W.E. shows that, for mostly worse and not much in the way of better, the Material Girl is still alive and well, and while the superficial glossy surface-level sheen is impressive as a dramatic sojourn into love, life and the mystery of romantic entanglement this film is as big an epic fail as any I’ve had the misfortune to see in quite some time.

Big Miracle struck a chord with me, and I can’t say its saga of resilience and faith in the face of unthinkable odds didn’t connect. I liked it, it’s a whale of a tale, and one viewers of all ages will almost certainly enjoy as well.

Yet Chronicle achieves its meager goals, this high-flying adventure keeping me entertained with nary a hiccup.

For those willing to let the film’s modest charms work on them, West’s The Innkeepers can be one heck of an enjoyable pulse-pounding ride.

Kill List isn’t an easy film to categorize, to put into a mass-market box general audiences will quickly recognize. But it gets the job done and then some, and as an excursion into debilitating emotional-based familial terror I doubt we’ll see its like at any point throughout the rest of 2012.

If only the denouement wasn’t so forgone, didn’t revel in familiarity while also telegraphing its scares like a second-rate John Carpenter B-movie. I was more than ready to extoll the virtues of The Woman in Black, to scream its praises from the marshy moors. But because of that soggy climax I just can’t do it.

While the surprises involving who lives and who dies (and in what order) is never in doubt, the pulse and the pace of The Grey is so unsettling, so unbalanced, that doesn’t mean near as much as it otherwise would.

King of Devil’s Island isn’t new, doesn’t offer up very many surprises, but thanks to Skarsgård and Helstad, and in no small part due to Holst’s confident direction, the drama transcended its overfamiliar tropes and transported me into a fiery winter wonderland of despair and resolve I didn’t want to depart from.

Man on a Ledge falls flat on its face, leaving a bruised and battered mess bleeding out clichés onto a bloody cinematic pavement that is going to be darn difficult to wipe clean anytime soon.