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Glad to see someone noticing the great facial expressions used with Dakota Fanning’s persona in “War of the Worlds.” The two that I thought best were: the mitten-over-mouth bit in the escape-car and the lullaby song she did while her dad was dealing with Tim Robbins (who, BTW, gave a great performance). The mitten-over-mouth scene reminded me of what Michael Caine said, in his acting book, about suppression of emotion.
“Little girl in danger” was part of several of her films. She used her remarkable talent to make us care a lot. How else could we have bought into Creasy’s loony killing rampage in “Man on Fire”? A big part of the film was spent getting us to know and love Pita. Dakota did an excellent job of fulfilling her function in the film.
IMO, Natalie Portman, in “Black Swan” set the bar pretty high so far as the mastery of expression is concerned. Nina is struggling with mental illness and, in her work, the need to go beyond where she had ever been. We saw all of the struggle through Natalie’s mastery of expression. Dakota has a real challenge ahead if she’s to reach that level; she’s smart though, and I expect her to get it done.
I have cut Dakota some slack and forgiven her for the Twilight Saga movies. “Just don’t do it again–please.”