dungeon Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

The Count of Monte Cristo
(Le Comte de Monte-Cristo)
(2024)

Directors – Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte – 2024 – France – Cert. 12a – 173m

*****

An innocent Frenchman framed and imprisoned as a Napoleonic partisan escapes to impose justice on his false accusers – new Dumas adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 30th

There have been numerous adaptions of The Count of Monte Cristo for the screen, not to mention radio and other media, over the years; this latest one is directed by the screenwriters of The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady (both Martin Bourboulon, 2023), who clearly have a strong feel for Alexandre Dumas’ works.

Much of what’s here is familiar: shortly after the fall of Napoleon, on the day of his wedding to sweetheart Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier from The New Girlfriend, François Ozon, 2014), ship’s crew member Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney from Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is arrested for Bonapartism, falsely accused by another crew member Danglars (Patrick Mille from the two 2023 Three Musketeers movies and Love Crime, Alain Corneau, 2010). Neither the crown prosecutor Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) nor Dantès’ friend Fernand de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon from Jumbo, Zoé Wittock, 2020) refute these allegations, although both know them to be untrue, since both have their own reasons for doing so: the prosecutor because Dantès could unwittingly ruin him, Fernand because he too is in love with and wishes to marry Mercédès.… Read the rest

The Reckoning

Director – Neil Marshall – 2020 – UK – Cert. 15 – 111m

***

A woman accused of witchcraft finds herself pitted in a battle of wills against her witchfinder torturer at the time of the Great Plague – on digital from Friday, April 16th and Shudder UK from Thursday, 13th May

On the one hand, this explores the historical time period of the Great Plague and links that directly with women being burned at the stake for witchcraft by way of a widespread, social scapegoating process. On the other, it depicts a horribly misogynistic society where, for the most part women are regarded as inferior and treated really badly. Two sides of the same coin.

The film itself is mixed. Parts feel hackneyed, parts will have you on the edge of your seat. The cliché-ridden opening, for instance, cross-cuts chocolate box-y photography of a cottage-dwelling couple’s idyllic, married existence in the constantly sunlit countryside with the wife digging a grave in torrential rain after finding her husband has hanged himself from a tree at night.

It transpires that farmer Joseph Haverstock (Joe Anderson) stopped off for a pint at the local tavern and accidentally drank the beer of a plague victim, contracting the disease.… Read the rest