New and Noteworthy: Movies

Fifty Shades of Grey The Valentine's Day present that 100 million fans of E.L. James' erotica tomes have been waiting for, with Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson starring as, respectively, the handsome Seattle businessman with a B&D thing, and Anastasia Steele, the innocent coed sent to interview him for the student paper. Things get swoony, and kinky. R

Kingsman: The Secret Service Colin Firth, recipient of an Oscar for another film with "King" in the title - The King's Speech, of course - camps it up as a Bondian superspy who recruits a young protege (Taron Egerton) to battle an evil villain played by Samuel L. Jackson. The espionage send-up, directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class), is an adaptation of the Secret Service comics by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. R

Leviathan Russia's Academy Award foreign-language Best Picture nominee is a tale of moral corruption set in a coastal town on the Barents Sea. Winner of the Golden Globe, and of a Cannes screenwriting prize, it's being touted as the frontrunner in the Oscar race. R

The Duke of Burgundy A woman who studies butterflies for a living has relationship issues.

Fifty Shades of Grey A literature student finds herself drawn to a mysterious billionaire who has a need to control everything and everyone in his world.

Kingsman: The Secret Service A veteran secret agent takes on an apprentice. Colin Firth, Michael Caine and Taron Egerton star.

The Last Five Years An actress and her boyfriend novelist each deconstruct the history of their relationship.

Leviathan A Russian man invites trouble when he asks an old army friend to help him save his home from demolition. Russian with subtitles.

Red Army This documentary looks at the history of the fabled Soviet Red Army hockey team.

Reviewed by critics Steven Rea (S.R.), Tirdad Derakhshani (T.D.), Dan DeLuca (D.D.), and David Hiltbrand (D.H.). W.S. denotes a wire-service review.

Birdman Michael Keaton is a faded Hollywood star trying to reclaim his career by mounting a Broadway drama in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's fierce, funny, breathless dive into the head of a man in deep trouble. An exhilarating, out-of-the-blue masterwork that ranks as one of the best films of the year, the decade, the century. With Edward Norton, Emma Stone, and Naomi Watts. 1 hr. 59 R (profanity, violence, sex, adult themes) - S.R.

Foxcatcher Steve Carell, sporting an aquiline nose and a marionette's gait, morphs into Newtown Square multimillionaire John du Pont, a self-styled coach and sponsor of American wrestling. By inviting Olympic gold medalists Dave and Mark Schultz (Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum) to live and train on his estate, du Pont invited disaster, too. Bennett Miller directs this slow-burning, brilliant account of a real-life tragedy. 2 hrs. 14 R (violence, profanity, drugs, adult themes) - S.R.

Mr. Turner Mike Leigh's meticulously observed chronicle of the last quarter in the life of the British artist J.M.W. Turner, with Timothy Spall grunting, grimacing and deeply moving as the son of a London barber who becomes one of the great painters of his time. Of any time. 2 hrs. 30 R (sex, adult themes) - S.R.

Still Alice Shot through with piercing detail, and devoid of cheap sentimentality, the sad, beautifully realized story of a linguistics professor, a mother, a wife, diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. One of the defining performances of Julianne Moore's career, rightly nominated for an Academy Award. With Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth and Kristen Stewart. 1 hr. 53 PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Selma A powerful, poignant restaging of a crucial time in American history, and the figure at its center: Martin Luther King, Jr. David Oyelowo brings the Civil Rights leader to life with nuance and grace, and if director Ava DuVernay's decision to portray LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) as an antagonistic force has drawn criticism and controversy, that's almost beside the point. What matters is the depiction of King, and the portrait of a country in the throes of racial conflict. 2 hrs. 07 R (violence, profanity, racial epithets, adult themes) - S.R.

The Theory of Everything The life, and loves, of British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is given keen, poignant treatment in James Marsh's film, starring Eddie Redmayne as Hawking and Felicity Jones as Jane Wilde, the student he meets at Cambridge and falls for (and vice versa). Then, the challenge of the disease that cripples Hawking's body. 2 hrs. 03 PG-13 (adult themes) - S.R.

Two Days, One Night Marion Cotillard stars as a laid-off factory worker who can get her job back if she can persuade her colleagues to forgo a bonus. And so she goes knocking on doors, asking, entreating, begging. An almost biblical parable about compassion and community, from the Belgian kitchen sinkers, the Dardenne Brothers. 1 hr, 35 R (drugs, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Whiplash Miles Teller (the student) and J.K. Simmons (the teacher) star in Damien Chazelle's propulsive drama about an aspiring jazz musician's torturous mentorship at a prestigious New York conservatory. It's a hyperventilated nightmare about artistic struggle and ambition - as much a horror movie as a keenly realized indie about jazz, about art, about what it takes to claim greatness. 1 hr. 46 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

American Sniper *** Bradley Cooper delivers a powerful turn as Chris Kyle, the real-life Navy SEAL credited with the most kills of any sniper in U.S. military history. Clint Eastwood directs this taut Iraq War-era drama, although the sequences with Kyle returning stateside are diminished by textbook scenarios of family dysfunction and discord. 2 hrs. 12 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Black or White **1/2 Boldly sappy melodrama that plays on - and off of - racial stereotypes, with Kevin Costner as a griefstruck widower, now left to raise his impossibly cute grandchild on his own. The girl is African American, and the paternal grandmother - Octavia Spencer - fights for custody. Oh, the bathos! 2 hrs. 01 PG-13 (profanity, drugs, alcohol, adult themes) - S.R.

Black Sea *** Jude Law is a disgruntled marine salvage captain who plans revenge on the company that has just laid him off by organizing a submarine mission off the Crimean coast - to bring up two tons of gold said to be stored inside a long-sunk Nazi U-boat. Manning a mothballed Soviet sub, with a wary crew of Brits and Russians, they rumble into the depths, and everything that can go wrong does. Fist-clenchingly suspenseful and, at the same time, kind of dull. Dive! Dive! 1 hr. 55 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

The Boy Next Door * Jennifer Lopez knows it's wrong. But she gets it on with the neighbor's nephew (Ryan Guzman) and pays an unimaginable price in this thoroughly predictable thriller with a nasty finale. 1 hr. 31 R (violence, sex, adult themes, nudity, profanity) - D.H.

The Imitation Game *** A gripping story, a sad story, a true story, about British mathematician Alan Turing, who led the team of Brits during World War II trying to crack the German's daunting Enigma encryption machine. Secretly gay, this unsung hero's life was brought to a grievous conclusion. Benedict Cumberbatch stars (another remarkable performance), with Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Mark Strong. 1 hr. 54 PG-13 (sex, adult themes) - S.R.

Jupiter Ascending Kitschy space opera, borrowing from George Lucas, Cinderella and The Wizard of Oz, with Mila Kunis as a hard-working Chicago house cleaner and unwitting heir of a clan of regal aliens bent on destroying Earth. Channing Tatum, with pointy ears and a devilish Van Gogh, flies to the rescue - literally, he's got "gravity boots" on. From The Wachowski's of Cloud Atlas, not the Wachowski's of The Matrix. 1 hr. 52 PG-13 (violence, gnarly aliens, adult themes) - S.R.

The Loft Not previewed. Five married men share the rent on a downtown apartment to carry out hidden affairs. The body of an unknown woman is found there. R

Mommy *** Xavier Dolan's Cannes festival winner is a speedball love song to the bonds between mothers and sons - and to a particularly lunatic mother (an amazing Anne Dorval) and son (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) who carom around the suburbs of Quebec, leaving emotional and physical destruction in their wake. An immersive, insane Freudian fever dream. 2 hrs. 19 R (profanity, sex, violence, adult themes) - S.R.

Project Almanac ** High schoolers build a time machine. It's all fun and games until somebody breaks reality. A lively but flawed teen fantasy with Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D'Elia and Sam Lerner. 1 hr. 46 PG-13 (language, sexual content) - D.H.

Seventh Son *1/2 Witches fight mystical knights in this ludicrous, lightweight swords-and-sorcery fantasy. The only mystery is how this piece of piffle attracted such sterling talent as Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore. Ah well, act in haste, repent at leisure. 1 hr. 2 PG-13 (violence, profanity, adult themes) - D.H.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water 1/2 A safe but not consistently satisfying animated outing for the kids, this movie puts the underwater optimist on the trail of a pirate who has stolen the secret recipe for the Krabby Patty. Sinks in its second half. Glub, glub. 1 hr. 33, PG (rude humor) - D.H.

Taken 3 * Liam Neeson returns in this superfluous action sequel. But this time he has no one to rescue but himself. The Taken formula isn't the only thing that doesn't work in this noisesome (let us hope) finale. 1 hr. 49 PG-13 (violence, profanity) - D.H.