The latest movie releases

Hailed as one of the creepiest movies to emerge in recent years, Australian horror The Babadook stars Essie Davis as a single mom struggling to control her six-year-old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who fears a monster is on its way to slaughter them. His visions become more concrete and his behavior more erratic after he comes into possession of a book about a disturbing creature called the Babadook. And when mom also starts to see a strange presence, she comes to believe her son’s fears may be well-founded. The film marks the feature debut of writer-director Jennifer Kent.

In a remarkable, now Golden Globe-winning performance, Eddie Redmayne transforms himself into scientist Stephen Hawking for biopic The Theory of Everything, which tells the story of his relationship with his first wife, fellow Cambridge PhD student Jane Wilde Hawking (Felicity Jones), his groundbreaking research, and the diagnosis of the motor neuron disease that put him in a wheelchair. Based on Wilde Hawking’s own memoir, it’s directed by James Marsh, best known for his documentaries Man on a Wire and Project Nim, and also features Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney and David Thewlis.

Two other performances prized at last weekend’s Golden Globes are also on show from this week on. In writer-director Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, best supporting actor winner J. K. Simmons stars as a ferocious, cymbal-flinging music teacher pushing talented young jazz drummer Miles Teller to the absolute limit.

Meanwhile, Julianne Moore won the best actress in a drama prize for her role as a linguistics professor suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in Still Alice, from writer-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland.

Moving away from awards territory, Taken 3 finds Liam Neeson once again playing former CIA agent Bryan Mills and employing his “particular set of skills” to save his daughter. After he is framed for the death of his ex-wife (Famke Janssen), he’s forced to go on the run in order to track down the real culprits. French filmmaker Olivier Megaton, who directed part two, returns to helm this third installment, which is again produced and written by Luc Besson.

Emotional journey

British comedy-drama Hector and the Search for Happiness stars Simon Pegg as a psychiatrist who heads out on a global quest to find the secret of contentment. Rosamund Pike plays the girlfriend he leaves behind, while Toni Collette, Stellan Skarsgård, Jean Reno and Christopher Plummer also feature.

Historias de Lavapiés is a Spanish dramatic comedy telling a variety of stories about life in the multicultural Madrid neighborhood, all revolving around schoolteacher Guillermo Toledo. Ramón Luque directs.

Finally, We Are What We Are is Jim Mickle’s Catskills-set American remake of 2010 Mexican horror Somos lo que hay, about a cannibal family sent into chaos by the death of one of the parents.