Because Everybody Else Has One

Aiming for an Oscar... But a swing and a miss! That's the wrong sports metaphor, isn't it? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about When African immigrant and world-class pathologist, Dr Bennet Omalu discovers extensive brain damage in a series of ex-football players who died under severely strange circumstances in a short amount of time, he uncovers a truth that the National Football League hoped would never get out: that playing football is extremely tough on the brains of those who play it. Based on a true story. What we thought Before dealing with the merits (and notable flaws) of the film itself, I have to ask: how on earth was it a surprise to anyone that a full-contact sport like American Football, a sport that features head-on collisions as a routine part of the game, is a source of massive brain-damage in its players? Seriously, isn't this more or less the equivalent to finding out that boxers have a predilection to getti...

And now for something actually worth seeing this week. I mean, aside for the Force Awakens for the 7th time... (Or, in my case, only the 3rd - but I really do want to see it in IMAX) Anyway, back to Steve Jobs, this review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about A character study of Apple founder Steve Jobs, centred around three product launches over three decades, that examines his work, his relentless quest for perfection and his extremely complicated, often adversarial relationships with even those closest to him. What we thought Standing in stark contrast to the decidedly ordinary biopic, Jobs, which saw Ashton Kutcher in the eponymous role trying his best – but ultimately failing – to capture the many diverse sides of Steve Jobs over pretty much his entire adult life, Steve Jobs is an almost impressionistic take on the man that says everything it really needs to say by focusing on a mere three vital days in his professional life. We don't ge...

Young and dumb and full of... crap? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about Johnny Utah, a young FBI agent, infiltrates a group of extreme sports athletes whose mission to complete eight increasingly difficult endurance tests is backed up by a series of heists – some for personal gain, but most for Robin-Hood-like wealth redistribution. A loose remake of the 1991 film of the same name. What we thought The original Point Break is something of a cult classic among action junkies but aside for the occasional memorable set piece (the firing his gun in the air bit) or the occasionally quotable line of goofy dialogue (“young and dumb and full of cum”), it was never much more than moderately okay. The decision to remake it, then, needn't have been such a bad move as it's always been a smarter idea to remake promising but ultimately flawed films than serious classics, but, as you may have guessed, this slightly more modern Point Break makes the or...

With loads of great kids movies out there right now, this really ain't good enough. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about In the fourth Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, after being tormented by her son, the Chipmunks head off to Miami to try stop Dave from proposing to his new girlfriend and leaving them behind. What we thought At this point, what more is there to be said about this unbelievably endurable franchise? From a sixties Christmas novelty hit to this latest major(ish) film series – I'm still trying to get over the fact that this is the fourth installment – there's just no keeping Alvin, Simon and Theodore down. Unfortunately, based on the evidence of the Road Chip, they are well beyond in need of a long nap. Admittedly, it is somewhat hard to review a film aimed squarely at no one over the age of six when you're a thirty-four-year-old man, but the real problem with this third Chipmunks sequel is that it is so tired...

This review is also up at Channel 24 .   Disclaimer/ Preamble/ No-Spoiler Warning: So, we have a brand new Star Wars movie: the first created without the input of George Lucas, the first to fall under the Disney umbrella and the first of an already rapidly expanding film universe that will include both direct sequels and spin-offs/ one-shots and, , prequels. The problem with talking about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (to give it its proper title), though, is that you can't really talk about it. The film has been marketed in such a way as to give as little information as is humanly possible about the actual plot, who these new characters are and how they fit in with old favourites, Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca – and I'm certainly not gong to be the guy that ruins it. If you're looking for spoilers, basically, feel free to look elsewhere, as you ain't gonna find them here. Instead, I'm going to try talk about what works (and what, perhaps, ...

Don't call me Ee-gor. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about The latest retelling of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, tells the very familiar story from the point of view of Victor Frankenstein's lowly assistant, Igor: in this version a nameless circus hunchback with a brilliant medical mind who is freed by Frankenstein and, after taking the name of the good doctor's absent roommate, starts to assist him in his mission to create life out of death. What we thought For all that Victor Frankenstein tries to make itself out to be a fresh new take on the extremely well worn story of Frankenstein and his “Modern Prometheus”, the main problem with the film is precisely that it feels tired and stale more than anything else. There are some spirited and enjoyable performances, most notably Daniel Radcliffe as Igor and James McAvoy as the titular character but even if everything is put together with competence by director Paul McGuigan, the...

Revitalizing the Rocky franchise, once again. Seriously, how does this still work? And yet here we are, six for seven good Rocky flicks. Amazing. Check out this review at Channel 24 as well. What it's about The seventh installment in the Rocky series focuses on Adonis Johnson, Apollo Creed's youngest, illegitimate son whose troubled early life took a decided turn for the good when Creed's widow, Mary Anne, invites him to live with her after he finds himself once again falling foul of the system. Years later though, with the aid of a loving mother figure, a fine home life and a great education, Adonis is thriving as an up and comer in the financial sector but the old family calling proves to be too much for him and he heads off to try make a name for himself – his own name – in professional boxing by enlisting the help of his father's rival/ protege/ best friend, Rocky Balboa. What we thought It was already pretty amazing that 2006's Rocky Ba...

Good Kill, worthy topic, only OK movie. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A drone pilot, desperate to get back into the air himself, starts to question the ethics of what he does when his unit is assigned to work with the CIA on increasingly destructive missions and his family life starts to take a turn for the worse. What we thought Good Kill is a timely, worthy, perhaps even important film that manages to tackle a complex issue with both even handedness and honesty. Unfortunately, as a piece of drama, it falls remarkably flat. The film actually never got much widespread distribution in the States and, though some have assumed that this much surely be a reflection of the film's delicate subject matter, I dare say that it's probably just because the film is a far better fit for something like the History channel than the cinema. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, a filmmaker whose better works include Gattaca and writing the...

South Africa finally got the latest James Bond movie after it seemed to have come out everywhere else on earth first. Was it worth the wait, though? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about A message from beyond the grave has James Bond hunting down a shadowy organization whose leader may have a connection to Bond's own past, while at the same time, even closer to home, forces within MI6 are conspiring to finally bring an end to the 00- program. What we thought Bond films have had a long tradition of being weirdly affected by their immediate predecessors, even though almost of all of them are stand-alone films with little to connect them but a handful of characters (and even then, the actors portraying them may not be the same). This started around the time Roger Moore took over as Bond and a dud like Moonraker would be followed up by the excellent For Your Eyes Only, which would conversely be followed by the middling-at-best Octopussy. ...

We can all breathe a sigh of relief: Mockingjay Part 2 solidifies the Hunger Games saga as the gold standard in YA novel adaptations. As a fierce defender of Mockingjay Part 1 (I loved all the talky bits), it's kind of odd that I have to say that, for all that it gets very right, Mockingjay Part 2 makes a strong case for smooshing the two films into one three-hour long epic. The Hunger Games' final installment is an excellent capper to the series that impresses both as a gripping piece of entertainment and as impressively ambitious social commentary that deals with class warfare, traditional warfare, revolutions, the corruption of power and the way that the media is used and manipulated in all of the above. It's brave, smart and audacious filmmaking that just happens to be a major, big-budget Hollywood film aimed, nominally, at teenage girls. Unfortunately, the one thing that stops it from ever really coming close to toppling Catching Fire as the series' best en...

All hail the return of the great Lily Tomlin to our big screens! This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A teenage girl approaches her recently widowed lesbian grandmother to help her pay for an abortion after her deadbeat boyfriend flakes on her but when it's revealed that her grandmother is as broke as she is, the two set out to raise the six hundred dollars that she needs – preferably without ever alerting the girl's emotionally cold, businesswoman mother. What we thought Arguably his best film since About a Boy, writer/ director Paul Weitz has crafted a charming, funny little film that seems to have been created with the sole purpose of having the wonderful Lily Tomlin remind us over and over again why it's such a crying shame that she hasn't been in more films over the last decade or two. She gets some unsurprisingly wonderful support by the likes of Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer and, the Voice himself, Mr Sam Elliot, not to ...

It's SUPPOSED to be a bit rubbish... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Five married men buy an expensive loft apartment for their extramarital activities with their assorted mistresses, one-night-stands and working girls, but their shared secret takes an even darker turn when, one morning, one of them discover the body of a young, naked woman, brutally murdered and left face down in one of their beds. What we thought In many respects a locked-room murder mystery, the Loft is a quite old fashioned bit of sexy, pulpy fun about a group of fairly reprehensible men getting entangled in a web of lies, murder, secrets double-crosses and beautiful femme fatales. It's far from the best example of its genre (for truly great modern-day pulp, check out the Ed Brubaker/ Sean Phillips line of graphic novels from Image Comics) but it's a lot more effortlessly enjoyable than most of the stinky overseas reviews may have you believe. The Loft...

Killer title, not so killer movie. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A chauvinistic, womanizing Cambridge poetry professor heads for a new life in Los Angeles with his beautiful and very pregnant, young student, but it's not long before his new commitment to being a faithful husband and father is challenged in the most unlikely ways. What we thought Any film that has as many alternate titles as How to Make Love Like an Englishman (we get its original title, but it's also known in other territories as Some Kind of Beautiful and Lessons in Love – which sound for all the world like 1980s John Hughes teen comedies) is bound to be the sort of crass, crappy product that even those soulless studios are pretty embarrassed about. And, mostly, they kind of have the right to be. It's a plodding, misjudged and nowhere near funny enough romantic comedy with a cast that probably should know better and an ass-backwards kind of morality that yo...

I'm going to make this one quick as I want a review up of it in time for the weekend but suffice to say, this is easily the best film of the week and, a couple of niggling flaws aside (hence the slightly conservative 8-star rating), one of the best films of the year. I can't reveal exactly why I have some slight reservations about the film, as they all have to do with events - and one in particular - that take place just before and during the final act of the film but let's just say that had they done things very slightly differently in the later parts of the film, I would have no qualms whatsoever about giving this nine or even ten stars. It's simply a beautiful film that is as soulful as it is immaculately crafted; as understated as it is moving. Brooklyn is a simple story of a young immigrant being caught not just between her old home and her new life, but between two very different but equally worthwhile men. This isn't Twilight, though, so those looking f...

Where's the love?! This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Based on Bill Bryson's beloved autobiographical travel book, we find Bryson (Robert Redford), older and living the quiet life with his wife in their suburban American home after two decades living in England. It's not long, however, before his general restlessness and unending passion for travel leads him to try hiking the punishing Appalachian Trail with a decidedly out of shape old friend (Nick Nolte) – all in the spite of the protests of his wife (Emma Thompson) and just about everyone else who knows him. What we thought A Walk in the Woods has generally not been particularly well received by overseas critics and, as near as I can tell, by many a Bill Bryson fan, but I'm slightly at a loss as to why this is. I haven't yet read the book on which the film is based and have only recently gotten into Bryson's work in general (based on what little I have read, though,...

Spielberg! The Coen Brothers! Tom Hanks! What could go wrong? Not that much as it turns out... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about At the height of the cold war, American insurance lawyer, James Donovan, is called on to represent Rudolf Abel, a British man accused of being a Soviet spy. What starts off as a civic duty soon becomes something far greater, however, as Donovan and Abel's lives intertwine in a way that places both of their lives in danger. Based on a true story. What we thought In a way, I needn't really say much more about Bridge of Spies than that is directed by Steven Spielberg, co-written (based on an original script by newcomer Matt Charman, adapting Donovan's own writings) by the Coen Brothers and starring Tom Hanks. It's a frankly astonishing selection of talent and even if Bridge of Spies is not exactly the greatest film ever made, you probably don't need me to tell you that it is very good indeed. ...

I know it's not exactly deep but as visual storytelling goes, it's hard to beat Crimson Peak. And sorry this is so late but I've been a wee bit under this weather the past week. And a bit lazy. And yeah, this will be pretty short because, honestly, Crimson Peak is the sort of film you experience, rather than talk or read about. Billed as Guillermo Del Toro's return to the more personal, intimate filmmaking of Pans Labyrinth and the Devil's Backbone after the bombast of Pacific Rim and Hellboy II, Crimson Peak is actually something a bit different. It's a film that in its construction is clearly incredibly personal to Del Toro (check out the wonderfully informative and funny interview that the Empire Magazine podcast did with the man himself a few weeks back) but is ultimately probably more about his love for gothic romance than anything more personally resonant. The result is a film that is absolutely worth seeing, just as long as you don't go in ex...

Well, not quite. It ain't half bad though. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about The true story of Reggie and Ronnie Kray, the notorious twin gangster brothers who all but ruled London in the 1960s and '70s. What we thought Legend is, quite frankly, a pretty exasperating piece of work. For every element that works beautifully, there is something else that's just never as good as it should be. It is in many ways a really enjoyable film that's easy to recommend but, at the same time, its weaknesses become more and more distracting as it goes on. The film grabs your attention pretty much immediately as we meet Reggie taunting a couple of cops whose entire existence is apparently dedicated to following the Krays until Reggie or Ronnie makes the single fatal mistake that will allow them to bring the full force of the law upon their heads. It's terrific stuff with sharp, funny dialogue and excellent performances from Tom Hardy...

Who's there? Who cares? This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Evan Webber is a devoted husband and father who, while spending a weekend alone at home while his family if away, opens his house to two gorgeous, ruthlessly seductive girls who claim to be lost and stranded in the pouring rain. It's not long before his fidelity is put to the test but what should have been a one-night indiscretion soon proves to be the worst mistake he will ever make. What we thought Eli Roth is perhaps best known for Hostel, a film that took the quite clever template of the first Saw film and stripped it of anything but its worst torture-porn excesses; helping to usher in one of the worst ever eras in big-screen horror in the process. His latest film is refreshingly low on the gore but what could have been a highly satirical and smart comment on infidelity instead proves once and for all that our emperor hasn't just been running around sans clothing this ...

I haven't reviewed Me and Earl and the Dying Girl yet so I thought I'd team it up with this week's much tougher coming-of-age story. They certainly make for an interesting double bill. My review of The Diary of a Teenage Girl is up at Channel 24 , but first a couple of quick words on Me and Earl. In many respects, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is the quirkier, more indie version of the Fault in Our Stars. Again, it's about teenagers dealing with a terminal disease and again there is still the irony of it also being about growing up. Our hero of the piece, Greg (Thomas Mann)  makes amateur parodies of classic films with his co-worker (really best friend) Earl and he spends his whole life trying to remain invisible in a school divided along arbitrary but rigid lines. When Greg befriends "the dying girl" Rachel (Olivia Cooke) though, who has just been diagnosed with a otentiallyp curable form of leukemia, he is forced to confront his aloof relationship ...

Not so much burnt as under-done. This review is also up at Chanel 24 What it's about A disgraced American chef, forced to leave Paris thanks to a destructive lifestyle of drugs and booze, sets out to redeem himself by being awarded the coveted “Michelin 3 stars” by becoming head chef of an old friend's respected restaurant. What we thought I'm not much of a foodie so excuse the cliched metaphor but, for all of its charms, Burnt is more hors d'oeuvre than entree. It's tasty enough and it's not badly prepared, but it ultimately leaves me hungry and wanting more. Much like the dainty gourmet dishes in the film itself, in fact. Bradley Cooper returns to a role not too dissimilar from one of his earlier performances as a chef in the short lived TV comedy, Kitchen Confidential, but he has obviously racked up quite the resume since. He is, as is now pretty typical for him, in good form here and he elevates some of the more mundane and wel...

Really, really not good enough... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Molly Moon is a smart, bookish and warmhearted orphan girl, living in a small orphanage in rural England, whose life takes a sudden and dramatic change when she finds a book on hypnosis at her local library. What we thought It's tempting to give the frankly fairly terrible Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism a pass just because it's a kids film, and a mostly harmless one at that, but there's something incredibly disingenuous, not to mention condescending, about accepting something this woefully below par just because it happens to be aimed at fairly young kids. In a world where Mary Poppins, School of Rock, Paddington and the Harry Potter series are readily available to rent, buy and/or download – and that's to say nothing of the countless brilliant animated kids films out there – there really is no excuse for something this lame and lazy. ...

Welcome back Mr Depp but this ain't exactly Goodfellas. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about The true story of Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, a small-time Boston gangster, who, by working with the FBI to take down Boston's major crime family, soon finds himself with free rein to become the most ruthless, most feared criminal in the city. What we thought Black Mass is a gangster movie that can perhaps be admired for how utterly unglamorously it portrays the casually violent gangster lifestyle (which makes for a particularly interesting contrast with Legend, the upcoming portrayal of the infamous Kray brothers) but it's a very hard to film to be invested in, let alone actually enjoy. Everything from the beige-and-tweed '70s fashion to the slow, downbeat direction to the utterly humourless script, adds up to an incredibly dour portrait of some of most spectacularly unlikable and unsympathetic low-life scum to hit our screen in quite s...

See, this is what happens when I review South African movies... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about While looking for a place to launch their new video game, Eric Scott and Jason White stumble upon an abandoned warehouse containing a fully functional twenty-year-old artificial intelligence named XJ1. With that warehouse about to be destroyed, the two friends search for a new home for the AI, before settling on uploading “him” to their work network: the highly secure intelligence company named Sky Corp, which happens to be run by Jason's father. What could possibly go wrong? What we thought I've got to be honest: Reconnect is a total bitch of a film to review. Quite aside for the fact that it's always a bit difficult to give a negative review an earnest independent movie, made with the best of intentions – bashing cynical, corpulent product like Transformers 4 is one thing, bashing a highly personal local film is quite another – Reconn...

In which Kristen Stewart is the best thing about it... This review has already been up for a few days at Channel 24 , in case you missed it. What it's about Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) seems to be your average twenty-something stoner, living a fairly ordinary life as an aspiring cartoonist stuck in a dead end convenience-store job but with a loving girlfriend at his side every step of the way. As it turns out though, Mike is not who or what he seems as he suddenly finds himself the target of the C.I.A. – but, lucky for him, he is also armed with a set of deadly skills; the origins of which, though, are a total mystery to him. What we thought With its not entirely original but still very promising premise, you would be forgiven for thinking that American Ultra would be, at the very least, a fun, funny thrill ride that makes good use of its quite idiosyncratic cast. Sadly, it's something of a misfire that has its share of decent moments but is mostly a ...

Another origin story that no one wanted... By this point, I think we can safely say that J.M Barrie's immortal fairy tale has been pretty well mined by the great Hollywood machine. Along with the classic Disney animated film from way back in 1953, we've had a silent adaptation in the early '20s, spin-offs in the form of the Tinkerbell series and sequels, including Stephen Spielberg's largely derided Hook. We've even had a look at the life of its author in the decent but underwhelming Finding Neverland - which itself came out just a year after P.J. Hogan's fairly straightforward adaptation. It's understandable, of course, as Peter Pan is that classic a story - and I haven't even gotten into the many, many reinterpretations on stage and TV and in novels and comic books, including my own favourite "cover", Peter David's wonderful novel, Tigerheart - but with so much baggage, it's hard not to come to a new version without at least so...

I can't remember the last Ridley Scott film to feel this assured. Well, okay, yes, I can, but that was American Gangster in 2007 and who the hell can remember that far back. Welcome back, Sir Ridley, it's been way too bloody long! The Martian tells the story of the first manned mission to mars (to be clear, the fictional story - but, um, you do know that, right?) and of the astronaut who is accidentally left for dead by his crewmembers and is forced to fend for himself on the inhospitable Red Planet until NASA send their next mission some four years hence. However, rather than going the more obvious route of a gritty, or at least more lonesome and meditative, survivalist story, it plays out like Apollo 13 on steroids - and it really is all the better for it. This means that though it does lack the depth of something like Duncan Jones' beautiful indie sci-fi flick, Moon, it more than makes up for it in terms of sheer, unfiltered enjoyment. And, frankly, after the un...

Sadly, more like Point/Less This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A dying real estate mogul turns to a covert corporation for his last chance of survival: a new procedure that would transfer his consciousness into a younger body. It's not long, however, before he starts to find out that this miraculous procedure may not be all that it seems. What we thought Self/less comes with a fairly tried and true science fiction premise but it's disappointing to see just how little it does with it. Science fiction has long been interested in questioning the nature of the soul and of consciousness while the quest for immortality has been a constant theme in both science and fiction for as long as anyone can imagine. Self/less is only the latest in this long tradition and its central premise of achieving some kind of immortality by transferring one's consciousness into new bodies is far from a new one. That it's unoriginal is neither unex...

Because not all flops deserve their fate... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Aspiring DJ, Cole Carter, believes that all it takes is “one track” to make his mark as a professional music spinner but as he has to navigate his way through deadbeat friends, a self-destructive mentor and a potentially disastrous romantic relationship, he finds that the road to the top might be a whole lot less straightforward than he could ever have imagined. What we thought Between its general drubbing from overseas critics and its status as one of the biggest box office bombs of the year. We Are Your Friends comes to these shores with a whole lot of baggage. Add to that my own personal bias of having little to absolutely no interest in electronic dance music and significantly less in the whole clubbing scene, and the film had something of an uphill battle in winning me over. Here's the thing, though: it kind of did. Now, no one in their right mind wou...

Leaving you (or me, at the very least) cold in more ways than one... To adequately review Everest, you kind of have to look at the film from two almost disconnected levels. The first - and this is something that really can be best appreciated in 3D IMAX - on a purely technical level, the second as a piece of storytelling. As you may well have guessed by now, Everest passes with flying colours on the first point, but things look a whole lot more dubious on the second. Put simply, from a purely aesthetic and technical point of view, Everest is nothing less than spectacular. Between its fully immersive soundscapes and the appropriate crispness of even the smallest sounds, the film obviously calls for the best sound system imaginable to appreciate the magnitude of the experience on offer here. Even more than its auditory delights (and terrors!) though, the film is just breathtaking to look at. I was disappointed by the lack of IMAX aspect ratio, as the added height would have defini...

Not so much refueled as rewarmed... Check out this review also at Channel 24 What it's about This reboot of the Transporter franchise finds Frank Martin and his father, Frank Sr., in France and involved in an elaborate revenge scheme by a group of former prostitutes against their former boss, a Russian crime lord. What we thought After the Transporter TV series crashed and burned – seriously, did anyone actually watch that show – we are once again confronted with that crucial question: can there be a Transporter movie without Jason Statham? The answer, as you may well have expected even before seeing Transporter Refueled, is, of course, you can't. It's not quite that The Transporter Refueled is an utterly terrible movie, so much as it's one that has no reason whatsoever to exist. While Ed Skrein spends the entire film doing a not very good Statham impression and Loan Chabanol spends her time looking for all the world like a pretty terrific mix...

Or will it? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about After being involved in a tragic car accident that resulted in the death of a young child, author Tomas Eldan is forced to come to grips with what happened, even as his writing career starts to take off. What we thought It's been a long time since a Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire) film has seen a cinematic release in this country but the extremely clumsily titled Every Thing Will Be Fine is far from his best work - even if it is, in some respects, quite representative of his enormous talents as a filmmaker. Wenders has always made glacially-paced, elegiac films that are as much about simmering emotions and overall mood as they are about traditional plot mechanics so it's hardly the case that Every Thing Will Be Fine is a major departure for him. It's also every bit as gorgeously shot and evocatively scored as his very best work and even if his experiment with 3D effect...

Less cancer, more angst - how does the new John Green adaptation hold up? Beloved YA author, John Green, may not be a filmmaker himself but he is well on his way to being the Millennial answer to John Hughes with the release of the second movie based on one of his novels, Paper Towns. Much like the late and much missed writer/ director behind such teen classics as the Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Green has proven himself to have an uncanny grasp of adolescence in all its messy, uncertain and often funny glory. After the blackly comic and unbearably moving The Fault in Our Stars, with its examination of how terminal illness might affect those who are too young to have lived a full life but too old to be unaware of what they're going to be missing out on, Paper Towns is a much breezier affair that nonetheless shows that you don't have to have cancer for adolescence to be a pretty painful experience. It's not as good as the Fault in Our Stars, to be ...