Movies: New and Noteworthy

COMING THIS WEEK

By Steven Rea

5 Flights Up Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman are a longtime Brooklyn couple trying to decide whether to sell their apartment - and what their future holds if they do. Adapted from the Jill Ciment novel, Heroic Measures. PG-13

Far From the Madding Crowd Carey Mulligan stars in an adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel, about an independent-minded woman in Victorian times who inherits an estate, and the three men - Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge - who go a'courting. Directed by The Hunt's Thomas Vinterberg. R

About Elly An Iranian kindergarten teacher mysteriously disappears while on a picnic. Farsi and German with subtitles.  

Reviewed by critics Steven Rea (S.R.), Tirdad Derakhshani (T.D.), Dan DeLuca (D.D.), and Molly Eichel (M.E.). W.S. denotes a wire-service review.

Ex Machina Alex Garland's forward-looking, brilliantly unsettling sci-fi thriller stars Oscar Isaac as the billionaire inventor of a sentient robot, Domhnall Gleeson as the whiz-kid programmer invited to run the'bot through a series of tests, and Alicia Vikander as Ava, the cyber-creature in question. Is she true A.I.? And if she is, what does that mean for humankind? 1 hr. 48 R (violence, profanity, nudity, adult themes) - S.R.

Grey Gardens Albert and David Maysles classic documentary gets a remastered rerelease to celebrate its 40th anniversary. The film focuses on "Big" and "Little" Edie Beale, two eccentric cousins of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who lived in a run down East Hampton mansion. The real draw of the film is the charismatic Little Edie who has become an icon of sorts. 1 hr. 40 PG - M.E.

Clouds of Sils Maria Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart star as a famous actress in midlife - and still, she hopes, in mid-career - and her personal assistant, half her age and bristling with intelligence. As Binoche rehearses a new play in an isolated corner of the Swiss Alps, Stewart's character takes on the other part, and the women's relationship begins to mirror the one they're enacting. A hugely affecting meditation on memory, on growing older, on the life of the theater and the theater of life. 2 hrs. 04 R (adult themes) - S.R.

Dior and I The fabled House of Dior gets a new creative director - the soft-spoken Belgian Raf Simons - and gets a documentary film crew to follow him through the breakneck process of creating a collection in time for the all-important Fall-Winter show. A fascinating look into a rarefied world. 1 hr. 29 No MPAA rating (adult themes) - S.R.

Wild Tales Six vignettes about people on their best behavior: out for vengeance and out of control. Madly entertaining and just plain mad, from Argentinian director Damián Szifrón, and one of this year's foreign-language Oscar nominees. 1 hr. 54 R (sex, violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Avengers: **1/2 The action in the latest Marvel Universe installment - and there's plenty - is just what you'd expect: giant-screen CG-driven thwacking, thumping, throwing SUVs into the air, the titular A.I. bad guy looking invincible - until he isn't. It's state-of-the-art, it's videogame-like, it's sort of cool. It's also sort of boring. It's the between-the- mayhem moments that work best, when the gang of avenging superheroes are just sitting around, jawing, joshing. 2 hrs. 01 PG-13 (violence, intense action, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Child 44 *1/2 Tom Hardy, speaking English with a heavy Russian accent (and dropping a lot of angry f-bombs) is the military detective Leo Demidov in this unrelentingly grim, plodding, close-to-incoherent adaptation of Tom Rob Smith's bestselling mystery about a serial killer in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman also star. 2 hrs. 17 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Danny Collins **1/2 Al Pacino has the title role in this it's-lonely-at-the-top mush about a big pop star (think Neil Diamond crossed with Billy Joel crossed with Barry Manilow - oooh) whose life gets turned around when he's handed a lost letter written to him at the start of his career by John Lennon. Comedy, pathos, and schmaltzy new songs follow. With Annette Bening, Bobby Canavale, Jennifer Garner, and Christopher Plummer. 1 hr. 46 R (language, sex, drugs, adult themes) - S.R.

Félix and Meira *** Moody and evocative French Canadian drama about the intense emotional affair between a Hasidic Jewish woman, married with an infant daughter, and the sort of charming galoot who lives in close proximity - yet worlds apart. 1 hr. 45 R (adult themes) - S.R.

Get Hard ** Will Ferrell plays James King, an investment banker sentenced to prison for defrauding his financial clients. To survive his decade-long term, King hires Darnell (Philly's Kevin Hart), a car-wash owner who King assumes has gone to prison, even though Darnell hasn't even gotten a parking ticket, in this comedy that relies far too heavily on the easy and crude. 1 hr. 40 R (pervasive crude and sexual content, profanity, some graphic nudity, and drug material) - M.E.

Little Boy ** Pepper (Jakob Salvati) grows up in a coastal California town during World War II and has to send his father (Michael Rapaport) into combat in the Pacific. His lessons in racism toward the Japanese are interrupted when a kindly priest (Tom Wilkinson) forces him to befriend an older man just released from an internment camp. It's an ambitious weeper with weighty subjects and teachable moments; the lessons might have stuck had there been fewer of them. 1 hr. 40 PG-13 (some mature thematic material and violence) -W.S.

The Longest Ride *1/2 Scott Eastwood is a hunky rodeo dude, Sophia Danko a college grad bound for the Big Apple. A parallel love story, set during World War II, is intertwined. 2 hrs. 05 PG-13 (some sexuality, partial nudity, some war and sports action) - W.S.

The Mafia Kills Only In Summer *** Italian TV personality Pierfrancesco "Pif" Diliberto directs and stars in this oddball political satire and coming-of-age yarn, about a Palermo kid - and then gangly young man - who worships the Prime Minister and a pretty girl, and who aligns himself with a citizens' movement to defy the violent, tyrannical rule of the Sicilian crime bosses. No MPAA rating (violence, adult themes) - S.R.

Monkey Kingdom *** This enjoyable nature documentary follows a newborn monkey and its mother as they struggle to survive. 1 hr. 21 G - W.S.

True Story ** Slick and shaky adaptation of Michael Finkel's memoir, about a tarnished news reporter's quest for redemption, and the pact he makes with a man accused of killing his wife and children, and who was posing as Finkel when he was arrested. Jonah Hill plays the real Finkel, James Franco the fake one. 1 hr. 40 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Unfriended ** A horror pic with a new gimmick that likely will spawn an entire subgenre of more substandard rubbish, Unfriended unfolds entirely on a computer screen, which is possibly the single most uncinematic device ever used in a film - and a gimmick that must have made the studio suits jump with joy. Talk about low overhead! I mean, they didn't even need a cinematographer. 1 hr. 28 R (violence, profanity, drugs, crimes against grammar) - T.D.

The Water Diviner **1/2 Russell Crowe stars - and makes his directing debut - in this ambitious and sentimental period drama, set four years after the Battle of Gallipoli, when an Australian farmer travels to the Ottoman Empire determined to bring the remains of his three sons back home. Adventure, romance and slo-mo flashbacks to the bloody World War I conflict ensue. 1 hr. 51 R (violence, adult themes) - S.R.

While We're Young *** Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are a married couple in their mid-40s who befriend a twentysomething hipster duo, played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, in Noah Baumbach's cuttingly comic and keenly observed meditation on generational longing, and acting your age. 1 hr. 37 R (profanity, nudity, drugs, adult themes) - S.R.

Woman in Gold *** Helen Mirren, deploying bite and a Bavarian lilt, stars as Maria Altmann, a Jewish refugee from Austria who in the early 2000s took her country to court to reclaim artwork, including a famous Klimt described as the Mona Lisa of Austria, that belonged to her family and that was seized by the Nazis. Ryan Reynolds is the bumbling California lawyer joining her in her fight. Simon Curtis (My Week with Marilyn) directs. 1 hr. 50 PG-13 (violence, adult themes) - S.R.