Rain Man on Fire: The Accountant, reviewed.

Anna Kendrick and Ben Affleck throw discretion to the glass. (Chuck Zlotnick/Warner Bros.)

Here, for NPR, is my rough accounting of The Accountant, a very strange action drama. It's basically Good Jason Bourne-ing, and yet still more fun than Jason Bourne.

Vernacular Spectacular: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, reviewed.

Eva Green as Miss Peregrine (Jay Maidment / Twentieth Century Fox)

The evergreen Eva Green is the best thing about Tim Burton's adaptation of Ransom Riggs' bestselling, "vernacular"-photography-inspired YA novel. But the stop-motion sequences are great, too. I reviewed the film for NPR.

If it ain't woke, don't fix it: The Magnificent Seven, reviewed.

Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington take over for Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner, respectively, in Antoine Fuqua's update of The Magnificent Seven.

Wait, Michael Biehn starred in a short-lived Magnificent Seven series on CBS in the late 90s? I've always been bad at keeping up with what's on TV, but this I should've known, given my long-term interest in the guy.

Anyway, here's my NPR review of the new Magnificent Seven from Antoine Fuqua and Denzel with Chris Pratt mugging his way around, too. Random note: It's funny that both The Magnificent Seven and Westworld, two long-dormant properties that starred Yul Brynner — most famous for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, "etcetera, etcetera" — as a black-clad cowboy, are both getting reimagined in 2016, isn't it? I think it is.

The $59,000 Question: Blair Witch, reviewed.

Wes Robinson and Valorie Curry in Blair Witch.

In 1999, the nanobudget horror hoaxumentary The Blair Witch Project rode a brilliant marketing campaign to blockbuster-level success. Now there's a legacy-quel called Blair Witch. My short review is that Blair Witch has displaced previous champ Frances Ha as the longest sub-90-minute movie I've seen in the last decade. My longer review, for NPR, is here. Boo. Also, boooooooooooooooo.

Boldly Gone: Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of Star Trek at 50, and Gene Roddenberry and fandom, for Rolling Stone

Leonard Nimoy's unflappable Mr. Spock communes with the Horta in "Devil in the Dark," from 1967. (CBS Consumer Products / Star Trek Archive)

I basically got into journalism because I wanted to write for Rolling Stone. That took longer to happen than I'd hoped it might, but it was a real thrill to get to do this piece for them yesterday, reflecting on What Star Trek Hath Wrought the occasion of the franchise's 50th anniversary.

Last night, the National Air and Space Museum showed "The Man Trap," the first Trek episode broadcast (albeit not the first one produced), at 8:30 p.m. Eastern — the same time NBC had shown it 50 years earlier. It's a really fun episode that demonstrates that the rich character relationships were present in the Original Series right from the beginning, and that most of the comedy in Trek was fully intentional. (Also that what was progressive in 1966 is decidedly not in 2016. But that's how progress works.)

Thanks to Scott Tobias for suggesting me for it, and to David Fear for editing the essay.