Movie Review: Sinners


The new movie “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan, who plays two roles, Stack and Smoke, in a rare example of one actor playing twin brothers.

This film is set in the Deep South, 1932, Clarksdale, Mississippi, where twin brothers, Stack and Smoke, return home to open a juke joint. There is massive evidence of bigotry, and members of the Klan as Smoke and Stack, throw money around town, attempting to convince people to perform or work at the new juke joint. Much of this is rather slow and boring for most of the movie until the entire story takes a gigantic turn into murdering vampires and zombies and violent battle scenes, until the insane conclusion, making this the strangest turn on a dime story change I have ever seen in any movie.

This movie is both written and directed by Ryan Coogler, marking his fifth collaboration with Michael B. Jordan that includes both “Black Panther” movies (2018, 2022), “Creed” (2015), and “Fruitvale Station” (2013), Jordan’s first movie.

I was surprised that a promising story degraded into something that seemed more like a B movie, and another run-of-the-mill Vampire film. I was also surprised at the appearance of actress Hailee Steinfeld, who seemed miscast in this movie, playing Stack’s love interest.

The special effects, while well done, have been seen many times before, with battle scenes involving the living and the dead, and the various methods of how to kill a Vampire. At this point, enough of the killing of the already dead.

The biggest surprise is the extremely high and wrong 98% rating for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with my rating 75% and only a very small recommendation, because there is nothing new in this story, other than the sudden and drastic change in direction.

Movie Review: Drop


The new movie “Drop” succeeds in creating a different kind of story, definitely never seen before.

As this movie begins with a flashback, Violet, played by Meghann Fahy is lying on the floor, about to be shot by her ex-husband while her young son looks on. We find out later that Violet’s insane ex-husband is dead and now it is about 3 years later, and Violet is ready to start dating again and has a blind date at a highrise restaurant in downtown Chicago.

With Violet’s sister babysitting her son, Violet arrives at the restaurant and meets her blind date, Henry, played by Brandon Sklenar. At first, the blind date is going smoothly, until Violet starts getting insane and then threatening cell phone messages, followed by videos showing her sister and son in her house. A terrorist is trying to force Violet to kill her blind date, and the constant threats with Violet desperately trying to find help, dominate the rest of this film.

There is an unusual side story with the appearance of an extremely annoying waiter, who makes too many appearances in this film, which I thought was an unnecessary distraction that lessens the story’s overall effectiveness.

There is a surprise and trick ending that I thought was well done, but not really that much of a surprise, with a climax that mostly worked.

The Rotten Tomatoes for Drop are a mostly high 83% and I agree with this rating and do recommend this movie.

Movie Review: The Amateur


The new movie “The Amateur” is a good example of a great idea for an action movie with bad execution.

A married couple Heller, played by Rami Malek and Sarah Rachel Brosnahan are separated when Sarah is on a business trip in London. Heller is a computer expert who works for the CIA. After Heller’s wife tragically is killed in a Terrorist attack, he decides to take matters into his own hands, even though he has no skills as a CIA field agent. Heller is trained privately by an x-agent Henderson, played by Laurence Fishburne, who determines that Heller does not have the physical strength, is not a killer and because of this, he should not continue on his quest for justice.

The problem with this film is that there are no connections between scenes, no buildup or explanation as to why something is happening, or why Heller is motivated to do what he is doing. Characters pop in and out of nowhere, and we all wonder how a screenplay this poorly written was greenlighted.

Other characters in this film include a CIA agent named “The Bear” played by Jon Bernthal, with a small and mostly unnecessary role, and Holt McCallany as CIA Director Moore. This film represents another very good opportunity lost because nobody realized that the screenplay needed about five more rewrites and moved into production too soon probably because of budget cuts.

This time around I 100% agree with the very low 61% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend this movie.