Halfway through <span class="italic">The Woman in Black </span>comes a long sequence — at least 15 minutes, possibly more — in which Daniel Radcliffe spends a night alone inside a haunted house. Doors slam shut. Inanimate objects move ever so slightly. Dark corners seem to harbor monsters. Mostly, though, director James Watkins ( <span class="italic">Eden Lake</span>) resorts to loud stingers and noises on the soundtrack to frighten you. This movie must set some sort of record for the number of times in which the musical score suddenly <span class="italic">BLASTS </span>from the speakers, jolting you out of your chair. Watkins also leans heavily on that old gotcha! of having characters suddenly walk into the frame, asking the startled hero “Is everything OK?” I kept hoping Radcliffe would turn around and say “No, everything is <span class="italic">not</span> OK. Stop creeping up on me like that!”

In last year’s <span class="italic">A Dolphin Tale</span>, Ashley Judd, Harry Connick, Jr and Morgan Freeman saved the dolphins. Now, in <span class="italic">Big Miracle</span>, Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski and Dermot Mulroney save the whales. Somewhere, the manatees are thinking “What about us?” This disarming family film, which recounts the 1988 international rescue effort to free three gray whales stranded in the ice in Alaska, is warm and soft-edged in all the expected ways — the sort of live-action picture the Walt Disney Co. used to crank out in the 1960s and 70s. But much like the book that inspired it — Tom Rose’s <span class="italic">Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World’s Biggest Non-Event</span> — the movie balances its sentimental side with a healthy dose of cynicism.

At the start of <span class="italic">A Separation</span>, an Iranian couple appears before a judge to request a divorce. Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi) have irreconcilable differences: She wants to move abroad before their exit visas expire for the sake of their daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). He is unwilling to relocate because his father is ill with Alzheimer’s and cannot take care of himself. But Simin would rather break up their marriage than stay put, because she doesn’t want her child to grow up under what she calls “these circumstances.”

In <span class="italic">Man on a Ledge,</span> a man named Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) checks into the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, orders a champagne lunch and then climbs out of the window of his room on the 21st floor, threatening to jump.

In <span class="italic"> The Grey,</span> Liam Neeson once again plays a man who is separated from his loved ones, just like he did in <span class="italic">Taken </span>and <span class="italic"> Unknown.</span> Only this time, there are wolves! Neeson may be pushing 60, but he cuts such a commanding action-hero figure, it’s hard to begrudge the actor for abandoning the sort of ambitious pictures he used to make ( <span class="italic">Schindler’s List, Kinsey</span>) in favor of schlock like <span class="italic">Clash of the Titans</span>.

The Academy Awards will celebrate the tried and true, not the fresh and new

As Iran cracks down on filmmakers, ‘A Separation’ rakes in the awards

You need lots of gifted people chasing after the same bad idea to make a movie as colossally misguided as <span class="italic">Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close</span>. This sort of train wreck is not the result of ordinary hackwork or mere incompetence. This is a failure on a much larger, deeper scale, an example of what can happen when artists view themselves as superior to ordinary people and decide to impart their wisdom on the masses.

Steven Soderbergh has been telling interviewers that he’s planning to take a sabbatical from filmmaking because he has lost his inspiration. His lack of interest is palpable in <span class="italic">Haywire</span>, a rote exercise in action filmmaking that is sleek and polished and instantly evaporates from memory. More unusual for Soderbergh is that the movie isn’t even all that fun to watch: Once you get over the novelty of watching mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano beat up her male co-stars, the film has practically nothing else to offer.

You need lots of gifted people chasing after the same bad idea to make a movie as colossally misguided as <span class="italic">Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close</span>. This sort of train wreck is not the result of ordinary hackwork or mere incompetence. This is a failure on a much larger, deeper scale, an example of what can happen when artists view themselves as superior to ordinary people and decide to impart their wisdom on the masses.

David Cronenberg’s <span class="italic">A Dangerous Method</span> makes all those Merchant/Ivory period pieces seem like <span class="italic"> Die Hard</span> sequels; this story about the curdled friendship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud makes Chess Club Treasurer seem like a far more exciting career choice than psychoanalyst. Like every director, Cronenberg has made boring movies before ( <span class="italic">M. Butterfly, Naked Lunch</span>), but he’s never made one this crushingly dull and anonymous. Even the two scenes in which Keira Knightley gets spanked during sex are tasteful and restrained — Masterpiece Theatre from the man who once made a truly kinky movie about people who got off on car accidents ( <span class="italic">Crash</span>).

Real-life lethal weapon Gina Carano doesn’t pull punches in new action movie.

“Moneyball,” “Melancholia,” “The Tree of Life” and a couple of surprises.

The best and worst of the year in film — and everything in between

There are two kinds of Steven Spielberg movies: The ones in which the filmmaker is completely engaged and invested in the material ( <span class="italic">Schindler’s List, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark</span>) and the ones in which he lost interest halfway through and went through the motions ( <span class="italic">Always, Hook, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</span>). Just because Spielberg puts his heart into a picture doesn’t guarantee it will turn out well (for more on this, see <span class="italic">1941</span>). But his enthusiasm and excitement glows in every single frame of War Horse. There isn't a moment in the movie where you don't feel Spielberg's passion for this simple story, and this time, the film is worthy of his enthusiasm. It’s a knockout.

<span class="italic">We Bought a Zoo</span> is the most formulaic movie Cameron Crowe has ever made — it is so generic, you could review it with a flow chart — and yet it’s still heartfelt and genuine. Crowe can’t help himself. This is his first feature since 2005’s unfairly reviled <span class="italic">Elizabethtown</span> and also the first time he has shared the screenwriting credit on one of his films ( <span class="italic">The Devil Wears Prada’s </span>Aline Brosh McKenna co-wrote the script, based on Benjamin Mee’s memoir). After the stinging criticism he received for his last picture, Crowe apparently opted to play it safe. The new movie often feels too eager to please, with constant cutaways to adorable children and cute animals, and not one but two scenes where all the characters on the screen stand up and cheer, courting the audience to do the same.

With ‘War Horse’ and ‘The Adventures of Tintin,’ the most beloved American filmmaker of his generation sets out to reclaim his crown.

The silent movie “The Artist” is generating major Oscar talk.

A handy primer to Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin.”

The director of “Seven” and “The Social Network” takes on the Stieg Larsson bestseller.

For much of the first hour of David Fincher’s <span class="italic">The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</span>, you marvel at the movie’s sumptuous style, cringe at its grave horrors and wonder why, exactly, Fincher bothered to make it. The laborious mystery at the center of Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster novel has already spawned a hit film, directed by Niels Arden Oplev in 2009. Fincher’s version — which isn’t so much a remake as it is a different take on the book — has a grander scale, more elegant images and a distinct, demonic energy. But the new movie initially feels redundant, like an old joke with a tired punch line. We know how this story ends, and it isn’t worth all this effort.

Like most men, Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) is constantly thinking about sex — more than just thinking, actually. Brandon is a successful executive who lives in New York City in a comfortable apartment. He is educated, intelligent, well-mannered and, by all outward appearances, perfectly sane. But like all functioning addicts, Brandon secretly devotes every spare moment of his life to feeding his obsession. And as inevitably happens with addiction, the more he feeds it, the more he wants.