Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Good concept, poorly executed.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Interesting fictional account of the mysterious disappearance of noted mystery writer Agatha Christie. Vanessa Redgrave portrays the gifted writer whose life becomes one of turmoil when her husband announces that he wants a divorce to wed another woman.Christie disappears to a hotel with an adjoining health spa where she plots to kill herself. Dustin Hoffman is the American writer who was to interview Christie on the day of her disappearance.Thanks to the maid, he traces her to the spa and professes love for her. They dance together as he tries to get her out of her depression.To me, height was a problem here. Hoffman is shorter than Redgrave and you felt that in their scenes together.

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best. Maybe Agatha Christie back in 1926 just wanted to get a way for a bit and at the same time give her estranged husband a bit of a bad time. To this day we don't know what happened to the famed author for those dozen days in 1926 when she left her rather expensive ride abandoned and disappeared. Leaves a lot of room for speculation.Which is what Agatha is, pure speculation. During her disappearance where shortly before she learned that husband Timothy Dalton had been out stepping with his secretary, Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha had an appointment with American gossip columnist Dustin Hoffman who's a Walter Winchell type and so gauche as versus these very well mannered and upper class British.Hoffman turns an investigative reporter, something Winchell never was as he was always relying on press agent tips and proves better than the police as personified by Timothy West.But this is all whole cloth folks, Christie's heirs attempted to sue.It's a nice ensemble piece of work Agatha with both Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman giving most believable performances. Well, it could have happened that way.

Michael Apted created a truly beautiful movie in this period piece. Watching it was an exercise in restraint, beauty, and remarkable taste, each frame seemingly more beautiful than the next. Again, Ms. Redgrave delivers a nuanced but powerful portrayal of this equally powerful mystery writer, who's real life disappearance was thoughtfully imagined in this thought-provoking film. Perhaps the choice of Dustin Hoffman was a bit of a stretch, when his physical height often seemed a little incongruous combined with the extreme height of the statuesque Redgrave, especially during the single love scene. That said, Hoffman's performance was more than up for the task, revealing a degree of stoic steadfastness and street smarts that makes the entire enterprise move along quite well, in spite of its generally slower pace, which English films generally employ to good effect. Never having heard of or seen this film before, catching it on TCM was an interesting and captivating delight.

I waited a long time to see Agatha. I remember seeing posters for this film at movie theaters when I was a kid and was intrigued about it ever since. For some reason I never happen to catch it, well, until now. I finally watched it on VHS (it's not available on DVD as of this writing). What a letdown. I said "That's it?" when the credits rolled at the end. I couldn't believe what a little, insignificant film it turned out to be. There are great things in it: the cast, lead by the magnificent Vanessa Redgrave. There's also Timothy Dalton and Dustin Hoffman. I always wondered how were they able to cast Hoffman, who's very short, against Vanessa, who's 6 feet tall I believe. Well, I know now: awkwardly. The cinematography by the great Vittorio Storaro is simply stunning and the music is excellent. But the story leaves a lot to be desired because, well, there's really no story.It's just an idea and a haphazardly conceived idea: after Agatha's husband told her he wants a divorce, the depressed mystery writer disappears from the public eye but goes to a health spa under another name and becomes obsessed with a device at the spa she wants to turn into an electric chair, and devises a plot in order for her to die from that electric chair but without making it look like it was a suicide. That's it. So according to this film, Agatha wanted to kill herself without making it look like a suicide but she obviously failed to do so as she was still alive and kicking after reemerging from her short-lived disappearance. Hoffman is the American who flirts with Agatha and eventually becomes part of the flimsy story.If I had known the story was this simple, I probably wouldn't have bothered with it. The production is grade A through and through but the screenplay is pure hokum.