Amanda Seyfried

Mean Girls

  • Title: Mean Girls
  • IMDb: link

It was a book that became a movie that became a phenomenon. Tackling high school cliques with an absurdist comedic edge, 2004’s Mean Girls stars Lindsay Lohan on her first day of high school as a young woman homeschooled up until that point. After making a couple of new outcast friends (Lizzy Caplan and Daniel Franzese), Cady (Lohan) is noticed by the popular mean girls (Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, and Amanda Seyfried) who invite her to join them.

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The Housemaid

  • Title: The Housemaid
  • IMDb: link

For a thriller starring both Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, The Housemaid is surprisingly lacking in heat or anything resembling eroticism. Sure, we get one sex scene halfway through, but even that seems perfunctory more than adding life into the bewildering thriller that throws out its playbook halfway through, spends 20 minutes speaking directly to the audience setting up an alternative permise, and then finally delivers something more deverting in its final 20 minutes.

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Mank

  • Title: Mank
  • IMDb: link

Mank movie reviewMank tackles one of cinema’s most legendary controversies about who should get credit for the script of what many believe to be the greatest film ever made. By the name of the film, the friendly nickname given to writer Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), you can guess which side director David Fincher takes. Using the screenplay from his father Jack Fincher, Mank delivers a story from the perspective of the writer hired by Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to anonymously write the screenplay for a thinly-veiled take on William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) which would become Citizen Kane.

The script glosses over early discussions between Wells and Mankiewicz, and ignores the numerous rewrites Wells made to the script while depositing the narrative that Welles was seemingly only nominally aware that a script was even being written. Despite some beautiful cinematography from Erik Messerschmidt, punchy dialogue from the elder Fincher, and solid performances from all involved, Mank is a bit uneven. The first hour, largely focused on introducing Mank’s over-the-top personality, is nearly flawless, but as the second-half of the film attempts to get more dramatic things get maudlin and melodramatic.

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