Chloe Grace Moretz

[5] Tim Burton’s big-screen adaptation of Dan Curtis’ cult TV show Dark Shadows wants to be a comedy about a vampire transplanted from centuries past into the 1970s. That movie – one that focused on the vampire’s relationships with his surviving relatives, perhaps gaining their trust by helping them financially — could have been a good one. And thirty minutes into the movie, it looks …

[7] Isabelle Huppert (Elle) and Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick Ass) co-star in this satisfying horror-thriller about a naive young woman (Moretz) who returns a lost purse to a lonely widow (Huppert). The two strike up a friendship, but Huppert becomes too needy. When Moretz tries to break off the relationship… well, let’s just say a lot of bad things start to happen. Greta starts out …

[8] A dorky teenager (Aaron Johnson) decides to dress up like a superhero and help people in need. He encounters a few other kids with similar ambitions, and before you know it, you have a hyper-violent, low-rent, joyous abomination of the superhero flick. Director and co-screenwriter Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) takes some unpredictable turns, railing against our expectations to create some terrific edge-of-your-seat moments. Nothing …

[4] The old fraternity house next door to Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne has moved away… but now there’s a sorority there — and the girls are even worse than the boys were. Rogen and Byrne seek out their old fraternity nemesis, Zac Efron, to help them banish the boozie babes. I enjoyed the first Neighbors because it gave Rogen, Byrne, Dave Franco, and surprisingly, Efron, …

[6] Matt Reeves, the director of Cloverfield, makes the second stab at John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel about a twelve-year-old boy who unwittingly befriends a vampire girl. (A Swedish film version, Let the Right One In, was released in 2008.) The remake bends the material more toward an American sensibility, and as a result the American version is of course faster-paced, less nuanced, and far less …

[5] If you love the Muppets, this eighth Muppet movie won’t disappoint you too badly, though it’s far from their best effort. Director James Bobin (Flight of the Conchords) and writer Nicholas Stoller return for their second entry in the franchise, after the great success of 2011’s The Muppets. This time, Kermet is replaced with the world’s most dangerous frog, a Russian gulag escapee named …