What's in theaters this week

'WE BOUGHT A ZOO': This is about a family that buys a zoo. It's as high-concept as you can get, and it's equally straightforward in wearing its heart on its sleeve. We know to expect this because "We Bought a Zoo" comes from writer-director Cameron Crowe. We know there will be some poignantly phrased life lessons in store for this family as they struggle to reconnect after the mother's death.

RATED: PG

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16, Lansing 8

'ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED': This latest Chipmunks film, directed by Mike Mitchell ("Shrek Forever After"), is aimed at a slightly younger demographic than the prior movies. The Chipmunks' father figure, Dave Seville (Jason Lee, looking vaguely hostagelike), takes his diminutive computer-generated friends on a vacation cruise en route to the Grammy-esque International Music Awards, where the Chipmunks and the Chipettes are an eagerly awaited pop sensation. But the antics of Alvin (Justin Long) throw them overboard and they wash up on a deserted island.

RATED: G

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16, Lansing 8

'THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN': Watching "The Adventures of Tintin" gives you the same thrill you felt when you saw "Toy Story" for the first time: Here is a next-gen animated film that builds on everything that has come before to create something new and exciting. Motion capture has been used everywhere from "The Polar Express" to "Avatar." But in his first foray into animation, director Steven Spielberg uses the technology to achieve something that could be described as cartoonish photo-realism - the images look like impossibly beautiful hand-drawn photographs - and then frees his camera from all earthly constraints. The results are extraordinary. This is the first in an intended series of films drawn from the comic books by the Belgian artist Herge (Peter Jackson, who produced the movie, is slated to direct the next one).

RATED: PG

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16, Lansing 8

'THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO': To put it bluntly, this movie kicks butt. Director David Fincher orchestrates a stark but enthralling adaptation of the first novel in late author Stieg Larsson's trilogy. Its harsh emotional terrain could have wound up softened and sweetened, yet this was an ideal match of filmmaker and material. Rooney Mara, who had a small role in Fincher's "The Social Network," gives a controlled detonation of a performance as traumatized victim-turned-avenger Lisbeth Salander.

RATED: R

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16, Lansing 8

'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — GHOST PROTOCOL': Luckily for Tom Cruise, this is one of his finest action flicks, just what he needs to restore his box-office bankability. For director Brad Bird, though, the fourth "Mission," rock solid as it is, ranks only as his second-best action movie, after the animated smash "The Incredibles." It's the best of the "Mission: Impossible" movies, though. This time, Cruise and his team (Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton and Simon Pegg) are blamed for bombing the Kremlin, so they go rogue trying to clear their names and stop a madman (Michael Nyqvist) from starting a nuclear war.

RATED: PG-13

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16, Lansing 8

'SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS': Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law bicker and banter and bob and weave with diminishing returns in this sequel to the 2009 smash hit "Sherlock Holmes." Director Guy Ritchie once again applies his revisionist approach to Arthur Conan Doyle's classic literary character, infusing the film with his trademark, hyperkinetic aesthetic and turning the renowned detective into a wisecracking butt-kicker. But what seemed clever and novel the first time around now feels stale and tired.

RATED: PG-13

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16, Lansing 8

'NEW YEAR'S EVE': This is the second in a remarkably shallow series of holiday-themed, celebrity-stuffed confections, following "Valentine's Day." Garry Marshall again directs a script by Katherine Fugate that weaves together a dozen or so plotlines that crisscross a holiday prone to sentimentalizing. If there is some kind of world record for schmaltz, this may have set it. Though it's pure, rosy fantasy on screen, this is cynical, paint-by-the-numbers entertainment, sold with a gaggle of stars spread across its movie poster like a telethon lineup. Among them: Hilary Swank as a producer of the Times Square ball drop, Jon Bon Jovi as a rock star, Katherine Heigl as a catering chef, Abigail Breslin as Sarah Jessica Parker's rebelling teenage daughter, Zac Efron as an ultra-confident courier, Jessica Biel as Seth Meyers' pregnant wife and Halle Berry as the nurse of a dying Robert De Niro.

RATED: PG-13

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16

'THE SITTER': Jonah Hill, world's worst babysitter. Must have sounded like such movie magic that director David Gordon Green and his team grabbed the first three brats they found on the street, shoved them in a minivan with Hill and started filming. As broad, dumb comedy goes, it's not a bad idea to cast Hill as a chubby slacker roped into a hellish night tending to a high-maintenance brood. Yet other than Hill's admirable work ethic trying to squeeze laughs out of this dismally underdeveloped scenario, the movie has nothing going for it, slogging from one rotten gag to the next.

RATED: R

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16

'WAR HORSE': Just in time for family friendly holiday feel-goodery is Steven Spielberg's sweeping, historical epic. The story began life as a children's book by Michael Morpurgo, then made its way to the London and New York stages to great acclaim featuring inventive puppetry, and now arrives in theaters with all the grandeur a master filmmaker can conjure. "War Horse" features a strong cast and the sort of impeccable production values you would expect. And yet it's overlong, painfully earnest and sometimes even hokey.

RATED: PG-13

SHOWING: AMC Showplace Schererville 12 and 16, Showplace Hobart 12, Cinemark at Valparaiso, Portage 16, Lansing 8