Movies: New and Noteworthy

COMING THIS WEEK

By Steven Rea

Focus Will Smith stars as a seasoned con artist whose sexy protege - The Wolf of Wall Street's Margot Robbie - pops out of nowhere to mess things up with his big scam. R

The Lazarus Effect A group of medical students discovers a way to bring the dead back to life, but the experiment goes awry when one of those students - Olivia Wilde - dies. (Hey, wasn't she already Dr. Hadley on House MD?) David Gelb, who made the terrific documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, directs. PG-13

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night Filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour has called her feature debut an "Iranian vampire spaghetti western," and festival audiences have been eating it up since its debut at Sundance last year. Sheila Vand stars in the title role; the mood is dark, stark; the film in black, white. No MPAA rating

   '71 A young British soldier is mistakenly abandoned by his comrades on the deadly streets of Belfast.

Red Army This documentary looks at the Soviet hockey team from the perspective of its longtime captain.

Zero Motivation A unit of female Israeli soldiers have nothing but time to kill as they await their return to civilian life. Hebrew with subtitles.

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.

Song of the Sea Tomm Moore's Oscar-nominated animated family film is a transcendent work of art. Rooted in traditional Irish folklore and propelled by a breathtaking body of songs, this gorgeous fantasy is about a mute little girl who has a hidden ability to sing magical songs and the brother who tries to rescue her from a Grinch-like creature. It will take you places you never dreamed a movie could reach. 1 hr. 33 PG (scenes of peril, some mild profanity) - T.D.

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.

Timbuktu **** This Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film is one of the finest elucidations of fundamentalist Sunni Islam and the jihadist mentality in recent memory. Yet it tells its story not with talking heads, embedded journalists, and political pundits, but through an eminently accessible, deeply moving human drama. 1 hr. 37 PG-13 (violence, adult themes) - T.D.

Leviathan A stirringly grim Job-ian tale set on the bleak, beautiful coast of Russia's Barents Sea, this foreign language best picture Oscar nominee is about political and spiritual corruption, about men and women accustomed to power, and of others fighting against it. A man struggles to save his house, his land, from a mayor determined to seize it. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return) lets it unfurl in searing detail. 2 hrs. 20 R (violence, sex, 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.

The Duke of Burgundy **1/2 A straight-faced homage to 1970s European erotica, full of soft-focus nudity and soft-core kink, in which two women who live somewhere in the woods engage in role-play, submission, domination, with woodwinds and cricket chirrups on the soundtrack and butterflies pinned to the wall. 1 hr. 44 R (nudity, sex, adult themes) - S.R.

The DUFF ** This rehash of the ugly-duckling, coming-of-age romcom that's been at drive-ins and multiplexes since the 1950s is a cross between potty-mouthed sex comedy American Pie and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, with a touch of Lena Dunham's Girls thrown in for good measure, trying far too hard to be the hipper-than-thou heir to John Hughes' teen classics. 1 hr. 41 PG-13 (pervasive use of profanity, sexuality, teen partying) - T.D.

Fifty Shades of Grey ** E.L. James' bestselling erotic romance - in which a virginal English major meets a hotshot entrepreneur with a bondage fetish - gets a TV commercial-slick screen adaptation, redeemed only by Dakota Johnson's wry humor and intelligence. The titular Christian Grey, played by Jamie Dornan, is a dud. 2 hr. 5 R (sex, nudity, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 ** The time traveling, intellectual-property-thieving stars of the 2010 hit are back (minus John Cusack), jumping into the titular temporal cauldron to thwart an assassination attempt, but landing ten years in the future instead of the past. Cartoonish gore, gratuitous nudity and jokes about gay sex, group sex, sex with Marilyn Monroe, any kind of sex, abound. 1 hr. 33 R (nudity, profanity, drugs, cartoon violence, adult themes) - S.R.

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 Wachowskis of Cloud Atlas, who also brought you The Matrix. 1 hr. 52 PG-13 (violence, gnarly aliens, adult themes) - S.R.

Kingsman: The Secret Service ** A cross between a James Bond film and a Marvel superhero comic, with a nod to Dr. No, Our Man Flint, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Get Smart, this movie has the makings of a sure-fire hit. Yet, this is one spy story even the dedicated addicts of the genre would do well to miss. 2 hr. 9 R (profanity, violence, some sexual content) - T.D.

McFarland, USA *** Inspirational Disney sports film, based on the true story of a fedgling high school team of Latino kids - the sons of crop pickers and day laborers - who go on to win the cross-country state championship. Kevin Costner stars as the coach, with his own problems and prejudices to overcome. 2 hrs. 08 PG (violence, ethnic slurs, 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. 1 hr. 46 PG-13 (language, sexual content) - D.H.

  What We Do in the Shadows *** From Eagle vs. Shark and Flight of the Conchords Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi, a mockdocumentary about three vampires who share a house in Wellington, New Zealand, and argue over whose turn it is to do the dishes. A cheerfully horrific affair, and there are even werewolves to contend with. 1 hr. 25 No MPAA rating (comic violence, adult themes) - S.R.