Divergent

Anomaly Tris (Shailene Woodley) is sick and tired of wearing wool sacks for clothes and only getting two minutes of mirror time a day. So, when she comes of age and bombs a test that’s supposed to tell her which virtue based faction she belongs to based on how her brain works, she goes for the flashiest of the bunch—Dauntless, where everyone screams everything they say and runs full speed instead of walking like some kind of ADHD ad-spot of the future. Here she meets future boyfriend Four (hunky to be seen and not heard Theo James) who has the same secrets (spoiler: he’s diiiiiivergeeeent too) and trains her by staring from across the room while she gets beat up, which is inevitable because girl can’t throw a punch to save her life. The always delightful Miles Teller and Zoë Kravitz are here too as nemesis and BFF, respectively. Things start to go awry when they stumble across a plot for smart-ass faction Eurodite (headed by the unblinking and therefor clearly evil Kate Winslet) to take over governing power (and side-plot enact divergent genocide) from her family’s doormat faction Abnegation by turning all Dauntless folk into mind-controlled soldiers. Well-cast, and better than you think, Divergent sets up the Veronica Roth trilogy with a balance of action, training montages and sassy quips. A fine place holder for The Hunger Games. —Lindsay Raining Bird