How I Live Now begins with an American teen named Daisy, sent to stay with distant relatives in the English countryside. She resents it. The bitchy New Yorker is pin-thin, heavily made-up, and needlessly strict about germs and food. But slowly Daisy warms to farm life with the help of her cousins, Isaac, Piper, and Edmond, the eldest sibling and Daisy's burgeoning love interest. Then a nuclear air strike hits London, signaling the start of World War III. Troops descend and forcibly separate the cousins by gender, who vow to reunite at the farm. The first half of the film is shot through a golden lens of idyllic youth; the second half is a thrillingly grim coming-of-age story. Even if you dislike war films, the superior child acting in How I Live Now makes it riveting, emotional, and well worth a few tasteful corpse shots. (CIENNA MADRID)