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.

While watching Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard I had the silly thought that the experience seemed similar to what it might be like to watch someone put on a two-hour theatrical using a doll house and brightly costumed dolls. In the same way a child playing with dolls is apt to exaggerate movements and voices to animate soulless toys, so do the performances and tableau of the film feel embellished and dream-like.

Shailene Woodley plays Kat Connor, a teenager deep in the throes of sexual awakening and exploration. Her mother Eve (Eva Green) disappears when Kat is 17, failing to return from the grocery store one day. Through flashback, Eve’s emotional decline is evident in her interaction with her husband Brock (Christopher Meloni) and her seething disdain for his every loving sentence, action, and breath. Leading up to her disappearance, Eve’s interactions with Kat — especially when her boyfriend Phil (Shiloh Fernandez) is present — get more and more vindictive. Strutting about in mini skirts and waking Kat in the night to slut shame her only scratch the surface of her paranoia and desperation in her housewife life.

After Eve disappears, Kat and Brock find their way through life. Kat goes to therapy to discuss her feelings and, more often, lack of feelings about her mother’s displaced status. She goes to college. She dates new boys. She takes up smoking.  It isn’t until she visits home during a school break, checking in with her old friends (Gabourey Sidibe and Mark Indelicato) and meeting her dad’s new girlfriend, that a conversation with now ex, Phil, causes her to question everything she thought she understood around her mother’s disappearance. Revelations that casts every relationship she has into question.

To think of White Bird in a Blizzard as a mystery would be mostly inaccurate. Mystery implies suspicion, and until very late in the film, there is none of that. Even the temptation to classify it as a character study feels wrong, as everyone is clearly filtered through Kat’s immature and narrow-sighted purview. In her eyes her mother is a drama queen, her father is a coward, Phil is a disposable sex toy, and Detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane) isn’t important for his work on her mother’s case, but instead as an example of the raw manly sexual ideal Kat’s decided is most attractive. And all of this would work just fine if the film’s ending didn’t throw real emotional revelations into the mix and expect us to accept them despite having spent all our time in a dream world until then.

As for performances, Eva Green and Christopher Meloni play their doll house roles with amazing style and energy. At first almost Stepford wife scary, Eve is robotic with her mannerisms and sharp in her candor. It starts out as off-putting and by the end is absolutely entrancing. Similarly as Kat’s idea of a wimp, Brock literally slumps his shoulders, hands hanging aloof at his sides, his every sentence exuding the cluelessness of a man trying to make sense of the marriage that’s crumbling in front of him and a daughter he holds little connection to. It’s almost hard to watch. Both deserve accolade, but Woodley’s Kat shows little signs of maturation despite the passage of time or the intensity of the truths she discovers by the end of the film, though I will hand it to her, she has teenage rebellion down pat.

Her lack of development may be due in part to what is clearly the film’s biggest failing, and that is the rushed ending. It’s possible the novel the film is based on spent a similarly short amount of time on the plot’s twists, but certainly its slower format in general must have given its readers more chance to process the information they are given. In the film, the editing fails by focusing on the wrong things, not allowing us enough growth with Kat to feel the impact of her self-revelations. It’s hard not to want her to care more about her life, though to give the film due credit, it well reflects the selfish preoccupation teenagers have in prioritizing their lives according to their daily dramas.

Another badge Gregg Araki deserves is in the perfectly curated music of the film and a great score from Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie. Full of great ’80s fare it’s worth staying through the end credits to create a playlist from the offerings, including Cocteau Twins, The Psychedelic Furs, and New Order. The art direction is equally enthralling — a well-crafted picture of the ’80s with a touch of ’50s sensibility.

Many beautiful elements and strong performances make White Bird in a Blizzard a stimulating watch, but its utter lack of real emotion do great injustice to the cruelty of loss and the very real emotions flooding through the average teenager at any given second. Kat’s only passion seems to be sexual, giving her an impractical flatness on which the entire film falls. Araki, known for reveling in unpleasant material in earlier films such as Mysterious Skin, manages to direct all discomfort into watching each characters’ overblown identity play out on-screen, while rushing past the hairy exposition without allowing it some influence. It’s just too hard to care for the story endings of dolls.

Take a look at the first clip released for the upcoming film White Bird in a Blizzard, courtesy of Yahoo! Movies.

In the clip, stars Shailene Woodley and Shiloh Fernandez make out in montage form, all scored to Depeche Mode. The film, which debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is a coming-of-age story about the sexual awakening of a young girl after the strange disappearance of her mother.

White Bird in a Blizzard is directed by Gregg Araki, who isn’t a stranger to sexually explicit films involving young people. He often gets his actors to go places they haven’t gone before on screen, so this may be an important film for Woodley, who doesn’t exactly have a squeaky-clean film persona, but is typically the good girl.

The film opens in theaters on October 24, but you will see it pop up on demand on September 25.

First clip from White Bird in a Blizzard

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

With with young actresses emerging as bankable leads in sci-fi and action pictures, taking a bit of the pie from their hulking male counterparts, casting the right actress in those lead roles is more crucial than ever. Jennifer Lawrence has set a high standard with her work in the Hunger Games series, and Shailene Woodley holds her own as the star of Divergent, the first installment of adaptations of Veronica Roth’s best-selling YA series.

Woodley, a proven talent (The Spectacular Now, The Descendants), takes command of the film as our heroine Beatrice with a strong spine and perceptive wit. Unfortunately, even her presence (along with the rest of the rock-solid cast) can’t patch up the dull script, which is head-scratchingly nonsensical at worst, campy fun at best.

The aforementioned head-scratching begins with the film’s setting, a near-future dystopian Chicago divided into five distinct factions, each with their own role to play in maintaining an orderly, functioning society. This societal structure is so impractical it’s funny, though it serves its ultimate narrative purpose of providing rabid YA fanboys and girls with the same fantasy tribalism that was an appealing foundation for the Harry Potter series.

Beatrice was raised in the faction called Abnegation, an Amish-like group that prides itself on selflessness and humility. The kids in Dauntless, the enforcer faction whose members traverse the damaged city streets (and rooftops) like a parkour S.W.A.T. team, catches Beatrice’s eye as she shares their (ostensible) taste for adventure and camaraderie. Now that she’s turning 16, she’ll have the opportunity to switch factions, if she so pleases, after taking a VR test meant to suggest which caste she’s best suited to based on her attributes. Administering her test is a tattoo artist named Tori (Maggie Q), who informs her that her attributes are too numerous to shove her into any faction, an anomaly referred to as–you guessed it–Divergent.

Problem is, Divergents are considered a threat to society as they disrupt the order of the faction system. Erudite, the faction of intellectual snobs, hates Divergents the most, and their leader (Kate Winslet) seems hell-bent on sniffing them out and doing god-knows-what with them. (Probably something evil!)

Beatrice chooses to align with Dauntless, where she trims her name to Tris and gets thrown into a sort of bootcamp where the brutality of the training borders on felonious. She makes a handful of friends, bonding immediately with petit nice-girl Christina (Zoe Kravitz). Miles Teller plays a prick former Candor who bullies Tris at every turn, a dynamic made more interesting if you’ve seen the two co-star in The Spectacular Now.

Director Neil Burger (The Illusionist) is too precious with the source material, and the overwhelming amount of expositional information (conveyed largely in uninspired voiceover by Woodley) dampens any urgency and drama the actors manage to get rolling. For every well-acted, emotional minute between Woodley and her co-stars, there are 10 hollow minutes of tiresome explaining. The art design is forgettable and generic, and the world Roth has built doesn’t seem to be grounded in any sort of logic. Most of Chicago is literally crumbling to bits, while the yuppies in Erudite walk around in buildings that look as immaculate as giant Apple stores. This is the most obtuse kind of social commentary, since the logistics of it all don’t make any sense. Roth’s analogy is too extreme, too undercooked.

The hunky Theo James plays Four, Tris’ commander and crush. Woodley and James have good chemistry, but again, the script betrays them. When Tris glimpses a bit of Four’s back tattoo, and he peels off his shirt to show her the rest of it without a second thought, it’s hard not to let out a little groan. At one point, Tris proclaims proudly, “I am Divergent!” as Burger zooms in slowly. She might as well be looking straight into the camera. It’s schlock like this that no actor, no matter how skilled, can recite naturally.

Divergent is too by-the-book, literally and figuratively (and ironically), for it to be a viable challenger to Hunger Games‘ throne atop the YA market, but it’s got some thrilling set pieces (an urban zipline scene is a standout) and has a great cast, making it a distant–but solid–second. Divergent is chock-full of holes, but Woodley and her bright band of co-stars try valiantly to save the day.

Divergent trailer

This Friday, Divergent drops on the masses, looking to cultivate a the same kind of ravenous YA fan base that made Twilight and Hunger Games so goddamn bankable. (The second installment of Hunger Games I quite liked, proving these kinds of films don’t have to be reduced to cash-grabs.) The Divergent book series has already amassed a gigantic, devoted following, so now it’s just up to the creative minds behind the film to follow through.

We had an opportunity to sit down with two of the stars of the Veronica Roth novel adaptation, Maggie Q, who plays shadowy tattoo artist Tori, and Mekhi Phifer, who dons a badass black jacket as Max, the leader of Dauntless, one of five factions that make up the world of Divergent. Directed by Neil Burger, the film also stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, and Miles Teller.

In the edited press roundtable interview below, the actors spoke to us about how it feels to be involved in such a huge franchise, what characters they’d like to play other than their own, navigating the movie industry as a minority actor, and the importance of saying no to stereotypical roles.

Divergent opens this Friday, March 21 nationwide.

What drew you to the project? Secondly, have you read the books, and do you know the fates of your characters?

Mekhi: First and foremost, in our profession, what draws you into any [project] is not only the people you’re going to potentially be working with, but the quality of the script. That’s first and foremost. Neither one of us knew about Divergent at all. What drew me to it was that it was just good. Then, you have Neil Burger, Kate Winslet, Ashley Judd–all of these other great people in it. It’s hard not to want to be a part of something so special. Then I spoke to my agents and people who knew the series, and they were extremely excited.

Maggie: You have to have faith in their assessment. They’re like, “You don’t understand!” and you’re like, “You’re right! I don’t!”

Mekhi: We sort of pseudo know [the fates of our characters]. We don’t have the script, but things could change. Who knows.

Maggie: Adaptations are funny. It depends.

Mekhi: There’s a certain artistic license we’re taking with the adaptation. It’s not necessarily literal to the book. I’m sort of twisting in the wind. I don’t know what’s happening. (laughs)

Maggie: [As for what drew me to the project,] the script is first and foremost, whether it’s a best-selling book or not. Let’s be honest: there are best-selling books that have been made into movies that are not good. Because adaptations are specific to what they think will work from the book, you kind of have to read the script first and not the book first, to see whether you like the way they’ve adapted it. If you want background, a rooting and education of it, you can turn to the book. We had Veronica Roth on set to help us, too, and it wasn’t a weird thing. It’s [typically] a weird thing to have writers on set: it’s a no-no.

Mekhi: Unless you’re doing TV.

Maggie: Yeah. It’s annoying. But on TV you need them because it’s constantly changing. But on a film that’s a touchy thing.

Mekhi: Usually in film, the [studios] acquire the rights [to the script], and then they say “get out of here” [to the writers].

Maggie: I don’t know how writers don’t jump off buildings. Their work kind of makes it on screen, but it takes a lot of passes. [As for the fates of our characters,] I know when she dies. I mean, the books are out, so that’s something the people knew before I did. We just hope that when we die the mourning is so great that people can barely make it! (laughs) This movie sets our characters up: who we are, where we’re going. The next film is going to be very exciting of us.

You guys are officially a part of this franchise now as these beloved characters, with this rabid fan base. If you could play another character in the series, who would you be?

Maggie: It’s hard, because they did such a good job with casting!

Mekhi: I like being Max! (laughs)

Maggie: Imagine if Mekhi was like, “I’d love to play Tris..” (laughs) I don’t know. I mean, I like our journeys.

Mekhi: I like our journeys as well. That’s a good question. Nobody’s ever asked us that. [I would pick] somebody in Dauntless.

Maggie: Yeah, we like Dauntless.

Mekhi: Jai [Courtney]’s character is interesting from a male perspective.

Maggie: But again, he does it well and he’s one of our friends, so I don’t know if I would want to take on what he did. There are so many characters in the franchise. A few die in this one, and then we’ll go on to the next one and see who we kill! (laughs)

Black actors are having a stronger and stronger presence in cinema, even though things aren’t where they should be, especially in television. Asian actors aren’t even close as far as visibility. They’re always type-cast, and it’s irritating. You two weren’t type-casted for these roles at all, which helps in terms of that conversation.

Maggie: It’s fun to be paired [on this press tour] with another minority. We know what it’s like. We know how that box exists. It’s very real. (To Mekhi) I’m sure you were offered every drug dealer role. Every pimp role.

Mekhi: Oh yeah, of course. You’ve got to say no. You’ve got to turn it down!

Maggie: You have to say no. The only power you have is to walk away. You can sit around all day long and whine about what [parts] you’re not getting, but it’s not about what you’re not getting; it’s about what you’re not taking. For me, as an Asian American, I’m looking for roles that are non ethnic-specific. If you come to me and you’re like, “Can you play this flower girl on this boat?”, the finger goes up really fast. The blood boils really quickly. Sure, I or any Asian girl could play that role. If you’re doing a story on history or whatever, that’s totally valid.

When you get roles that are stereotypical and do not push our cause or further our image in media and in entertainment, it’s your responsibility to turn those things down. I’m not saying that from the position of, “I’ve earned enough so that I can say no.” I’ve said no to things when I had no money.

Mekhi: Absolutely.

Maggie: It wasn’t about that. It was about the big picture. Where do I want to go with this? Do I want to make that amount of money for the next six months, and then what? It goes away, and I’d have no further career beyond that. Or, do I want to make smart decisions that are going to change the face of my freakin’ community?!

I was negotiating my deal on Nikita. A copy of the Hollywood Reporter came to my house one day. There was a photo of me, and it said that there was this landmark casting about to happen. I was like, “Ooh…what landmark casting?” I started reading this article, and it said that if I took the deal–I was still negotiating–that I would be the first Asian American lead on broadcast television. I wanted to throw up. There are so many quality Asian American actors out there, but they’re not giving us the lead roles!

What was important to me was not that it was an Asian lead. What was important to me was that it was a lead that was not written for an Asian. Nikita’s always been played by white girls. Always. Warner Bros. took a leap of faith and said, “We don’t want a French girl, or a white girl, or this or that. We want the right actress. And it doesn’t matter if she’s black, or white, or yellow or purple. We want the right person who has the heart of this character. You have it.”

These are not ethnic-specific roles (in Divergent). It’s not like Tori pushes the dim sum cart around the Dauntless vault, you know what I’m saying? But let me tell you…you get those scripts. They come all the time.

Mekhi: Max definitely wasn’t just written for a black man. You want to be good at what you do, and hopefully that helps break down stereotypes.

Mekhi, one of your early roles was in Clockers, and that was a very complex role and not stereotypical.

Mekhi: Right, right.

Later on you were on ER, and it’s that great progression where, you start seeing people in these roles and it no longer becomes specific to a particular ethnicity.

Maggie: You’ve got to walk into the [casting] room and change their minds. You do. I’m like, “Send me into that room where they want a white girl. Now. Send me into that room.” I don’t care. It shouldn’t be about that. They should be open to whatever, but if they’re not, you’ve got to be up for that fight. Half of the time it’s getting the job and performing at a level where you can continue to work. But the other half is that fight, getting into those rooms.

We’re seeing a bit of that now with the Fantastic Four casting. Michael B. Jordan’s a great actor. I think people will start turning, open up, and change. They’re fictional characters.

Maggie: We do live in the United States. What are we talking about? If we can’t be diverse here…I don’t understand how that’s even possible. It’s very, very strange. It’s also a global market now, too, which is why it’s changing. Some of it is that attitudes are changing. Some of it is that certain parts of the world–Latin America, Asia–we’re selling half the world, baby. You’ve got to put [actors] in positions where people in other parts of the world can relate to what you’re throwing on screen.

I’ve seen a lot of progress because of the global market, number one. Two, you have to get out there in a way where people actually know you as an individual. It’s about people knowing and liking you as a person first, seeing your work and appreciating it for what it is.

Mekhi: I’ve turned down money [before] because I was either going to be making lateral movement or going down as far as the way I was being perceived by the public and fans. There are jobs that I wouldn’t take, but then there’d be this job that would take you to another level.

Maggie: You’ve got to be patient, have faith in the process, and also know that you have something to offer that’s real. Then, it’s really all about what actually matters.

Mekhi: If integrity matters to you and you want to be an actor, when you get those jobs, save your money so that you’re not a slave to the system.

Maggie: I got the best letter ever. When we get scripts, there’s always a cover letter on it that says, “In anticipation of our conversation,” or “As per our conversation, here’s the script, here’s the director, here’s who’s in it.” There’s always this cover letter. To be fair to my agent–who I’ve been with for ten years and who I love–there was a bunch of scripts I was delivered. He was in Paris, hadn’t seen them, and had them sent over. I got this script–I’m not going to tell you what movie it is. “In anticipation of our conversation, please find the script written by ‘blah blah’, starring ‘blah blah’.” I shit you not, it said, “Please take a look at the role of ‘The Chink’.” You can’t make it up. That’s the name of the character.

It’s framed in my office, because I want to always be reminded of what’s out there. First of all, I’m going to punch this writer in the face! Just let me know where he or she lives. Then, they were like, “It’s kind of a cool character!” Super racist. A very talented Asian actress ended up taking the role. A very talented Asian actress. You’ve got to say no.

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.

Considering James Ponsoldt’s first two films (Off the Black, Smashed) deal with alcoholism, it comes as no surprise that the subject is also baked into his third film, The Spectacular Now. This time around the theme is buried underneath the surface of a high school coming-of-age film that demonstrates there is more to life than living in the spectacular now. There is more to appreciate than to despise in The Spectacular Now, largely due to the outstanding performances from the two leads that transcend the film beyond just an ordinary young adult drama.

The Spectacular Now begins not unlike other of high school dramas, with an 18-year-old named Sutter (Miles Teller) recalling how the love of his life Cassidy (Brie Larson) recently broke up with him. Everyone in the school thought they were the perfect couple and together they were the life of every party. After a long night of partying in an attempt to free his mind from his recent breakup, Sutter wakes up on a random lawn to the sound of a timid girl named Aimee (Shailene Woodley) calling his name. Aimee recognizes Sutter from school, but the familiarity is not mutual. As with most high school stories the popular student is completely unaware the quiet nerdy student even exists. However, instead of viewing her as solely a rebound girl (like what typically happens before realizing they are good together) he takes a genuine interest in her from the very beginning.

Sutter is known as the sarcastic class clown at school and the person everyone wants to be around at parties. He subscribes to the ‘living in the now’ philosophy, though to a punishing fault. His literal interpretation of this viewpoint means that he takes absolutely nothing seriously. Slowly he begins to realize that his classmates not only think he is the class joker, but also someone who is destined to go nowhere in life. The ultimate eye-opener for him is when he meets his father for the first time since he was a child only to discover he does not want to windup like him.

When you first see Sutter drinking alcoholic beverages at parties you do not think much of it. After all, it is a somewhat socially acceptable occurrence regardless of the fact he is underage. It is when he busts out his flask seemingly everywhere (including his job!) that we begin to notice a much larger issue at hand. And so does he. Because of Aimee he begins to think about consequences for the first time.

Both of the main character’s weaknesses stem from their strengths. Sutter’s flaws are easily seen in plain sight, living in the moment without ever thinking about his actions. But his shortcomings are not as exasperating as Aimee’s are because he is a troubled teen who is smarter than he appears; whereas Aimee seems to contradict her intelligence by repeatedly making poor decisions. While her unconditional affection towards Sutter is inspiring most of the time, her willingness to always look the other way, turn the other cheek, and to forgive everything he does can be frustrating to watch. Specifically, there is an incident late in the film that would have been a wake up call for most people, or at the very least a chance for her character to stand up for herself for once. In the grand scheme of things however these are admittedly only minor complaints to otherwise enjoyable characters.

Because the story has so much depth to it—much more than your typical teenage drama—it is easy to tell The Spectacular Now is based on a novel. Each character in the film has a specific purpose not only to the story, but meaningfully intricate to one another as well. For these reasons it is easy to compare this production to The Perks of Being a Wallflower, another come-of-age story that successfully transitioned from novel to film.

Credit the writing for creating a redeeming character that makes you want to reach out to stop him from ruining his life, but also for allowing the character to be smart enough to so himself. You must also give credit to the two main leads who help make some of the familiar plot devices feel fresh again. Far too many teenage dramas are content with staying within the boundaries of the schoolyard, in this case placing all the focus on Sutter’s temptations with getting back together with his ex. Fortunately, The Spectacular Now introduces a darker side of the film that helps separate it from its competition.

The Spectacular Now trailer

Below, check out the brand new trailer for Divergent, the latest release from Summit Entertainment, the folks who brought us the recent Ender’s Game adaptation and, of course, the Twilight series.

Helmed by Neil Burger (The Illusionist), the adaptation of Veronica Roth’s novel of the same name takes place in a futuristic Chicago and stars Shailene Woodley as Tris, a heroic young woman with special abilities. Each citizen must choose to align themselves with one of five factions upon reaching adulthood. Kate Winslet plays Jeanine Matthews, the authoritarian leader of the Erudite faction who is hell-bent on wiping out people with special minds like Tris.

Summit seems to have the YA sector of the cinemasphere on lock, save for Lionsgate’s hugely successful Hunger Games franchise. With Divergent, a series with several similarities to The Hunger Games (pretty female lead, lots of action, dystopian setting), Summit looks to challenge Lionsgate for the white-hot YA throne. It’ll be interesting to see over the next few years who comes out on top.

Watch the trailer for Divergent:

Divergent opens nationwide March 21st, 2014

The Descendants shares a lot in common with other films Alexander Payne has directed (About Schmidt, Sideways) in that it is about a middle-aged man on a journey of self-discovery. A man must learn how to raise his children while making some life changing decisions. The role for George Clooney is not very typical for him and does a good job with it. Even though the film felt contrived and underwhelming it is still watchable thanks to Clooney.

Matt King (George Clooney) must take charge of the household of two children when his wife ends up in coma after a bad boating accident. He is a lawyer who makes good money but he is a descendant of a Hawaiian princess who owned 25,000 acres of paradise. Matt does not believe in spoiling his children in his own words, “I want to leave them enough for them to do something but not too much that they do nothing.”

Going from the “backup parent” as he says to the primary parent is a difficult transition but he makes it look effortless. His youngest daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller) is ten years old and is having a hard time dealing with her mother being in the hospital. She is acting out in school and insulting girls out of frustration.

She gets her rebelliousness from her older sister Alexandra (Shailene Woodley). The seventeen year old spends most of her time hanging around boys and drugs which is why she is attending a boarding school. When Matt goes to pick her up from school so they can visit the hospital, she is found drinking after sneaking out.

As if Matt’s hands were not already full, two more events occur that complicate matters even more. The first is that the land he inherited he highly sought after for major commerce development. So he must decide to appease his family who want him to sell the land for the money or to keep the land to protect it.

The real blow comes when Alexandra shares what caused her and her mother to get into a major argument before the accident. She tells her father that her mother had been cheating on him and was considering asking for a divorce. The news hits him hard as you would expect and suddenly his focus is on something different.

He and Alexandra, now fueled by a bond, decide to investigate the man that their mother was having an affair with. They find his name and where he lives but are still not quite sure what the next step should be. When the doctors tell him that his wife will not wake up from coma, Matt just wants to find out as much as he can about this man and his side of the story.

George Clooney is definitely what made this film. Without his fine work I fear that the film would have been a disaster. He is featured in nearly every scene and makes the otherwise average film into something just a little bit more.

One of the problems I have with the film is that we are giving no background on his wife Elizabeth. We do not see any flashbacks or any insight as to who she was. This makes it hard to have any strong emotions about her or empathize with Matt for his loss.

Another issue I have with The Descendants is Sid’s character, it felt unneeded. Other than offering some comic relief, he was meaningless to the story. More times than not, I found myself asking why he is even in the scene at all.

Frankly, I do not see what all the Oscar buzz around The Descendants is all about. The film is certainly not a complete bust, but I am shocked that it is considered one of the front-runners for a Best Picture Oscar. The whole film is similar to the ending, it is tolerable but it could have been better.