Female Film Critics 24/375
A remake of a 1981 big screen spy thriller and based on an espionage novel by Robert Littrell, The Amateur sees a mousy computer genius played by Oscar winner Rami Malek set a death trap for his wife’s killers after his CIA supervisors refuse to take action. Malek, in just about every frame of this film, travels across Europe as he takes a big byte out of the bad guys like a seasoned special ops pro.
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This action-packed political thriller combines a sci-fi apocalyptic theme with a compelling whodunnit. The plot follows Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown), assigned to guard U.S. President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), a smarmy Southern Democrat from a wealthy family. Problem is: When Collins reports for work one morning, he discovers that Bradford has been brutally murdered in his bedroom and the President’s personal tablet, containing highly classified state secrets, is missing.
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Janet Planet is an intimate snapshot of an intense mother-daughter relationship as each of the two characters attempts to move through the world. On the cusp of adolescence, Lacy clings to Janet, her mother, the latter of whom is trying in her own way to forge an identity beyond ‘single mother’. Nostalgic but never naff, Janet Planet fills the screen with warmth and compassion for its charming, flawed and very human characters.
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The idea for Dream Scenario sounds fascinating and clever. Nicolas Cage stars as a hapless, uninteresting professor who starts showing up in dreams for people all over the world, becoming a celebrity overnight. Nic Cage fans will be entertained, with the actor showing the restraint and nuance needed to properly anchor this bizarre concept. The movie does highlight the best and worst aspects of being pointed to by the fickle finger of fame, but a limp second half loses the momentum for what could have been a far more compelling story.
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Story in the subtitle is accurate. Weird tells a story as it follows the lines of most biographies of musicians: the hatred by parents of the new music, the outlying adolescence, the instrument that annoys, the success that surprises, the love interests that aren’t interested, and the adulation in spite of it all.
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Director Maggie Greenwald’s film Sophie and the Rising Sun is distinctly old-fashioned, sturdy in its construction, stolid even, but with fine details of time and place that add depth and grain to the action. The film is a handsome affair about interracial romance and racial prejudice, and although it occasionally traffics in sentiment, the solidity and strength provided by the female cast keeps it focused on rational tolerance, womanly solidarity and a little old thing called love. Read On…
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