Richard Corliss

The Woman in Black is a welcome addition to the old canon; renouncing innovation, embracing anachronism, it's almost "The Artist" of ghost movies. To anyone who fancies throwback stories of the supernatural, there's nothing so appealing as a well-preserved corpse.

What's unusual about the sometimes screwy but mostly smart and always heartfelt Perfect Sense - is its search for a middle ground.

True to its grim prospectus, The Grey dwells in haunted machismo to the very end.

Not quite in the class of the first film, Underworld 4 is still the most enlightened girl-power film of the week, nosing out Gina Carano's "Haywire" by the length of Pinocchio's proboscis.

Carano is her own best stuntwoman, but in the dialogue scenes she's all kick and no charisma. The MMA battler lacks the conviction she so forcefully displayed in the ring. She is not Haywire's heroine but its hostage.

Miss Bala is a tragedy rendered with the savviest, moviewise virtuosity. A young woman's despair, and a nation's, was never so damned entertaining.

The critic in me can authoritatively declare that the film is crap. The fan in me sent his shirt to the dry cleaners for tear removal.

However ripe A Separation might seem for being adapted into a smart American film, Hollywood shouldn't bother. Farhadi's movie is just about perfect as it is.

The Iron Lady is a clever and oddly touching entertainment.

Motion capture, which transforms actors into cartoon characters in a vividly animated landscape, is the technique Spielberg has been waiting for - the Christmas gift, or senior-citizen birthday present that he's dreamed of since his movie childhood.

Crowe has made a meretricious weepie that rouges the facts and defeats the attempts of Matt Damon, with his considerable charm and skill, to breathe some emotional truth into it. There's a word for the strenuous, shameless plucking of an audience's emotions that this movie traffics in: cornography.

Seeing Fincher's version is like getting a Christmas gift of a book you already have. This edition has a nicer binding and prettier illustrations than your beloved old paperback, but it's essentially a reproduction of the same old dragon. Dragon Tat-two.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is no "Fast Five."

In his most painterly film, Spielberg has appropriated the lavish visual palette of John Ford movies: "The Quiet Man" for the rural settings, "The Horse Soldiers" for the war scenes. Boldly emotional, nakedly heartfelt, War Horse will leave only the stoniest hearts untouched.

At 78, Polanski has earned the right to pursue his career-long demons of confinement and anarchy even in a minor film like this. But Carnage is not the word for what he's perpetrated here. Minor irritation is more like it.

Fresh inspiration is sparse here; the sequel is less an extension than a remake. Holmes says of one of his lamer disguises, "It's so overt, it's covert." And the shadow in this game is the imposing penumbra of Ritchie's very satisfying 2009 film. It's overt and overwhelming.

It's a shame that W.E. smells so bad.

By turns amusing and annoying, Young Adult could be the flip side, plus the sequel, of "Juno."

In a movie era remarkable for its reluctance to dramatize erotic intimacy, Shame merits praise for the dark energy of its sexual encounters.

At two hours, the film version is a third the miniseries' length, requiring severe compression by screenwriters Peter Straughan (The Debt) and Bridget O'Connor, which they've accomplished smartly.

Bursting with earned emotion, Hugo is a mechanism that comes to life at the turn of a key in the shape of a heart.

In his third consecutive Cronenberg film (after playing the righteous killers of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises), Mortensen is a happy surprise. Never has this tightly-wound actor seemed so relaxed in a difficult role; he is the charming papa Jung hates to overthrow but knows he must.

Everything that happens in Happy Feet Two is good-to-great.

Harrelson rewards watching; he's no less potent at rest than when he explodes in calculated rage.

The pity is that Tarsem's intelligence doesn't connect his cinematic eye to his narrative mind. The director's visual gift is like a brilliant retina, detached.

For stretches of the film, von Trieria is as welcome as Siberia. You must stay to the end for a potent payoff, when the tragic magic of the opening scenes is reasserted.

It provides intimate glimpses of people usually seen, and then only briefly, as faces on a post-office wall or numbers in a cemetery.

The film manages to be both sensational and stodgy, like a guided tour that goes on until it drones.