Lesley Coffin, Author at The Mary Sue

Lesley Coffin

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Interview: Smart Girl Meredith Walker

While famous funny lady Amy Poehler became the public face of Smart Girls (and contributed plenty of hilarious and warmhearted material), Walker has been just as active as their executive director, and has become a highly respected spokesperson for the site and its mission. At SXSW this year, Walker was onsite not only to discuss the site (which just recently joined Legendary Digital Network), but to spread the word about combating online bullying—and speak exclusively with TMS.

Review: Ma Ma Suffers From Melodrama Without Catharsis

The sentimental, unapologetic melodrama is somewhat of a lost art form today at the movies. Julio Medem's Ma Ma feels so desperate to be a heartbreaking melodrama that it goes overboard with sentimentality and becomes something almost ridiculously sappy (and in a few moments, infuriating).

Review: The Nice Guys, the First Great Comedy of Summer

I know, we’re pretty much a month from the calendar’s official start of summer. But at this point in the movie release schedule, we’re about to be in full swing. And so far, we have three comedy films which will be competing for funniest comedy of the year

Review: Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Gets a C for Comedy

It's worth noting that while it isn’t wholly original, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is far more creative and ambitious as a comedy than one would expect from the trailers, but its most interesting aspect is actually the seemingly sincere interest not only in giving equal comedic opportunities to women, but to make a movie about feminism as a topical comedy.

Review: The Curse of Sleeping Beauty Is a Snooze-Fest

Fairy tales have been told, retold, modernized, and altered since falling into the cultural lexicon. The current trend seems to be returning (or claiming to return) to their original darkness. The one thing I can say in favor of Curse of Sleeping Beauty is that it commits to that Grimm darkness—but embracing the darkness doesn’t necessarily make everything better, and the darkness here doesn’t make up for how unbearably dull it turns out to be.

Review: Whit Stillman’s Hilarious Love & Friendship Focuses on Jane Austen’s Humor

If you're a Whit Stillman fan (Metropolitan, Barcelona, Last Days of Disco, and Damsels in Distress), consider this high praise: Love & Friendship is exactly what you would expect from Stillman adapting Jane Austen, focusing on some of the period’s absurdities of love, marriage and inheritance.

Tribeca Interview: Youth in Oregon’s Joel David Moore and Mary Kay Place

At the Tribeca film festival this year, actor Joel David Moore made his directing debut with the feature film Youth in Oregon. A Portland, Oregon native himself, his film addresses Oregon’s "right to die" laws through the lens of a family dramedy. I spoke with Joel and star Mary Kay Place, a veteran writer-director-actress herself, about their collaboration.

x-men ap

Review: Average X-Men: Apocalypse Plays the Hits, Underwhelms

We still have Suicide Squad in August (the classic untested film adaption to anchor the summer) and November’s Doctor Strange, but the big blockbusters came shockingly early this year. Now that I’ve seen X-Men: Apocalypse, I can wrap my head around this year’s trend of the war between superheroes. X-Men: Apocalypse is right alongside Batman v Superman and Civil War: overstuffed but underwhelming.

Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, sitting on a motorcycle wearing a leather jacket.

Interview: The Night Manager Director Susanne Bier

Review: Mother’s Day (the Movie) Is Not an Acceptable Gift