Everyone enjoys a brief opening paragraph, so why don't we spend it listing all the things that "Dark Places," from director Gilles Paquet-Brenner ("Sarah's Key"), gets right. Its cast is undoubtedly committed, particularly a convincingly grimy Charlize Theron, and an enjoyably off-the-leash Chloe Grace Moretz, though it feels like they signed on to different films, and continued under that misapprehension all the way through shooting. Christina Hendricks is decent in a frumpy role that is sold from under her by the film's last-act twists.

An unfazed tough guy walking away from an massive explosion in slow motion, it’s a tipping point reached long ago—this sequence has become a well-worn cliché in the visual vocabulary of pop culture even beyond cinema. Hell, it’s even been celebrated and mocked by the Lonely Island Guys in song. So it’s perhaps both a testament and symbol of Antoine Fuqua’s fortunate/unfortunate filmmaking modus operandi that the director not only embraces the hackneyed sequence, but also attempts to top it and create the most gloriously excessive walking-away-from-explosions scene ever made.

Chloe Grace Moretz gives a strong grown-up performance in 'If I Stay,' a surprisingly mature supernatural love story based on a popular novel, and overall, the film earns the tears it wants its audience to spill.http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured

When you're a teenager, everything feels like it's life or death, that each decision has an irrevocable ripple effect that will you experience forever. But in "If I Stay," the very decision to stay alive (or not) hangs in the balance, and it's a choice that Chloë Moretz will have to make. Based on the novel by Gayle Forman, with a screenplay by Shauna Cross and directed by R.J. Cutler ("The September Issue"), this one follows Mia, who winds up in a coma following a terrible car crash.