'American Assassin' (2017) Movie Review

Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp novels are the kind of books your dad picks up at the airport ahead of a long flight. Potboiling espionage thrillers, they read like Tom Clancy light. (They feel more like they’re written by someone who reads a lot of spy novels rather than someone who actually knows anything about that world.) Similarly, Michael Cuesta’s big screen adaptation of Flynn’s 2010 American Assassin—there are currently more than a dozen books in the series—feels like diet Jason Bourne. This potential franchise starter has Bourne envy, big time.

'Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials' Movie Review

At the tail end of last summer, director Wes Ball dropped yet another adaptation of yet another dystopian young adult novel into our laps with The Maze Runner, and, much to the surprise of many, it was a blast. Not as good as The Hunger Games movies by a good margin, it is a damn sight better than the Divergent films. Made on the cheap, it was also a highly profitably endeavor, and now the sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, is here in the same slot to continue the saga of a bunch of amnesiac teenage boys.