When it was first announced that Steven Spielberg was going to be directing War Horse, a movie that featured young actors and a war-based story, the initial thought was “How could it go wrong?” After all, this is the same guy who won an Oscar for directing Saving Private Ryan, he produced Band of Brothers, and he worked with kids in everything from E.T. The Extra Terrestrial to this summer’s Super 8 (which he produced). Unfortunately, the end result, while not necessarily a bad movie, certainly fails to live up to its high expectations.

In 2006, the Mee family purchased the closed down Dartmoor Zoological Park in England, refurbished it, and reopened the zoo to the public in July 2007. It is a very nice story that has already inspired a four-part television documentary, and Benjamin Mee, a former journalist, wrote a book about how the experience changed their lives. Now, their story has inspired Cameron Crowe to return to the director’s chair for the first time since 2005’s Elizabethtown. The resulting film also makes for a nice story; nothing more, nothing less.

When he made Schindler’s List in 1993, Steven Spielberg was praised for having “grown up” as a filmmaker. As good as that movie was, the famed director is still at his best when he lets that kid inside of him come out to play. This winter is a perfect example of that as it sees releases from both the grown up Spielberg and the boy-who-wouldn’t-grow-up Spielberg, and The Adventures of Tintin certainly scores a win for the latter.

Director Jason Reitman has directed only three feature films to date, but all three have been critically acclaimed with the last two, Juno and Up in the Air, earning Oscar nominations for best picture. It’s reasonable, then, to expect that his latest movie, Young Adult, would be earning some early award buzz, especially considering that it reunites the director with Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody. The movie has garnered some attention for a couple of its actors, but it seems that as more and more people see the movie, the further it falls off the award radar… with good reason.

For all of its eye-popping visual effects and how much the trailer makes it look like it is trying to follow in the footsteps of the Bourne trilogy, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is actually a throwback of an action movie. It’s a throwback to the days when action heroes would get beat up for an entire movie and show not a single bruise or scratch (although hero Ethan Hunt does feature an ever-increasing limp throughout the movie) and it’s a throwback to the days when the hero would always send off the villain with a cheesy one-liner. In fact, this movie even starts off with one as the opening credits scroll following Ethan’s instructions to “light the fuse.”

Director Garry Marshall seems determined to make the American version of Love Actually, a multi-plotline romantic comedy that revolves around a particular holiday. Last year he tried to do it with Valentine’s Day, but that movie ended up getting lost amidst a sea of characters that we just didn’t care about. For New Year’s Eve, the action moves from Los Angeles to New York City so that an even more plentiful cast of characters that we only marginally care about can gather in Times Square and—hopefully—watch the ball drop.

Apparently, it’s been hard getting the word out about this film, which is, as near as I can tell, a marginally fictionalized account of young Dax Locke’s ill-fated battle with Leukemia. By the time Dax is two years old, x-rays show he’s got a tumor in his brain. Tests quickly diagnose Leukemia, and his parents’ lives are naturally derailed. The made-for-TV movie doesn’t follow Dax, though—it follows Dax’s mom and dad, who must come to grips with the “ultimate bad news” that Matthew West sings about in the title song. Cameron and Neilson are very appealing as the female leads here, and Dax’s story is certainly worth hearing about. But really… this has precious little to do with Christmas. The connection is incidental at best.

Although this film spends a lot of time focusing on its title character, the movie is actually about the young man named Colin Clark who helped Marilyn Monroe overcome her neurosis while filming The Prince and the Showgirl in England. The problem that creates, of course, is that the supporting character is far more fascinating than the main character, which keeps the movie itself from being great. Nevertheless, it features a brilliant performance by Michelle Williams that is worth a the price of admission alone.

The transition from silent movies to talking pictures is one of the most fascinating bits of Hollywood history. Given that, it is somewhat surprising that Hollywood hasn’t revisited it very often as a movie subject. Of course, it has already been done masterfully in the classic Singin’ in the Rain and maybe Hollywood just thinks that it would be impossible to explore the era any better, so why try? Enter French director Michel Hazanavicius and his new movie The Artist, a fresh, entertaining, and very unique movie about that crucial moment in movie history. How is it unique? It’s silent… mostly.

Director Martin Scorsese is best known for his tough, bloody R-rated movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas, so it was something of a shock when it was announced that he would be adapting the kids book The Invention of Hugo Cabret for the silver screen. One thing Scorsese is above all, however, is a movie buff. Speaking as someone who has never met the man, I wouldn’t be surprised if he himself said he was a film buff first, movie director second. Once you realize that, and you know what the book is actually about, Hugo actually seems like a perfect fit for the Oscar-winning director.