“‘Chaos Walking’ Stumbles, Trips, Faceplants”

Just gonna pat myself on the back for this headline, what a stroke of genius. Continue reading →

“How ‘Twilight’ Sparked A YA Craze It Then Helped Destroy”

I wonder if I’m being overly critical of Twilight here, suggesting that it’s Twilight‘s fault YA has apparently moved on from genre to more reality-based material; I do very much loathe Twilight, because I love hewing to popular opinion, but at the same time I’m grateful for it as a basis for the careers of Robert Pattinson … Continue reading →

“How ‘Wrinkle in Time’ Refuses to Conform”

Recently, I took it upon myself as a journalist, a critic, and a writer to re-read A Wrinkle in Time, the ol’ Madeleine L’Engle book, in preparation for A Wrinkle in Time, the new Ava DuVernay adaptation. (I actually covered the story years back, when Disney hired Jennifer Lee to write it, so I’ve been procrastinating on … Continue reading →

Review: Nerve, 2016, dir. Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost

I’ll say it plainly: Strip away the hacking subplot, the dark web subplot, the pining nice guy best friend subplot, and the mom subplot from Nerve, and you’d end up with a better than pretty good movie. Add in real, visceral consequences, and you’d have an even better movie than that. Nerve is just too free of … Continue reading →

Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, 2014, dir. Francis Lawrence

“How do you review half a movie? Do you just write half of a review? Maybe that’s the right thing to do. Maybe it’s the only intelligent thing to do. But just maybe, nobody should blame The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, the latest victim of Hollywood’s desire to bleed dry literary adaptations by dragging … Continue reading →