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AI’s Black Box Is Getting a Window. Somebody Still Has to Look Through It“It Stars C. Thomas Howell. No.” Why AI Gets Stuck in a LoopShould You Query or Self-Publish Your Memoir If You’re Not Famous?Judge the Writing, Not the Tool: What the AI Pile-Ons Get WrongThiago Ferreira: Thinkers, Not DoersYana Semova: Let AI Do the AdminLisa Hamilton-Smith: Unstoppable, AI AssistedSuperman Day: The $130 Contract Behind the CapeRaymond Chandler Day: The Novelist Who Started at FiftyJohn Steinbeck Day: The Reporter Who Wrote the NovelInternational Translation Day: The Invisible AuthorsMaya Angelou Day: The Dare That Became a MemoirNational Podcast Day: The Interview Is the Raw MaterialKurt Vonnegut Day: The Book That Took Twenty YearsTell a Fairy Tale Day: The Stories Everybody EditedHarry Potter’s Birthday: The Book Twelve Publishers MissedHarper Lee Day: The Draft Her Editor Saw ThroughGene Roddenberry Day: The Pilot Who Pitched the StarsRoald Dahl Day: Six Pencils and a Grudge Against Grown-UpsInternational Literacy Day: The Readers Books LoseJack Kerouac Day: The Scroll and the Last AddressElmore Leonard Day: Leave Out the Part Readers SkipEncourage a Young Writer Day: The Adult Who Read the PagesBack to the Future Day: The Script Where Everything Pays OffNational Library Lovers Month: The Building a Town Pays ForAlice’s Day: The Story Told on a Rowing BoatRobert E. Howard Day: The Texan Who Built ConanStephen King Day: The Daily Two ThousandEmily Dickinson Day: The Poems in the DrawerIan Fleming Day: Two Thousand Words a MorningFyodor Dostoevsky Day: The Novels Written Against the ClockZora Neale Hurston Day: The Ear She TrainedF. Scott Fitzgerald Day: The Masterpiece That FloppedElmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, and Which Ones I BreakShould Your Novel Have a Prologue? When a Cold Open Earns Its Place“People Who Use AI Deserve to Be Castrated”: When the Sentence Outruns the CrimeHow Famous Memoirs Were Really Written: What the Collaborators DidThe Bell JarOpen: An AutobiographyBeneath a Scarlet SkyFlorida RoadkillCampus BattlefieldLifeThe Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One ReadsThe Sage of SagittariusDid I Ever Tell You This?: A MemoirPa’anAmerican SoldierIt Doesn’t Take a HeroMake Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World

Genre: Action

Fast pacing, physical stakes, and characters who solve problems by moving. These are stories where something has to be outrun, outfought, or outlasted, and the clock is always running.

Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams stand alert on a New York street at night as plainclothes police officers. TITLEAction

Nighthawks (1981) Review

Nighthawks (1981) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Stallone and Billy Dee Williams are New York decoy cops assigned to an international terrorist, and Rutger Hauer is so much better than the film around him that he…

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Betsy Russell as a young woman in 1980s clothing, looking serious or determined.Action

Avenging Angel (1985) Review

Avenging Angel (1985) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The sequel recast its lead, aged the character to university student, and converted a squalid character piece into a revenge picture with a real estate conspiracy. It is…

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Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam stands in a grey, rubble-filled environment, wearing his superhero costume. TITLE: Black AdamAction

Black Adam (2022) Review

Black Adam (2022) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Dwayne Johnson spent fifteen years getting this made, declared that the hierarchy of power in the DC universe was about to change, and the studio he was in…

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Jason Momoa as Dante Reyes in Fast X, wearing sunglasses and styled as a Roman emperor character.Action

Fast X (2023) Review

Fast X (2023) rates 2 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The tenth entry in a series that began with a film about stealing DVD players, costing around three hundred and forty million dollars, ending on a cliffhanger, and…

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The moon looms large and ominous over a city skyline as catastrophic tidal forces begin to destroy the landscape below.Action

Moonfall (2022) Review

Moonfall (2022) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Roland Emmerich spent around a hundred and forty million dollars of independent money on a film where the moon is a hollow alien megastructure, and it is the most…

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Jared Leto as Michael Morbius in vampire form, with pale skin and dark eyes, shot against a blue-grey nighttime setting.Action

Morbius (2022) Review

Morbius (2022) rates 2 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A film assembled from a contractual obligation, released, mocked into a meme, re-released on the strength of the mockery, and rejected a second time. The most instructive failure of…

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A woman in armor stands against a desert landscape with a spaceship hovering overhead.Action

Rebel Moon (2023) Review

Rebel Moon (2023) rates 1 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Zack Snyder pitched this to Lucasfilm as a Star Wars film, was refused, and made it anyway with the names changed. It is Seven Samurai with the recruitment…

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Ryan Gosling as Sierra Six in a tense action scene from The Gray Man, with Chris Evans visible in the background.Action

The Gray Man (2022) Review

The Gray Man (2022) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Netflix spent around two hundred million dollars on an action film with two of the largest stars available, and produced something nobody can describe afterward. The Prague…

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Tom Holland as Nathan Drake stands among falling cargo crates inside a military transport plane during an action sequence.Action

Uncharted (2022) Review

Uncharted (2022) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A film adapted from a series of games that were already adapting films, which means it is a photocopy of a photocopy. The cargo plane sequence is lifted directly…

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A scene from Jurassic World Dominion showing dinosaurs in an urban or natural setting during the film's opening premise.Action

Jurassic World Dominion (2022) Review

Jurassic World Dominion (2022) rates 2 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The previous film ended with dinosaurs released into the world, which is the only genuinely new idea the series ever had, and this one is about locusts…

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A zombie in a gas station uniform leads other undead toward a fortified city tower across a river. TITLE: Big Daddy ZombieAction

Land of the Dead (2005) Review

Land of the Dead (2005) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Romero finally got a studio budget after twenty years and used it to make a film about a walled city where the rich live in a…

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