Kurt Loder on W.E., Chronicle, and The Woman in Black

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.