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THE AMATEUR MOVIE REVIEW
Imagine yourself as CIA cryptographer Charlie Heller. You look like Rami Malek, you’re decidedly a huge dork, and somehow you land Sarah (the stunning Rachel Brosnahan) as a wife. If she was on a trip to London and terrorists killed her, and then your bosses at the #1 spy agency in the world seemed like they were doing nothing about it, well, you’d pretty much be forced to go rogue. Revenge is on Charlie’s mind and even though he certainly wasn’t trained on operations, he’s going let his genius IQ do the work for him as he hunts down overseas the four terrorists and kill them one by one. Unfortunately, his CIA bosses have skin in the terrorists game and they have sent their own man to kill Charlie, Henderson (Laurence Fishburne). What you end up with should be a ‘smartest guy in the room’ thriller with a lead that constantly surprises the audience with his inventiveness. But what you get is a film lazily not even bothering to suss out how he achieves what things he does, which except for one deeply implausible kill, are not particularly that interesting. Chris and Frank don’t mind a spy film if it’s silly, but it should at least be fun, which The Amateur decidedly is not. Check out their review here.
DIRECTED BY: James Hawes
STARRING: Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitriona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson, Danny Sapani, Jon Bernthal, Adrian Martinez, Takehiro Hira, Marc Rissmann, Joseph Millson, Alice Hewkin, Henry Garrett
YOUR REVIEWERS
Christopher Lawrence Cox (Founder, Da Boss, Digital Noise, Highly Suspect Reviews, Screener Squad, Deliberations of Doom)
Born in the wilds of northern Virginia, Chris managed to put all of his survival skills to use and barely escaped with his life to Austin Texas in 1992 where ever since he’s dabbled in everything from plumber’s assistant to sandwich maker, from band to bar and theater management. An opportunity to see theatrical release films for free by becoming a critic on a local public access show called “The Reel Deal” turned into a full-time job when Chris and his friends decided to take it to the internet. They built the site Spill.com, adding multiple podcasts and animated features, to no small amount of success. During this time, a fortuitous friendship sprung up between Chris and young Brian Salisbury, who was also a local film critic, and they merged their forces of will, and their laundry list of ideas for shows, to eventually build this community of critics. While Brian eventually followed his heart to a new family, Chris continues on with a cast of colorful folks from all over the country (and a few others).
Frank Calvillo (Highly Suspect Reviews, Screener Squad, What Ever Happened to Bette & Joan?)
Born and raised in South Texas, Frank currently lives in Austin and has been in love with movies ever since his father showed him some Three Stooges shorts when he was five years old. Today he loves all kinds of film, regardless of era, country, budget or genre. He believes every film has an audience and is at least one person’s favorite movie. After writing for Sight & Sound and Slackerwood, he now writes for Cinapse where his increasingly random taste in all flavors of cinema (from Rashomon to Mars Attacks!) continues to thrive. His ultimate goal is to write a script for his boyhood crush, Michelle Pfeiffer.
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