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The Best Picture nominee Train Dreams features a rarity in Western fiction: a protagonist with little agency and even less interior life. Where most stories, especially American stories about men, the heroes are strivers and individualists—the untamable Huckleberry Finn, the self-made Jay Gatsby, the indomitable Charles Foster Kane—Robert Grainier of

All You Need Is Kill, the light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and Yoshitoshi Abe, saw success in Hollywood when it was adapted as Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The story follows a human soldier who dies combating an alien invasion only to wake up earlier that

Too often storytelling treats science like magic, a hand-waving variation of “abracadabra” for the modern world. This might be one of the reasons Andy Weir’s novels have proven such fertile ground at the movies. Despite penning wildly outlandish scenarios set almost entirely in space, the one-time video game programmer drills

As Oscar season heats up, we’ve been taking a critical eye to the Best Picture winners of the past, and having already tackled the ’80s and ’90s, we’re now moving on to the ’00s, where we will not be disputing the recognition that Gladiator, Chicago, and Slumdog Millionaire got from

In the world of gaming, some titles separate casual players from pros almost immediately. These are the games where your skill, or lack thereof, can be exploited immediately. Whether it is mastering precise controls, understanding complex mechanics or reacting faster than your opponents, these games demand constant improvement to stay