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If I stay

Film is based on the namesake Gayle Forman novel
Chloe Grace Moretz, Jamie Blakley and Mireille Enos
Directed by R.J. Cutler

When starlet Anne Baxter preyed on aging stage legend Bette Davis in “All About Eve,” did anyone figure that paradigm would eventually shift to middle school? Every two years we chop down the last teen star so that a new one can rise in the sunlight. You know Stewart and Lindsay and Fanning and Fanning, Knightley and Woodley and Ronan and Breslin. But do you recall, the greatest teen-actress of ... more >

Texas killing fields

Swampland shenanigans: and real scary, too
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Sam Worthington and Chloe Grace Moretz
Directed by Amy Canaan Mann

As I watched The Texas Killing Fields, I had one question running through my mind: why don’t they make more films like this? I don’t mean this in the Terrence Malick-random-acts-of-genius sort of way, as in “why can’t every filmmaker take seven years in post-production to create a high-minded masterpiece?” I mean it in a “whatever happened to the if it’s Friday, ... more >

Let me in

It's not fair is it?
Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz and Elias Koteas
Directed by Matt Reeves

Life is unfair to middle children and remakes. If Matt Reeves’ vampire coming-of-age story "Let Me In" had been made before the Swedish original--Tomas Alfredson’s “Let the Right One In”--would we automatically think it was the better of the two? It didn’t work that way and we’ll never know. What I can say? "Let Me In," written and directed by "Cloverfield"’s Reeves, underlines and ... more >