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Reviews Ratings: **** Excellent *** Good ** Fair * Poor Reviewers: S.R., Steven Rea; D.D., Dan DeLuca; T.D., Tirdad Derakhshani; M.E., Molly Eichel; W.S., Inquirer wire services.

Reviews

Ratings:

**** Excellent

*** Good

** Fair * Poor

Reviewers: S.R., Steven Rea; D.D., Dan DeLuca; T.D., Tirdad Derakhshani; M.E., Molly Eichel; W.S., Inquirer wire services.

New This Week

About Elly See Tirdad Derakhshani's review on Page 8.

The D Train See Gary Thompson's review on Page 5.

Far From the Madding Crowd See Gary Thompson's review on Page 4.

5 Flights Up See Tirdad Derakhshani's review on Page 10.

Hot Pursuit See Gary Thompson's review on Page 5.

Welcome to Me See Tirdad Derakhshani's review on Page 4.

Also on Screens

Avengers: Age of Ultron 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.

Cinderella A winning redo of Disney's 1950 animated classic, directed by Kenneth Branagh with a sprinkling of stardust, dashes of good humor, and a respect for the corniest kinds of romance. Lily James (Downton Abbey) and Richard Madden (dazzling dentition) star as the woebegone heroine and the handsome prince with the foot fetish. Cate Blanchett chews scenery as the gleefully cruel, cackling stepmom. 1 hr. 52 PG (adult themes) - S.R.

Clouds of Sils Maria 1/2 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. From filmmaker Olivier Assayas. 2 hrs. 04 R (adult themes) - S.R.

Dior and I 1/2 The fabled House of Dior gets a new creative director - the softspoken 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. Even for non-fashionistas, a fascinating look into a rarefied world. 1 hr. 29 No MPAA rating (adult themes) - S.R.

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.

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.

Insurgent 1/2 The action-heavy second installment in the Divergent series about life in a post-apocalyptic dystopian Chicago, where society is divided into five factions, and Shailene Woodley is the upstart who doesn't fit in. With Theo James, Kate Winslet, Miles Teller, and a lot of trippy virtual-reality mind games, too. PG-13 (violence, action, adult themes) - S.R.

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.

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

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, 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.

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.

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.

Wild Tales 1/2 Six vignettes about people on their best behavior: out for vengeance and out of control. Madly entertaining and just plain mad, from Argentine director Damián Szifrón, and one of this year's foreign-language Oscar nominees. 1 hr. 54 R (sex, violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Woman in Gold Helen Mirren, deploying bite and a Baravrian 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 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.