The Cinematic Review-verse

Poster for 'The Amateur.' Photo by William Beavers. Good afternoon, readers. On Friday afternoon, April 18, I crossed ' The Amateur' off my watchlist. Rami Malek produced and led the film as a CIA employee new to the field. While I enjoyed Malek's character's intelligence and Volker Bertelmann's good score, I felt 'The Amateur' should've shown Malek's character using hand-to-hand combat. Rami Malek and Rachel Brosnahan as Charlie Heller and Sarah Heller, respectively, from 'The Amateur.' Courtesy of 20th Century Studios.  Malek played Charlie Heller , a mild-mannered CIA cryptographer with a lovely wife named Sarah, played by Rachel Brosnahan from 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'. But Charlie's quiet life ended when Sarah was killed on a business trip. Teaming with a blunt Colonel Henderson , played by Laurence Fishburne , Charlie is forced to take the role of a killer to find the people responsible for Sarah's murder. O...

Meghann Fahy as Violet Gates and Brendan Sklenar as Henry Campbell in "Drop." Courtesy of Universal Pictures. The last time I saw Meghann Fahy was when she was the mother in "The Unbreakable Boy." On Wednesday, I saw her in a vulnerable and headstrong combination in her leading role in "Drop", directed by "Heart Eyes" producer Christopher Landon. Because I'm still new at watching suspense films, I didn't think highly of the film until it bypassed the "awkward first date" story between Fahy and Brandon Sklenar's characters and transitioned to the action towards the climax. Besides that, the good parts of the film were the camera work and the scoring by Bear McCreary, which sounded reminiscent of the scoring from "Jaws." Fahy played a widowed therapist mother in Chicago named Violet Gates who went on her first date in years with a photographer named Henry Campbell, played by Brandon Sklenar. As if her nerves about a ...

Hell of a Summer poster. Courtesy of 30West. On Friday, April 4, 2025, I witnessed Finn Wolfhard and  Billy Bryk 's directing debut of Hell of a Summer . The cast was led by Fred Hechinger, who played the " camp leader " of Camp Pineway and tried to keep his younger counselors safe from a serial killer who crashed the bonfire. There were dark moments from the killings to the offbeat humor of the younger cast, but Hell of a Summer  was a good movie with fun, sentimental moments between the cast, Wolfhard's assembling of sound and production designers, songs from bands such as The Turtles or The Animals , and throwback to old-timey things such as the camp itself with its arts and crafts center or it's non-working landline phone. Fred Hechinger played Jason, a 24-year-old man who returned to his childhood summer camp, Camp Pineway, as head counselor. His sweet, optimistic nature was not to be deterred by his age, the offbeat humor of his mentees--be it a goth, vegan...