The Divergent series has, in many ways, been doomed from go. Propping up the dystopian hero’s story is a clumsily conceived, confusing “faction” system that makes so little sense it can cause spontaneous combustion if meditated on for extended periods of time. So, here we are, considering Allegiant, the third entry in the series based on Veronica Roth’s popular YA books, directed by Robert Schwentke. While the overlong, bland, uninspired, nonsensical movie didn’t cause said spontaneous combustion, my explosive demise is imminent; there’s another one coming out next summer, part two of this miserably drawn-out finale, and if there’s any silver lining, it’s that we can at least say there’s an end game in sight.

Again, we join Tris (Shailene Woodley) as she continues to unravel the mystery of “the founders,” the people who set up the cockamamie faction system however-many years ago. To catch up: Until the final events of Insurgent, Chicago had been divided into districts, whose residents are assigned according to their dominant personality traits. Upon opening a mystery box left by the founders, Tris and the rest of Chicago learns that there are people beyond the sky-high city walls that have confined them for all this time, a revelation that effectively collapses the longstanding faction system and sends plucky Tris, her super-soldier boyfriend Four (Theo James) and their rebellious friends on a quest to find out, once and for all, what’s beyond the wall.

An underwhelming run-n-gun sequence follows our heroes as they evade military forces sent by Four’s mom, Evelyn (Naomi Watts), who in the last movie disposed of the tyrannical Janine (Kate Winslet), only to (predictably) adopt the former leader’s totalitarian tendencies. The group makes it over the wall, but not before two of the series’ prominent characters of color—played by Mekhi Phifer and Maggie Q, who are each given virtually no dialogue as a parting gift—are gunned down, likely to make room for the new influx of white actors we’re about to meet (Daniel Dae Kim shows up for a second too, another minority bit-part designed to create a false sense of diversity). Not an uncommon Hollywood practice, but frustrating nonetheless.

On the other side of the wall, we find a Martian-looking wasteland, an army bearing futuristic weaponry, a new city (built, amusingly, on the remains of O’Hare International Airport), and a benevolent leader David (a sleepy Jeff Daniels), who informs Tris that she is the sole success of the “Chicago experiment” the founders set up all those years ago. There are details, but they’re too stupid and uninteresting to get into here. The basics are, Tris is the key to the prosperity of the human race, and David, who (surprise!) isn’t as benevolent as he appears to be, pampers her into ignoring her friends to concentrate on fulfilling his Hitler-y dreams. Four, Christina (Zoe Kravitz), and Tris brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) do their best to snap Tris out of her self-aggrandizing daydream while also dealing with a civil war that’s broken out back in Chicago between Evelyn and Johanna’s (Octavia Spencer) respective followers.

The logic of the faction system was already frustrating, but now the series introduces this master-race narrative that only makes things worse. It simply isn’t clear what the message is Roth and the filmmakers are trying to get across. Is it that everyone’s special? No one is special? Tris seems pretty special. So do her friends. They all specialize in one thing—Four kicks major ass, Caleb’s good with tech—but the movie seems to be saying that their laser career focus is the result of genetic tampering or something, which leads us back to the secret behind the faction system mess. I can feel my body wanting to burst now, as I type this.

The enjoyable thing about Insurgent was that the action was urgent and inventive, but the set pieces here feel more trite and way less entertaining. The folks beyond the wall have nicer looking lasers and flying bubble ships than the dirty trucks and machine guns we’ve seen in the previous installments, which is a welcome change, but one can’t get over the fact that every bit of art design we see feels woefully generic, as if they were scrounged from a bin of unused video game assets. Unexpectedly missed are the surrealistic dream sequences from the first movies.

Perhaps the biggest head-scratcher of all is how a movie can fail so epically with such an amazing cast of seasoned vets and young stars populating the screen at any given moment. For goodness sake, you’ve got Spencer, Watts, and Daniels bouncing off of Woodley, Elgort, James (who’s not half bad here, actually), Kravitz, and Miles Teller, whose charisma can make the most terrible line work, at least to some extent. The Whiplash star is a standout as the opportunistic Peter, whose flips in allegiance have been enjoyable throughout the series. My feeling is that the cast makes a terrible script feel somewhat coherent and emotionally grounded, and for that the unlucky few who actually see this movie in a theater should be thankful.

Surprise: The action scenes in Insurgent, the follow-up to 2014’s dystopian sci-fi sensation Divergent (as if you haven’t heard), are actually pretty good. Take a late, trippy scene in which our returning, plucky heroine, Tris (Shailene Woodley), sprints after her mom (Ashley Judd), who’s trapped in a room on fire and detached from its building, floating away toward the horizon. Tris scrambles across rooftops and clings to hanging electrical wires, rubble whizzing by her face, as the mass of concrete and broken plumbing threatens to fly off into the stratosphere like a child’s lost balloon. It’s a thrilling, urgent sequence that manages to feel dangerous despite it taking place within a virtual landscape. (Tris’ mom is dead and, you know, rooms don’t fly. I’ll explain in a bit.) If only Insurgent were a straight-up action movie, it may have stood a chance.

But alas, those familiar with the first film and Veronica Roth’s hit young adult book series on which the franchise is based know that the series’ focus lies not in exciting set pieces, but in an ill-conceived mythology centered on a walled-in city (formerly Chicago) that herds people into factions based on predominant personality traits. A few moments of thought reveals this faction system to be laughably illogical and impractical, and yet it there it is, the bubble of idiocy within which all of the film’s events are informed and take place. So, while the action is entertaining when judged on its own, it always leads us back to the story’s dimwitted conceit. Practicality isn’t a storytelling prerequisite (especially when it comes to sci-fi), but there’s a point where suspending one’s disbelief so actively and extensively becomes a mind-numbing chore. Just like its predecessor, Insurgent is a head-scratcher from beginning to end, further cementing the series as the inferior alternative to the mighty Hunger Games juggernaut.

Things pick up shortly after the events of the first film, with Tris and her boyfriend, Four (Theo James), sharing a light chat and a kiss on a farming compound overseen by Amity (the pacifist faction), where they’re hiding from the military forces of Jeanine (Kate Winslet), the leader of Erudite (the rich, entitled faction). Her death, Tris thinks, is the key to city-wide peace, or something. Joining the killing-machine lovebirds on the farm are Peter (Miles Teller), Tris’ Dauntless arch-rival, and Caleb (Ansel Elgort), her formerly Erudite brother, but the four hideaways get quickly disbanded when a tank-driving hoard of Jeanine’s troops, led by merciless Dauntless turncoat Eric (Jai Courtney), raids the compound in search of Tris.

Oh, that Tris. She’s so special. Jeanine’s hunting her down because she found a mysterious box in Tris’ old Abnegation home. She needs a Divergent—someone who carries the primary traits of all five factions—to open it: Contained within is a message from the architects of the city (not Chicago, the new city, the one based on segregation), and only when someone endures all five faction-themed “sims” (that floating room deal was the Dauntless sim) will its contents be revealed. There are plenty of Divergents running around, but none that Jeanine’s managed to capture have thus far been able to survive the five virtual trials. She needs a special Divergent. The best Divergent. Who do you think that could be? Hm?!!

The main appeal of female-centric young adult series like Twilight, Hunger Games, and Divergent is that they provide young girls with a powerful, brave, sought-after, special heroine to project themselves onto, thereby feeding into their wildest center-of-the-universe fantasies. Allegory is the vessel by which these stories deliver their coming-of-age messages (Insurgent‘s happens to be one of self-forgiveness), but the problem with Roth is that she piles on so much on-the-nose allegory and symbolism that her messages feel hokey and forced and obtuse. The film’s cast is talented for days, and its director, Robert Schwentke, despite having a hit-or-miss catalogue (Flightplan, R.I.P.D., RED), has proven to be a very capable filmmaker. Everyone involved is capable of making good stuff, but what ultimately does them in is the shoddy source material.

The actors are pros put forth a decent effort, though it’s clear some of them would jump ship if they could. Teller and Elgort, who’ve each found major success in the 12 months since the first film, feel a bit overqualified for their roles at this point, but they make lemons out of lemonade, particularly Teller, who plays a great, love-to-hate-him turncoat weasel. He’s always a welcome on-screen presence, especially when he manages to squeeze some real humor out of otherwise lifeless scenes with nothing but a sarcastic eyebrow raise or a shifty glance. Woodley doesn’t do the action hero thing as well as Jennifer Lawrence does, but she’s better at looking vulnerable: when she’s in pain or letting out a heartened battle cry, her voice shakes and then cracks a bit, kind of like Sia when she belts out the chorus of “Chandelier”.

Though their performances feel uninspired across the board, the older actors lend the film some gravitas. Winslet plays Jeanine as a straight-up sociopath authority figure, showing no remorse for subjecting innocent Divergents to her evil experiments (though technically, the city’s founders designed The Box and how to open it, so are they evil too?), and Naomi Watts shows up as Four’s thought-to-be-dead, insurrectionist mother and leader of a group the heroes fall in with called the “factionless” (they’re essentially the opposite of Divergents). What’s strange is—and forgive me if this sounds lewd—Watts (who looks insanely good for her age) seems to have more sexual chemistry with James than Woodley does, despite playing his mom. Just throwing that out there. Octavia Spencer pops up for a second as the leader of Amnity, but she’s quickly forgotten before she can make an impression.

The visual effects are impressive, especially during the inevitable simulation set pieces, though the digital effects team seems to have a strange fascination with floating rubble (tons and tons of frozen-in-time rubble). What stands out more is the tangible stuff, the fight and action choreography, which is way better than it has any right to be. A nighttime Erudite vs. Dauntless ambush sequence is the best moment in the entire series, as it actually convinces you that there are human lives at stake (instead of miraculously dodging a zillion bullets, people actually get shot).

Without spoiling too much, I will say that the forthcoming two entries in the series, the Allegiant two-parter, have hope of not being bogged down by the same nonsensical premise as the first movies. But as far as Insurgent is concerned, it’s still stuck in the muck. The reveal of what’s inside “the box” is so dumb it hurts to think about. It simply doesn’t make any sense, which seems to be this series’ unintended overriding theme. Funny thing is, during the climax, Woodley actually says, “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but you have to trust me,” to Four as he stares at her quizzically. That was worth a chuckle. If you’re able to push aside the confused machinations of the larger plot during the scenes of flashy violence, you may be able to find a bit of enjoyment in Insurgent. Beyond that, there isn’t much nice to say.

For a director like Jason Reitman, who in the past has been so innately in touch with how human connection works (the nuanced Up In the Air and insightful Thank You For Smoking demonstrate his expertise), to make a movie so out of touch, out of date, and overbearing is, frankly, baffling. I don’t understand how his latest effort, Men, Women & Children, came from the same guy that made Juno, a film whose characters felt so grounded and earnest.

Men, Women & Children is an ensemble film about how the internet has reduced all of us to half-awake iPeople and mutated the way we communicate. With an array of cardboard characters and relationships it sends a message: The internet is totally messing with our brains, man! Sadly, everything about the film is sorely behind the times, telling us little about ourselves we don’t already know. If this were the year 2000, Reitman would have had a thought-provoking, prophetic cautionary tale on his hands; In the year 2014, he comes off as naive as his clueless characters do.

The film opens pleasantly enough, with voiceover narration by Emma Thompson accompanying an image of the Voyager I spacecraft, the furthest man-made object from earth, hurtling toward the edge of the solar system. Then the film zooms in on the “pale blue dot” we call home, introducing us to its multiple characters. You know how in almost all zombie movies, it’s an unspoken rule that the characters live in a world where zombie movies don’t exist? Men, Women & Children is similar in that its characters seem to be just discovering the wonders of the internet, despite it being 20-effing-14.

Adam Sandler plays Don, whose marriage to Helen (Roemarie DeWitt) has grown stale, as many do. With the house empty, he grabs his tissues and hunkers down in front of his computer to masturbate. Ahhh…masturbation; the ultimate bandaid for marital-malaise. Or is it? Frustrated by his malware-infected PC, he walks over to his son Chris’ (Travis Tope) room to use his. There, he discovers an online escort agency and sets up a meeting with one of the girls. Helen is no victim in the situation, though–she’s been experimenting with “affair” website Ashley Madison behind his back.

When you strip away the fact that Don and Helen found their affairs online, all that’s left is a story we’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of times before: An unhappy couple cheats on each other. Considering the film’s premise, shouldn’t we be presented some new kind of perspective on this scenario? The infidelity is the focus here, and unique repercussions of the digital element are nowhere to be found. They may as well have used carrier pigeons instead of a mouse and keyboard.

By a mile, the best relationship in the movie is between a teenage ex-football star named Tim (Ansel Elgort) and a reclusive, quiet girl, Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever). Tim left football to hang out with friends he made in his favorite online role-playing game, which consequently lost him all his high school friends. His mom left he and his dad Kent (Dean Norris) to move to California with another man, and ever since Kent’s been trying hard to understand why his son would give up football (the only interest they used to share). Feeling isolated and alone, he’s drawn to Brandy, who’s in a similar rut. Her mom Patricia (Jennifer Garner) goes to borderline psycho lengths to monitor her every move, tracking everything Brandy does online and deleting “dangerous” messages before she can read them. In each other, Tim and Brandy find a respite from a world that doesn’t understand them. A scene in which the outcasts lay together in front of a waterfall at night is the film’s most touching.

The mother-daughter relationship between Brandy and Patricia, like the Don-Helen plot, illuminates nothing new about internet evils. Just because the tightly-wound Patricia uses technology to be overprotective doesn’t change the fact that, for storytelling purposes, she’s simply an overprotective mother and nothing more. Everyone in this film is so one-dimensional, their trajectories so predictable and clichéd. Judy Greer, for example, plays a mom who takes risqué photos of her snooty daughter Hannah (Olivia Crocicchia) and posts them online, a sleazy parenting move that may ruin Hannah’s chances of landing a spot on an American Idol-esque talent competition. The fact that Greer’s character is genuinely surprised that the TV show executives find her daughter’s site questionable is absurd. Again, maybe 15 years ago this story line would make sense, but we’ve come way too far since then.

One thing the film has going for it are some key, good performances, most notably from Sandler. As Don you can see him bearing the weight of his unfulfilled life on his shoulders, often zoning out and staring off at nothing as his wife and son move around him. There’s an honesty to the performance that makes you wish he’d venture into the dramatic arena more often instead of churning out family movie schlock. Elgort and Dever are excellent as well, imbuing their thinly-written parts with real heart.

At least Reitman hasn’t lost his ambition–Men, Women & Children is a huge, intricately woven film that at least attempts to say something profound about the current digital-obsessed landscape. His message may be out of date, but maybe someday, years from now, we’ll look back on this movie fondly, as a time capsule of how foolish we once were to let online nonsense muck everything up so bad.

Men, Women & Children trailer

The Mill Valley Film Festival has built a reputation as a showcase for future Oscar winners and emergent independent and foreign filmmakers. The festival has hosted five of the last six Best Picture Oscar winners, rolling out the red carpet for A-list actors and filmmakers while heavily supporting local filmmakers as well. Nestled in one of the most beautiful places in the world, filmmakers, actors, and attendees alike are drawn to Mill Valley every year by the easy, low-stress atmosphere, the gorgeous surroundings, the varied special events and, of course, the films. In its 37th year, the festival looks to deliver everything loyal festival-goers expect and more.

“Variety has said once–probably more than once–that Mill Valley has the ambience of a destination festival and the clout of an urban festival,” said festival founder and director Mark Fishkin at yesterday’s press conference. “Change” is one of the themes of this year’s festival, with the folks behind the festival embracing the evolving landscape of film and film distribution. Said Fishkin: “For us, change is inevitable, but we are still part of a special division of the film industry, which is theatrical exhibition. We take our role as curators very seriously, whether it’s films that are coming from the Bay Area or films coming from Cannes.”

The Homesman

Tommy Lee Jones‘ latest offering, The Homesman, will open the festival, with star Hilary Swank set to attend. The film is a Western, following a claim jumper (Jones) and a young woman (Swank) as they escort three insane woman through the treacherous frontier between Nebraska and Iowa. Fishkin describes it as a “feminist Western” that is “extremely moving. We’re just so proud to be showing it in this year’s festival.”

Co-headlining opening night is Men, Women, & Children, Jason Reitman‘s new film starring Ansel Elgort, Adam Sandler, Judy Greer, and Jennifer Garner that explores the strange effect the internet age has on parents and their teens. Reitman will be in attendance to present. Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies will also play opening night, completing the killer triple-threat. The film, about a woman stuck in slacker adolescence, stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Keira Knightley, and Sam Rockwell.

The festival looks to finish as strong as it started, with Jean-Marc Valée‘s follow-up to Dallas Buyers Club, spiritual quest movie Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed, who embarked on a 1,100-mile hike to heal deep emotional wounds. Laura Dern also stars, and will be honored with a tribute.

French favorite Juliette Binoche stars across Kristen Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria. Binoche plays an actress who’s asked to return to a play that made her famous 20 years ago, but this time in an older role, forcing her to reflect on the young woman she once was and what she’s become since. Another French actress who can do no wrong, Marion Cotillard is outstanding in the Dardenne brothers’ new film, Two Days, One Night. Recalling the best of Italian neorealism, the film follows a woman who’s got a weekend to convince her co-workers to forego their bonuses to save her job.

The Theory of Everything

Two emerging young actors will be spotlighted as Eddie Redmayne and Elle Fanning will be in attendance to discuss their respective new films. Fanning stars in Low Down, which views the troubled life of jazz pianist Joe Albany (John Hawkes) from the perspective of his teenage daughter (Fanning). Set in the ’70s, the film also stars Glenn Close, Peter Dinklage, and Lena Headey. In a breakout performance, Redmayne portrays legendary physicist Stephen Hawking in the stirring biopic The Theory of Everything, which is quickly generating momentum on the festival circuit.

Several other films that have been building steam on the festival circuit will play at the festival as well. English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner is played brilliantly by Timothy Spall in Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, which we loved at Cannes. Also portraying a significant real-life figure is Benedict Cumberbatch, who stars in The Imitation Game, the story of English mathematician Alan Turing and his groundbreaking intelligence work during World War II. Steve Carell‘s highly-anticipated turn in Foxcatcher as John Du Pont, the man who shot olympic great David Schultz, will surely continue to stir up Oscar talk as the film plays late in the festival. Robert Downey Jr. stars as a big city lawyer who returns home to defend his father (Robert Duvall), the town judge, who is suspected of murder.

Metallica is set to play a pleasantly unexpected role in the festival as his year’s artist in residence, with each of the four members of the band presenting a film. Drummer Lars Ulrich has naturally chosen to highlight Whiplash, Damien Chazelle‘s drama about a young aspiring drummer and his relentless instructor. Chazelle will also be in attendance. Lead singer James Hetfield has chosen to present a classic, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, while guitarist Kirk Hammett, one of the world’s foremost horror aficionados, will offer up Dracula vs. Frankenstein. Bassist Robert Trujillo is showing a sneak peek at a documentary he produced himself, Jaco, which tells the story of legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius.

On the local side of things is a special screening of Soul of a Banquet, a documentary by filmmaker Wayne Wang  about celebrity chef Cecilia Chang. Wang and Chang, who both have deep San Francisco Bay Area roots, will be in attendance to celebrate their storied careers and present their film collaboration. Chuck Workman, another Bay Area legend who’s best known for editing the clip reels at the Oscars, will be honored at the festival as well.

There’s little to be heard in the trailer for the latest feature film from writer/director Jason Reitman outside of The Plaintain’s hazy cover of the Donna Summer disco classic “I Feel Love.” Men, Women & Children fades between shots of the film’s leading men, women and teenagers attached to their modern tech devices. iPhone chat bubbles, album artwork, and streaming video chats hang above the heads of Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, and The Fault in Our Stars‘ Ansel Elgort. Also starring are Kaitlyn Dever, Judy Greer, Rosemarie DeWitt, and frequent Reitman-collaborator J.K. Simmons.

Paramount recently announced the film will land a limited theatrical release on October 3rd, before expanding wider October 17th. The news makes Men, Women & Children yet another potential awards contender opening (at least partially) on October 17th. That weekend, the new Reitman feature will go up against the Brad Pitt war drama Fury (after Sony moved the picture’s release up from November 14th), Birdman and Camp X-Ray (both in limited release), as well as Kill the Messenger (which like MW&C, expands on the 17th). Holdovers like David Fincher‘s Gone Girl, the Robert Downey Jr.-lead The Judge, and Whiplash will still likely be in theaters for what might turn out to be a very enjoyable October at the movies.

Watch Men, Women & Children trailer

Based on the wildly popular John Greene novel, The Fault in Our Stars, directed by Josh Boone, has a can’t-fail combination of gifted, pretty, rising young stars and an invincibly sympathetic, sob-inducing story of big dreams and heartache that will, without a doubt, draw piles and piles of money into the laps of all involved in the production. Many a skeptic cinephile will find themselves approaching the film with folded arms, expecting a manipulative tearjerker expertly designed to appeal to the teen idol masses. The film is, in fact, every bit a product of the Hollywood cheese factory, but it offers much more than that; it’s bravely earnest, self-aware, crafted with care, and undeniably life-affirming.

“Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.” It’s biting remarks like these, spoken by Shailene Woodley as plucky 16-year-old cancer patient Hazel Grace, that elevate the film high above manufactured YA mediocrity. Hazel’s lived with metastatic thyroid cancer (which mostly affects her lungs) for the larger part of her life, dragging around an oxygen tank with a tube fed to her nose at all times. She refuses to pity herself, a quality so endearing it isn’t fair. She’s mostly concerned with how her imminent fate will affect her sweet parents (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell) than she is afraid of leaving this world. At once cynical and compassionate, witty and self-deprecating, Hazel Grace is irresistible.

Hazel acquires a persistent admirer at a cancer support group named Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a brazen, unstoppably confident young man who pops cigarettes in his mouth but never lights them. Augustus (Gus for short), though in remission, lost a leg to disease, so he keeps the thing that could kill him hanging from his lips, but never gives it the power to do its dirty work. “A metaphor,” he proudly calls the strange habit through an impish grin. Yes, Gus should be incredibly annoying, but he’s not. This is because Elgort, like Woodley, is so charismatic you’ll pretty much buy whatever he’s selling, including an unlit cigarette.

A problem with most young actors is that they tend to be given dialogue that their intellect isn’t mature enough to support. They say all these smart, insightful things, but you can see on their face that they frankly don’t fully understand the weight of what they’re talking about. Woodley and Elgort are gifted in that they exude intelligence, thoughtfulness, and savvy, making smart dialogue sound smart, the corniest lines sound terribly romantic and natural.

Shortly after they meet at the support group, Hazel asks Gus why he’s staring at her. He answers: “Because you’re beautiful.” Typing that made me cringe. But watching the scene unfold, you see the utter conviction and sincerity in Elgort’s eyes, Woodley lets out a small, nervous laugh, and amazingly…you smile. They’ve got you, those damn kids. Then, as Gus turns to say goodbye to another girl from the group, Woodley almost inaudibly mutters, “…I’m not beautiful.” Perfect timing. The heart melts.

For a while, Hazel and Gus swirl around each other in a whirlwind teen fantasy, flirting, texting, and charming each other to pieces. When Hazel is invited to Amsterdam by Van Houten (Willem Dafoe), her favorite author, she’s overwhelmed with excitement, but her dream escapes her when her mom, full of regret, breaks the news that they simply don’t have enough money to make the trip. Dern is absolutely wonderful, filling every frame she occupies with love and acceptance. Hazel’s dream is saved by Gus, who uses his last wish (granted by the Genie wish foundation) to fly them to Amsterdam where they indeed meet the famed author. The interaction is an unexpectedly intense watershed moment, with the young actors playing beautifully off of the seasoned Dafoe.

Woodley’s role is a colorful one, covering a wide spectrum of emotions, and she wears every iota of them on her face. She can make you laugh with a simple raised eyebrow, or make you sob with a subtle quiver of the lip. Her talent is beyond her years, which is fitting, as Hazel is forced to face more trauma before her 18th year than most people do in a lifetime. The physical torment endured by Hazel due to her condition are conveyed excellently, and the danger of her lungs failing is always lingering in the back of your mind, defining the stakes.

Elgort is suave and super-cool as you’d expect, but his looks are pleasantly pedestrian; he’s handsome no doubt, but he also looks like your everyday teen with his puffy Nikes and thrift store leather jackets. When he leans in and says, “I’m in love with you, Hazel Grace,” he doesn’t blink, doesn’t shake. He means what he says, and we feel it.

The film is less about the sadness of cancer than it is about the wry skepticism and wild energy of teenagers. Being a teen is a beautifully flawed experience on its own, but Hazel and Gus’ poise in the face of doom makes their story all the more inspiring and memorable. The film’s ending, while predictably tragic, doesn’t define the experience. Yes, it’s manipulative, and yes, tears will be shed by the bucketful. But what will stick with you is the strong chemistry between the young lovebirds, which is the greatest victory for any romance movie. Color me impressed.

The Fault in Our Stars trailer

This past Wednesday, Divergent, the next potential YA phenomenon from Summit Entertainment based on the popular Veronica Roth book series, premiered in San Francisco with stars Maggie Q and Mekhi Phifer in attendence. The film, about a daring girl named Tris (Shailene Woodley) who discovers she’s “divergent”, meaning she doesn’t fit into any of the five factions that make up her city (a post-apocalyptic Chicago) like everyone else. The film also stars Kate Winslet, Theo James, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, and Zoe Kravitz.

The franchise already has a ravenous fan base going in to the first film of the series, and with a talented cast of young talents and seasoned vets in tow, Divergent has a strong chance of setting itself apart in the sea of YA contenders vying for the attention of young fanatics. We’ll see the film’s full impact on March 21st, when it releases nationwide.

Check out photos from the red carpet below, and stay tuned for our chat with Maggie Q and Mekhi Phifer coming soon.