Stylish but barely mediocre overall

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Branagh's ambitious past-life thriller is very much a product of its time, and seen today it feels rather dated: there are cheesy haircuts and outfits galore. Plus, the viewer never really believes Branagh's American accent, which remains distracting throughout the movie. Yet DEAD AGAIN succeeds where other movies fail: it feels original for the most part, and it possesses enough inventiveness on the part of Branagh the director to make it a fairly engaging viewing experience. The film has many overblown moments where good ol' Ken emulates Hitchcock and the like, especially in the use of some silly slow-motion towards the end. But the black-and-white sequences set during the '40s are pretty good and, although fairly slow-paced, the film manages to retain the interest throughout.The casting is also pretty decent; Branagh and Thompson are here teamed up again, and both of them are required to act in many different styles. Derek Jacobi, another regular, is excellent as the stuttering hypnotist, and God, doesn't he look creepy without the beard? There are other stars too who make an impact, from Robin Williams' foul-mouthed supermarket worker (grimy and paranoid) to Wayne Knight (JURASSIC PARK) as Branagh's buddy. One rather odd thing is the last twenty minutes of the film, which finishes up the mystery and drama side of the story after offering a nice twist, and becomes standard psycho-thriller territory, along the lines of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and all the others that were popular at the time. The diverse range of elements and the passion put into this movie make it a standalone piece of cinema.

An amnesiac (Emma Thompson) and a private eye (Kenneth Branagh) find they might have a past life connection.Somehow this film ended up on my list of horror and thriller films to see. Horror? Not in the slightest. Thriller? Perhaps. Regardless, it does have a bit of the supernatural (past lives) and some great actors involved. Any time Wayne Knight gets to be anyone other than Newman or the villain in "Jurassic Park" is a good thing.Although I would not recommend to this to anyone looking for a thriller, it is a better than average movie that seems to have slipped through the cracks. I certainly never heard of it before and knew nothing about it until I hit play.

I agree with the guy a few reviews ago that pointed out all the plot holes (quite a few of which I didn't notice).It's just TOO unbelievable. You try to suspend disbelief just to have fun but couldn't do it.The ending was incredibly silly. The twists seemed pointless. The acting was very good all around, though. It DID hold my attention until the very end, which is a plus. Once it was over I felt like I wasted my time.If you want a good mystery with great twists, watch Wild Things. The first twist in THAT movie was a shock! This movie, the twists were like, yeah, OK, why??

Well, I guess it's not really "karmic" revenge. It's just plain revenge behind the murder.Whoever wrote this piece of confusing comic/mystery/melodrama was channeling Madame Blavatsky, who apparently emerges from time to time from behind the veil of Isis.There was a scissors murder in 1948. A composer (Branagh) was executed for the murder of his wife (Thompson). Somehow, a reporter (Garcia) seems to have been involved but he's just a red herring. Forget him.Anyway, it's now forty years later, 1988 that is, and Emma Thompson is an amnesiac taken in by Branagh because she has no identity and nowhere to go. A hypnotist and antique dealer insinuates his way into the relationship that, as the sophisticated viewer will have already guessed, has turned physically demonstrative. The hypnotist age regresses Thompson and she begins reliving the 1948 case in which she was the victim.Branagh, a fundamentally decent guy, consults Robin Williams, an ex shrink who now runs a Carniceria. (This is Los Angeles.) Williams explains all about karma to Branagh and advises him to kill Thompson before she kills him. The two are reliving the 1948 murder only the genders are reversed.But Williams is a red herring too. The whole business about karma is a red herring. And at the end, when the villain tries to murder Thompson with a pair of antique scissors -- hint, hint -- that's a lot of baloney too because Thompson has no connection with the earlier murder, as far as it's possible to tell. She just happens to be a lady who lost her memory and came up with these weird stories under hypnosis.What a fine cast. Kenneth Branagh looks young and innocent but isn't really convincing in this relatively light part. I haven't seen his renditions of Shakespeare. Emma Thompson is a splendid actress and looks very appealing without being in the least sultry and certainly not Hollywood gorgeous. She has the open, wide-eyed, innocent features of a loving pet dog, some kind of miniature. Not a poodle, though. More like a happy-go-lucky terrier, one of those pets that's always wagging its tail and has its tongue hanging out of its mouth, maybe poised and hoping you'll toss a tennis ball. Andy Garcia has sleek features, is an underused performer, and should choose his parts more carefully. All of them live in those pretentious mansions of Southern California except for Jacobi and his dear mother, who are consigned to one of those cluttered little spaces out of Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop." If anyone can make sense out of this underlighted mish mosh, will he please let me know? I need some hints too, you know.