Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials movie review: apocalyptic pile-on
The only slightly original element of the first film — the Maze — is gone, and now we’re in not simply a generic afterscape but every sci-fi afterscape.
based on a book
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl movie review: sick of it
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl gets sick, but she can still inspire a man to better himself, while also adding a dash of repugnant narcissism to the subgenre.
Ten Thousand Saints movie review: exhausted urban elegy
An achingly perfect evocation of New York’s East Village in the 1980s and an amazing cast cannot make this tale of adolescent anxiety catch fire.
Paper Towns and Mistress America movies review: girls’ stories are their own (and not yours, boys)
Want to debunk the myth and the mystery of the manic pixie dream girl? There’s a wrong way to do that… and an oh-so marvelously right way.
Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism movie review: you are getting very angry…
This desperately terrible children’s fantasy is an unpleasant mishmash of dated slapstick, unwittingly sinister adventure, and icky magic.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl movie review: crossing no-woman’s-land to adulthood
It shouldn’t be radical to see a movie treat a girl with this level of appreciation and understanding of her most intimate inner self. Yet it is.
Mr. Holmes movie review: the case of the missing myth
It looks lovely and Ian McKellen is amazing, of course, but it’s not very Holmesian. I suspect Holmes himself would snort in derision at its sentimentality.
The Longest Ride movie review: romantic bargaining
For once, a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book is populated by relatively realistic people dealing with relationship conflict in realistic ways.
Madame Bovary movie review: why woman why cry?
A cold, sterile film, bereft of the spirit and danger Gustave Flaubert’s groundbreaking novel demands.
Every Secret Thing movie review: skeletons in the heart
A slow burn mystery in which the secrets aren’t so much about the crimes it explores but truths of women’s emotional lives that are too often ignored.
