• David Foster Wallace is the much-celebrated author of the one thousand-page plus novel “Infinite Jest.” Not an easy read. But then, neither is “Ulysses,” or “Gravity’s Rainbow,” George Perec’s “Life: a User’s Manual” nor any number of boundary-blowing, epoch-making masterpieces that we crack open from time to time and know we will read some day. “Infinite Jest” I’d already given up on and picked up again several times.

  • Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley are such a naturally charming on-screen couple that it takes quite awhile to realize the movie they're in, "The Spectacular Now," isn't very good.

    Directed by James Ponsoldt (who debuted with the far more focused and wrenching "Smashed" last summer) and adapted from a Tim Tharp novel by writers/co-producers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (who also wrote