Dakota Fanning Page 3

At only 15, Cherie Currie (Fanning) is overwhelmed when Joan Jett (Stewart) asks her to front her band The Runaways. With the encouragement of music promoter Kim Fowley (Shannon), Cherie becomes an iconic presence on stage and off, propelling the group into previously uncharted territory as female rockers. And while Joan and the other bandmates (Maeve, Taylor-Compton and Shawkat) take the lifestyle in their stride, Cherie is continually drawn back to her big sister (Keough) and absent parents (O'Neal and Cullen).

Continue reading: The Runaways Review

Even though they're now pledged to be together forever, Bella (Stewart) and her dreamy vampire boyfriend Edward (Pattinson) are stuck in a gloomy funk. Not only does she have lingering feelings for Edward's mortal enemy, the hard-bodied werewolf Jacob (Lautner), but vengeful vampire Victoria (Howard) is still after her. Meanwhile, an army of young-blood vampires is building in nearby Seattle, mobilised by the hot-headed Riley (Samuel). And a Vulpari delegation, led by pain-monger Jane (Fanning) is on its way to clean up the mess.

Continue reading: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Review

Just as Bella (Stewart) turns 18 and begins her senior year in high school, her beloved Edward (Pattinson) decides he has to leave town for her safety. In a deep funk, she eventually turns to neighbour Jacob (Lautner) for company, but their friendship takes a twist when he starts getting hunky and tetchy and hanging out with gang-leader Sam (Spencer). But it's not steroids; the gang members are actually werewolves, locked in mortal combat with vampires. And she needs (and wants) to keep both Edward and Jacob in her life.

Continue reading: The Twilight Saga: New Moon Review

Lily (Dakota Fanning) lives in rural South Carolina with her no-account abusive redneck daddy T. Ray (Paul Bettany) and the family housekeeper Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson). Her mother died when she was very young, and the circumstances have haunted the young girl ever since. When President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1964 into law, Rosaleen decides to register. In the process, she is assaulted, beaten, and arrested. In a moment of opportunity, she escapes the police, and takes Lily out on the run. They wind up in the care of the Boatwright sisters -- August (Queen Latifah), June (Alicia Keys), and May (Sophie Okonedo). Successful beekeepers, their safe haven gives Lily a chance to face the demons from the past and plot a course for the future.

Continue reading: The Secret Life Of Bees Review

In the film, Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) is a mentally challenged single father raising his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning). Sam is a sweet, good-natured man who earns a living by sweeping up at a local coffee store. His mental capacity is that of a seven-year-old, and as his daughter turns seven, she begins to intellectually outgrow her father. Soon, their lives come under the scrutiny of a social worker, who, "for the good of the child," wants Lucy placed into foster care.

Continue reading: I Am Sam Review

And so it is that in the terrorism-edgy mid-'00s, Steven Spielberg has resurrecteds War of the Worlds - again - and created the greatest alien invasion movie ever.

Continue reading: War Of The Worlds (2005) Review

In the film (a remake of a 1987 flick of the same name) Denzel Washington coasts through his role as John Creasy, your average ex-undercover operative now saddled with a drinking problem and a yen for his own death. His buddy from the bad old days, Rayburn (Christopher Walken), now a wealthy Mexican businessman of ill repute, gets Creasy a job as bodyguard for the nine-year-old daughter of Mexico City industrialist Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony). The average parent might have noticed that Creasy might not have been the best man for the job, seeing as he drinks, is temperamental with the daughter, and tries to off himself one lonely night. But the girl herself, Pita (Dakota Fanning), takes to crusty old Creasy anyway, saying to her mother (Radha Mitchell) that "he's like a big, sad bear" and filling her notebook with moony scribblings about how much she loves him. Creasy finally warms up to Pita, an irresistibly personable ball of energy as played by Fanning, who also brings a powerfully adult presence to her scenes with Washington, complementing his character's world-weariness: they're like the only two adults in a world full of corrupt, venal teenagers.

Continue reading: Man On Fire (2004) Review

I'm not talking about masked-psycho-with-a-chainsaw scary.That's kids' stuff. This is a slow, relentless, meticulous fear. It's thefear of uncertainty, the fear of grand-scale devastation that humanityis powerless to stop. It's a fear that fills the air like a storm and creepsup your spine in a way that's hard to shake. It is a fear not unlike whatevery American felt on September 11, 2001 -- but divorced from fact andrealigned as entertainment through the subconsciously reassuring comfortof a movie theater seat and a tub of popcorn.

It's visceral, it's psychological, and it comes more fromthe terrified performances of Tom Cruise and the remarkable Dakota Fanning(the angelic 10-year-old from "Hide& Seek" and "Manon Fire") -- as a dock-worker deadbeatdad and his daughter on the run from 100-foot alien killing machines --than from the film's hyper-realistic special effects and monsters (whicharen't that different from the ones in the shamelessly corny "Warof the Worlds" rip-off "Independence Day").

The film is worth seeing just to experience this fear,which is a testament to the power of cinema.

Continue reading: War Of The Worlds Review

Making only a minimal effort to be any different or better than the hundreds of other forgettable, predictable, almost-married-the-wrong-guy romantic comedies that have come before it, "Sweet Home Alabama" has the benefit of a talented, appealing cast and the burden of being entirely dependent on clichés to drive its story.

Reese Witherspoon stars as Melanie Carmichael, a rising-star designer in New York's fashion world who is downright giddy about her new engagement to the political mover-and-shaker son (Patrick Dempsey) of the city's image-conscious mayor (Candice Bergen). In the movie's most romantic scene, Mr. Wonderful proposes by getting down on one knee at Tiffany's, which he's arranged to stay open after hours, and telling her to pick any ring she wants.

But there's one little wrinkle Melanie's fiancé doesn't know about: Before she can marry him, she'll have to divorce her hayseed childhood sweetheart back in small-town Alabama. A handsome, blue-eyed charmer named Jake (Josh Lucas, "A Beautiful Mind") with a playful Paul Newman smirk, she did nothing but fight with him once the magic wore off their relationship, so Melanie bailed out to follow her ambition.

Continue reading: Sweet Home Alabama Review

The last thing I wrote in my notes at the preview screening of "Uptown Girls" was "could have been worse." I guess that means some part of me was somewhat charmed by this silly, weightless yet self-serious modern fairy tale of a dead rock star's impetuously carefree daughter who must come to terms with the real world when her accountant absconds with her inheritance.

But the contrived story gets by only on the middling magnetism of its stars: Brittany Murphy as flighty, Peter-Pan-syndromed Molly Gunn and 8-year-old Dakota Fanning as Ray, an uptight little rich girl who slowly loosens up when Molly takes a job as her nanny.

As they learn neatly packaged life lessons from each other and grow into more well-round people, the laughs are often predicated on either Murphy's pratfalls (beautiful actresses playing clumsy is Hollywood's idea of making them seem "common") or the cuteness quotient of a pretty blonde child wearing Chanel, listening to Mozart, acting snooty and speaking in multi-syllabic words she can hardly wrap her mouth around.

Continue reading: Uptown Girls Review

Apparently not wanting to call attention to the fact that it's releasing a emotionally exploitive child abduction B-movie thriller at a time when AMBER Alerts are being issued almost weekly, Warner Bros. sneaked "Trapped" into theaters this weekend without holding any advance screenings.

This practice is usually reserved for pictures the studios are embarrassed to have made at all ("Pluto Nash," anyone?). "Trapped" isn't as bad as all that, but it is a film that has to get stupid -- really stupid -- in order to resolve its plot.

A rehash of Mel Gibson's "Ransom" with younger, prettier parents fighting back against their child's kidnappers, the film stars the luscious Charlize Theron ("Sweet November") and darkly charming Stuart Townsend ("Queen of the Damned") as a rich, happy young couple with a lakefront, Architectural Digest home but without much credibility as parents to a pretty 6-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning, "I Am Sam").

Continue reading: Trapped Review