Today is Saturday, September 23, 2023. Today the big news around here was the weather: tropical depression Ophelia struck the metro area, dumping somewhere between 1 to 3 inches of rain on the streets of New York. This storm is not forecasted to leave until Monday. The damage inflicted by this storm is covered in an online article for CNN by Aya Elamroussi, Melissa Alonso, and Artemis Moshtaghian entitled “Ophelia weakens to tropical depression as it dumps inches of rain along upper East Coast.”

Thus the tropical storm now named after a character in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet who was a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, and potential wife of Prince Hamlet who ends up in a state of madness that ultimately leads to her drowning, has impacted parts of the mid-Atlantic after it hit landfall early Saturday near Emerald Aisle, North Carolina, slamming the coast with heavy rain, strong winds, and flooding.

Coastal flood warnings and wind advisories remained in effect for some parts of the East Coast, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The rain lingered here all day and it was exactly the kind of day where the two of us could have stayed home and played Scrabble – but we didn’t. In fact, I went out earlier to have breakfast at Jackson Hole, despite the rain. Elliot was content to have breakfast at home.

After I returned home, Elliot and I decided to see the new Hercule Poirot mystery,
A Haunting in Venice at the Kew Gardens Cinema after rejecting seeing it in Brooklyn. At least we abandoned that earlier idea because of the pounding rain outside. So we went to see the new film at a local theater that didn’t involve driving for an extended length of time. So we desired to see the 3:25 showing and we did.

The film was adapted from the great mystery writer Agatha Christie’s 1969’s Hallowe‘en Party and it stars Kenneth Branagh in the title role. This is his third outing as the Belgian detective. This time around the setting is Venice in post-World War II times, circa 1947, and it has a more supernatural feel to it just in time for All Hallows Eve next month.

At the beginning, we see Poirot living a life of retirement and shunning the entreaties of potential clients who want to make use of his superior detective skills to help them solve personal mysteries. He is kept shielded from those desiring his help by way of his personal bodyguard and ex-cop Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio). But his retiring solitude is shattered by the arrival of his old friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a bestselling American author who manages to persuade her retiring friend to attend a Halloween party at a dark and forbidding palazzo and help her debunk the seeming gifts of the famous psychic Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) who is going to hold a seance there after the party is over.

The reason for the seance is to mollify the owner of the palazzo, opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), who wants to communicate with her recently deceased daughter, Alicia, who committed suicide at this eerie abode. But as the moment of the seance unfolds, amidst a lot of Sturm und Drang, an actual murder occurs before the shocked spectators arrayed around the table.

As with any Christie plot, those spectators at the seance include a disparate cast of characters, all holding connections, secrets, and motives for the crime. This time those characters include Jamie Dornan as the battle-scarred doctor Leslie Ferrier, Rowena’s skittish and superstitious housemaid Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), and the former finance of Rowena’s daughter, Alicia, Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen). Amid this spooky setting, Poirot must awaken from his self-imposed sleuthing slumber and find the killer that walks among the guests. Another guest at the palazzo includes the young, sensitive son of that doctor who is played by Jude Hill.

With this installment of the Poirot franchise in which Branagh wears two hats as both director and actor, the setting provides a more creepily claustrophobic element, which provides varying results. There is an element of horror as Poirot appears to lose his grip on reality as he begins to hear childlike whispers in the air and sees ghostly figures in the shadows. You see, the palazzo was originally an orphanage in which doctors and nurses locked the children in their care in the inner depths of the house during the plague and left them to die. It is those children who supposedly walk the halls of the palazzo seeking revenge for their deaths at the hands of those in the medical profession.

All in all, Elliot and I were left unimpressed by the ghostly goings-on that ensnare a discrete group of characters in the dark and forbidding palazzo that serves as the setting for murder. We thought there was too much chatter, as the supernatural elements of the plot fall by the wayside with a more rational and worldly explanation for all of the strange events happening to everyone during a windy and stormy night.

Even though we were not too excited over the overall impact of this film on our critical senses, I would suggest not to abandon this film altogether since it’s a harmless entertainment on a rainy day like today. But don’t expect another Halloween or anything approaching the likes of that here.

After the film, we drove to Nick’s Bistro on Metropolitan Avenue for dinner. The rain had temporarily let up by that time.

Also, it’s been more than 24 hours since I had my booster and I’m feeling fine. So that’s a good sign. I was able to go out for most of the day as if everything were normal, even though a storm was brewing outside.

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur Eve and Monday is the Day of Atonement. I’m deciding whether I’m going with Elliot to services tomorrow evening at the synagogue that his aunt attended in Jersey City or go to services at the LGBTQ+ synagogue in the city, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. The latter is held at the Jacob Javits Center that sometimes attracts up to 2,000 congregants. Because of that huge amount and the recent uptick in COVID cases, I will probably go with Elliot to Jersey City – if the weather isn’t atrocious like today.

So if I’m fine after the fast tomorrow and Monday, I’ll write my blog on Monday. At this holiday, we especially miss our dear friend “Mark” who would host us for break fast at his apartment in Forest Hills for the last three years. This year, we’re staying home and having bagels and lox.

So for those who do fast on Yom Kippur, I wish you an easy and safe fast.

Stay safe and be well.