"I love soulful noirs, and this slow-burn Austrian crime thriller is one of my faves of the new millennium. It’s as if Bergman made a movie about cops and robbers. Austrian director Götz Spielmann gets incredible naturalistic performances, and the storytelling has some real breathing space, which is rare in crime thrillers. (For another soulful Criterion crime pic, give The Hit a look-see.) What I love most about Revanche is this narrative magic trick it pulls. You think it’s going to be a relatively conventional story about a robbery that goes off the rails and criminal-code revenge. But instead it turns into this deep exploration about the intersection of people and the happenstances that lead us down surprising paths in our lives (a theme that I explored in my documentary Magical Universe. Find it!). Like the best noirs, the crime plot is just the Trojan horse that takes you into a profound story about choice and consequence. Before you even know it, Revanche has morphed into something like a Kieślowski film, and it suddenly knocks you on the floor and leaves you in a heap."

"Reread done for #AdamRereadsHP! GOBLET OF FIRE is definitely work and I could've done for a lot of cutting. One of the things I admire most about this series is the way J.K. Rowling can speed through a year in under 300 pages. And GOBLET is twice that length and it didn't always feel justified. I shouldn't complain because more time in this world is MORE TIME IN THIS WORLD, and it's all very realized, but the pacing still felt off. (I really, really could've done without the Quidditch World Cup.) When I first read this novel when I was 13 going on 14, I took a break for MONTHS. And the same thing happened during this reread as a 28-year-old. I think it was around the same part too. But once you get to the Third Task, it all picks up. This last fourth of the novel has always been my favorite. Voldemort's return! That scene with the Death Eaters! Harry vs. Voldemort! Moody isn't Moody! Rita Skeeter exposed! It's all wonderful. GOBLET isn't my favorite in the series, but it's still pretty damn magical."