aramis-112-804880 Newcomers to Agatha Christie are genuinely astonished at her breadth. She's more than Poirot and Marple. She's the Beresfords and Superintendent Battle, and lots of one-off mysteries, with freewheeling young people and with lots of humor; as if Wodehouse decided to drop Jeeves and Wooster and try to do mysteries.Personally, I like lots of the Superintendent Battle stories, like THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS, THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY . . . and TOWARDS ZERO. Yes, this is a Battle book that Miss Marple is horning in on. Like like she horned in on Tommy and Tuppense in another story in this series. She's invading another sleuth's book.But a word on Geraldine McEwen's "Marple." Compare her to the earlier incarnation of "Miss Marple" (Joan Hickson). Christie writes about how Miss Marple occasionally twinkles. Hickson, a former "Carry On" and comedy actress, is a bit creepy and annoying. But then, at just the right moment, she twinkles, and you see what Christie meant. McEwen, another long-time stage actress with a some tv and film history, is all twinkle. And it's tiresome.Nevertheless, like all "Agatha Christie Marple" episodes with McEwen, "Towards Zero" is stylish. And unlike some others, it actually goes more or less by the book. Some episodes ("The Moving Finger") are fairly accurately Christie. Others change the lovers (wrongly in each case, to my mind); or the murderer ("The Sittaford Mystery"; or twist the murderer(s) characters to suit the new writers' political outlook ("Nemesis"). Miss Marple doesn't belong here, but otherwise they keep the story comparatively pure. And they keep a wonderful moment on the boat near the climax. It was funny in the book when Battle did it. I confess it comes as a great visual when Marple does it.Eight stars out of ten for style, and more or less accuracy; but Marple doesn't belong here. It's too bad they couldn't do a series of Christie without Poirot or Marple. They did a few of these when Francesca Annis, Cheryl Campbell and James Warwick were young. Christie is hardly Holy Writ and changes must be made from page to screen, but this twinkling Marple really sticks her nose where it doesn't belong.

filmalamosa This movie is really a sort of satire of Agatha Christie's Towards Zero. Like Peter Sellers movies it tries to make this genre a comedy.A further complication is added to the comedy.. The murderer may have been Aude she walks due to the incompetence of the Poirot Marple Colombo detective.Guillaume is just plain crazy.The film pokes fun at stilted period English murder mysteries.However only the second wife Carolin was funny she was the best part of the movie.I have trouble recommending this....turning murder mysteries into comedy is just not my idea of entertainment plus the slap stick acting--particularly Guillaume towards the end and the servants through out is just a turn off and not funny.Do Not Rent.

dbdumonteil Pascal Thomas began his career with estimable French comedies; then, in the naughties,he began to adapt Agatha Christie,with "Mon Petit Doigt M'a Dit" feat Thomas and Tuppence Beresford (the names were Frenchified ) and he used again the husband-and-wife detectives in his latest effort "Le Crime Est Notre Affaire".I read "towards zero" a long time ago but I've got a vivid memory of it;once again the names were Frenchified : Nevile and Kay Strange (check the surname)became Guillaume and Caroline Neuville(sic);in the role of the wife ,Laura Smet (daughter of Johnny Hallyday and actress Nathalie Baye) overplays and turns the original character -an elegant mysterious woman- into a shrew :one really wonders why Guillaume fell for her.The book begins,if my memory serves me well,with a long chapter depicting the numerous characters :like in any Christie book,all MUST have a reason to commit a murder;the first fifteen minutes are faithful to Christie's spirit.So is the rest of the movie ,although it almost verges on parody and it has not the entertaining side of "Mon Petit Doigt".Thanks to Danielle Darrieux (an old lady who has been working since ... 1931!such a longevity is absolutely stunning and the actress is as good as when she used to make movies with Henry Decoin,Julien Duvivier,Max Ophuls or (yes!) Billy Wilder and Joseph Mankiewicz) who enjoys smoking opium ,this is worth a look ,at least on a rainy day.

gridoon2018 I approached this movie with some skepticism: although France is to be commended for being pretty much the only country in the world right now that still produces films based on the works of Agatha Christie and releases them theatrically (the British Poirot and Miss Marple series are still running, of course, but they're made for TV), "Towards Zero" is directed by Pascal Thomas, whose previous Christie adaptation, the 2005 "By The Pricking Of My Thumbs", was about as dull as a film can possibly be. Thankfully, "Towards Zero" is much better. The main reason for this is simple: instead of being a talkathon with secondary mystery elements like "Thumbs", this is a good old-fashioned whodunit with nearly all of the typical elements of the genre in place: a luxurious mansion, a large but limited number of suspects, a cunning police inspector, family secrets, intense emotions and rivalries, red herrings, etc. The solution is unpredictable, even though it is based on the kind of double-deception that Christie has used quite a few other times in her stories. The cast is good, with the best performance award going to Laura Smet for her infuriatingly impulsive and impulsively sexy character. The locations and the settings are beautiful. A nostalgically enjoyable movie. *** out of 4.