A Haunting in Venice (2023)

This is it, the best Kenneth Branagh Poirot movie. It's also a good Branagh movie, period, thanks to the way Branagh and screenwriter dismantle and reinvent the source material (Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party) to create a relentlessly clever, visually dense "old" movie that uses the latest technology. The original Christie novel was published in 1969 and set in then-present-day Woodleigh Common, England. The adaptation transplants the story to Venice, sets it over 20 years earlier, gives it an international cast of characters thick with British expats, and retains just a few elements, including the violent death of a young girl in the recent past and the insinuating presence of an Agatha Christie-like crime novelist named Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), who takes credit for creating Poirot's reputation by making him a character in her writing. Ariadne's sales have slumped, so she draws Poirot back into sleuthing by pushing him to attend a Halloween Night seance at the aforementioned home, hoping to produce material that will give her another hit. Instead they get a murder, and Poirot is off and running to solve it. There are lots of touches that set this firmly in post WWII Italy and overall it is both fun and atmospheric.