeping an audio recording running during his chess games to help improve his play. The Club also figures out Penny realized Mercer killed Angela, was assumed innocent, so she and John killed him, buried him in the Coopers Chase cemetery annex. When Bogdan showed Ian the buried skeleton John decided he must kill Ian so he injected him during the chaos of the protest. Soon, both Penny and John die, maybe of natural causes, maybe by his actions as well. As this all wraps up, Joyce is made an official member of the Club with her (apparently) well-off daughter, Joanna (Ingrid Oliver), considering buying Coopers Chase as all returns to normal (until the next murder).⇐
SO WHAT? If you prefer murder mysteries of the more genteel type (as opposed to a lot of on-screen violence and gushing blood), from the traditions of Agatha Christie (66 novels from 1920 to 1976), Murder She Wrote (CBS TV, 1984-1996), Midsomer Murders (PBS TV, 1997-present), Only Murders in the Building (Hulu streaming, 2021-present), and even the considerably-newer The Marlow Murder Club (PBS TV, 2024-present), then I think you’ll find The Thursday Murder Club to be quite delightful (as I did). However, even though it deserves considerably more attention than I’ll be giving in this posting I’ve had to cut it a bit short due to a good many other situations which have needed my attention this week. Certainly, I’ll say I enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club quite a bit, easily recommend it to you (unless your tastes trend more toward machine-gun-toting dinosaurs involved in loud car chases), find it keeps the killers reasonably well-hidden until the needed reveals, and definitely has great star-power in its main cast with Best Actor Oscars (and royalty designations) for Mirren (The Queen, Stephen Frears, 2006) and Kingsley (Gandhi, Richard Attenborough, 1982), as well as the engaging screen presence of former James Bond and Mamma Mia! star Brosnan. Given the general positive response to … Murder Club the situation is easily set up for sequels if all of this star power can be kept together in the future, including director Columbus who you might know from his work on Home Alone (1990) and its sequel (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and a couple of the Harry Potter episodes (2001, 2002), giving you even more reason to check out his latest offering as he knows how to keep a light touch in place. (I will note, nevertheless, my confusion over a few plot points, especially the one involving Penny, John, Ian, and Peter; Netflix attempts to clear this up for me [Spoilers, of course], but I’m still not as resolved as I’d like to be.)
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: The Thursday Murder Club had a brief theatrical release (for Oscar consideration, I presume) on August 22, 2025, but you’re much more likely to find it via streaming on Netflix where it’s free to subscribers (or, if you want to indulge for a month you can pay $7.99 for the with-ads version, $17.99 for without), which the CCAL generally encourages you to do (along with me) as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are at 77%, although the Metacritic average score drops down considerably to 61%. Speaking for those who join me in the positive responses is Stephanie Zacharek of TIME: “The charms of The Thursday Murder Club, Netflix’s adaptation of Richard Osman’s 2020 novel, are slender but sturdy. […] The plot of The Thursday Murder Club twists and turns gently, like wind chimes in a light breeze. It’s one of those movies you watch not necessarily for its whodunnit complexities, but for the pleasure of watching a group of actors having fun, in a storybook English-countryside setting complete with happy, well-kept flower beds and cemeteries dotted with gravestones both ancient and new.” Lisa Weidenfeld of The Boston Globe, though, wasn’t all that impressed: “It’s a shame. The book is quite fun, and they’ve assembled a dynamite cast, but there’s too much lost here in the effort to cram it into a two-hour movie. If only they’d turned it into a miniseries.” Yikes, as time evaporates on me I’d better wrap this up with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor—except I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to this movie leaving me to create my own by borrowing/rewriting the Simon & Garfunkel song “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” (on their 1970 farewell album Bridge Over Troubled Water) to now be “Metaphors may come and / Metaphors may go and / Never change your point of view / When I run dry / I stop awhile and think of you / So long, Thursday Murder Club / All of my killer guesses were so wrong / So wrong / So wrong.” (You might also want to hear the original so here it is, joined to imagery of Wright’s unique architecture. Yeah, I know this has nothing to do with murder on any day of the week, but I'll hope you can share my delight in looking at these unique buildings.)
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
(1) 21 Netflix movies adapted from books; & (2) Recent theatrical releases to watch at home.
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list). Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark home page. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us! Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post. You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please
use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.
OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.
Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 11,316. (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.) Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):
0 Response to "The Thursday Murder Club plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics"
Posting Komentar