This week's movie releases

There are many people who love the films of Cameron Crowe. There are also some for whom the likes of Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous and Elizabethtown are unforgivably fraudulent and sentimental. So when you hear his latest goes by the tremendously twee title of We Bought a Zoo, it's hard to imagine the naysayers wavering. The "We" in question are Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon), a daredevil journalist and recent widower; his cute moppet of a seven-year-old daughter (Maggie Elizabeth Jones); and her stroppy teenage brother (Colin Ford). The "Zoo" they buy is a dilapidated wildlife park of lions, monkeys and porcupines, headed by chief keeper Scarlett Johansson. On the twee front, the movie does not disappoint as Damon cheerily digs himself into debt dealing with escaped bears, aging tigers and familial traumas. The fact that the movie is based on the true story of Dartmoor Zoo in Devon, England, plus its charm, quirky supporting cast and smart lines go a long way to smoothing over the more cloying and contrived bumps. But while a film so committed to teasing out the magical provides plenty to love, this feels like it was made on Prozac. The final scene, involving a vision of the kids' dead mom, will make you retch more than rhino dung.

The first time Nicolas Winding Refn went to Hollywood he came back, penniless, with the flawed flop Fear X. The second time, things have proved different for the terrifically talented Danish director of the Pusher trilogy. Drive, which stars Ryan Gosling as a movie stuntman and in-demand getaway driver, won him best director award at Cannes and there's even talk of Oscar nominations. A slick car-chase thriller drawing on the likes of Walter Hill's The Driver and Bullitt, it also stars Albert Brooks, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston and Christina Hendricks.

'Le Havre'

Another Cannes winner, of the critics' FIPRESCI prize, Le Havre is a French-language drama from Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki about a bohemian shoe-shiner who tries to prevent an African immigrant boy from being deported in the port city.

Spanish horror jumps onto the 3D bandwagon with XP3D, from the people whose bank accounts also brought you The Orphanage and Julia's Eyes. Amaia Salamanca, Maxi Iglesias, Luis Fernández, Úrsula Corberó and Óscar Sinela star as medical students who head to an abandoned mining town to investigate paranormal activity. Sounds like a perfectly sensible plan - what could possibly go wrong?