One positive thing to be said about Madonna’s new
movie, W.E., writes Kurt Loder, is that it is leagues
better than her first directing effort, the 2008 Filth and
Wisdom. But then many things are, periodontal surgery among
them. The new shaky-cam “real footage” movie Chronicle, on
the other hand, features good (if little-known) actors, a solid
genre plot, and surprisingly slick effects. The Woman in
Black, meanwhile, reaches back into the horror-movie past,
long before mad slashers and crazed gore frenzies infested the
genre, to present us with an unapologetically old-fashioned
haunted-house exercise. Kurt Loder reviews all three.