Movies: New and Noteworthy

COMING THIS WEEK

By Steven Rea

San Andreas Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is an L.A.F.D. helicopter pilot who plucks his ex-wife, Carla Gugino, off a seismically challenged skyscraper when the Big One rocks and rolls the West Coast. "This whole chunk of land will be decimated," scientist Paul Giamatti warns. Aftershocks ensue. PG-13

Aloha Bradley Cooper stars as a defense contractor who heads to Hawaii and falls for the Air Force officer (Emma Stone) assigned to squire him around. Old friends (Bill Murray) and exes (Rachel McAdams) cross paths, too. From Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire writer-director Cameron Crowe. PG-13

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared Swedish farce with a Forrest Gump-ian twist about an extremely senior senior citizen who recounts his adventures with various prominent 20th-century figures while trying to elude a biker gang determined to get back the big bag of money he's taken from them. R

Dark Star: H.R. Giger's World The Swiss artist and Academy Award-winner is the subject of this docuementary.

Sunshine Superman This documentary looks at Carl Boenish, who founded the BASE-jumping movement.

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

Apu Trilogy Bengali director Satyajit Ray helped put Indian cinema on the international map with a trio of connected films - Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) - that have been digitally restored by the Criterion Collection. A masterpiece inspired by Italian neorealism, the trilogy, screened separately, chronicle with a unique blend of realism and poetry the childhood, education and early career of a young Bengali man born in poverty who aspires to be a writer. No MPAA rating (adult themes, sexuality, some vioelence). - T.D.

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.

About Elly Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini) is an Iranian ex-pat living in Germany who is recently divorced but in Tehran for a brief visit. His friend Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) decides to play matchmaker, introducing him to her friend Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti). The weekend getaway to cheer up Ahmad brings scandal and a devastating crisis in social protocol. 1 hr. 59 No MPAA rating (adult themes, smoking) - T.D.

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 - who 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.

In the Name of My Daughter Ripped from the headlines, André Téchiné's superb psychological thriller follows the real-life story of a widowed casino owner (Catherine Deneuve) in southern France whose troubled daughter, a depressive divorcee (Adèle Haenel), is seduced and murdered by a canny young lawyer (Guillaume Canet) in the late 1970s. Though a body is never recovered, the lawyer stands trial no less than three times over a 30-year period. In French with English subtitles. 1 hr. 56 R (nudity, profanity, drugs, some violence, smoking) - T.D.

Iris Albert Maysles' winning portrait of Iris Apfel, the freethinking nonagenarian New Yorker whose uncanny sense of style has inspired several generations of fashion-world movers and shakers. "Less is more" is definitely not this wonderful woman's credo.1 hr. 18 PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Lambert & Stamp Essential viewing for fans of the Who, the wild, woolly British invasion band fronted by Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry. But more than that, director James D. Cooper's remarkable portrait of the mismatched duo who guided the Who to stardom - Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp - opens the window on a pivotal time in '60s (and early '70s) pop culture. It's a revelation. 1 hr. 47 R (profanity, drugs, 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: Age of Ultron **1/2 The action in the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe installment 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 doesn't. It's state-of-the-art, it's video-game-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.

The D Train **1/2 A Hollywood actor (James Marsden) causes commotion when he returns home for his high school reunion, organized by starstruck Jack Black. 1 hr. 37 R (sex, profanity) - G.T.

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 a world apart. 1 hr. 45 R (adult themes) - S.R.

5 Flights Up **1/2 Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman are a longtime Brooklyn couple trying to decide whether to sell their apartment. Seeing Keaton silhouetted against the Manhattan skyline again is joyous and heartwarming in this sweet film with a few nicely turned lines, some good jokes, and some very lovely dialogue, but, nonetheless, this romantic comedy is paper-thin. 1 hr 32 PG-13 (profanity, some nudity) - T.D.

Gerhard Richter - Painting *** This documentary looks at the German painter and his work. 1 hr. 37 No MPAA rating - W.S.

Hot Pursuit ** Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara team up for a comedy in which the main jokes seem to use women in the punch line. Cooper (Witherspoon) must escort Riva (Vergara) around Texas so she can testify against a drug kingpin in this Midnight Run-style comedy. 1 hr. 27 PG-13 (sexual content, violence, profanity, some drug material) - G.T.

I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story *** A warm, reverent documentary portrait of the eternal boy-man who brings the Sesame Street star and pop-culture icon to life - and who has been doing so now for more than 45 years. 1 hr. 25 No MPAA rating (adult themes) - S.R.

Good Kill *** Ethan Hawke is an Air Force major assigned to the program of UAV missions - unmanned aerial vehicles - in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We see that deadly action is taken only after there is ample evidence against a target. But after the CIA takes over an increasing number of the missions, the UAV operators must target people who simply display a suspicious pattern of behavior. "Did we just commit a war crime?" 1 hr. 44 R (violent content including a rape, profanity, some sexuality) - T.D.

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.

Mad Max: Fury Road *** Never mind Furious 7, really. George Miller's mega-reboot of his '80s franchise plays like Fast and Furious - The Thermonuclear Edition, a turbocharged chase across a toxic wasteland with Vin Diesel and pals replaced by Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, who are certainly not pals at all. Post-apocalyptic heavy metal mayhem. 2 hrs. R (extreme violence, intense action, adult themes) - S.R.

Pitch Perfect 2 *** The Barden Bellas are underdogs once more in the sequel to the 2012 sleeper hit. After a humiliating incident in front of the president, the all-female a capella powerhouses attempt to make their way to the world championships. It's pretty much the same movie as the first, but that's not a bad thing. PG-13 (innuendo and language). - M.E.

Poltergeist (not previewed) Indie film stalwarts Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt take over for Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams in a reimagining of the classic 1982 haunted-house flick. The Bowen family's domicile is invaded by ghosts, whose anger comes to a head when they abduct the Bowen's youngest daughter. 1 hr. 33 PG-13 (frightening sequences, brief suggestive material, and some language).

Saint Laurent *** Dreamy, impressionsistic biopic of the hugely influential French fashion designer, focusing on his transformative '70s seasons full of debauchery, drugs, disco, and dazzling couture. If you don't know your fashion-biz history going in, you may not know all that more coming out. But the film, starring Gaspard Ulliel, captures that collision of art and music and fashion with cool, smoky style. Style as substance - and substance abuse. 2 hrs. 30 R (nudity, sex, drugs, adult themes) - S.R.

Slow West *** Naive 16-year-old Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee) sets out into 1870 Colorado to find his love (Caren Pistorius), equipped with little more than a guidebook. There he meets Silas (Michael Fassbender) who helps the young Jay survive, although he has ulterior motives in John MacLean's gorgeously shot directorial debut. 1 hr. 24 R (violence, brief profanity) - M.E.

Tomorrowland **1/2 Disney's retro-futuristic, time-toggling adventure aspires to Back to the Future thrills and Wizard of Oz magic but doesn't quite make the grade. Britt Robertson, as the brainy daughter of a NASA scientist, teams with George Clooney, playing a disgruntled inventor, while flashbacks to the kid version of the Clooney character - at the 1964 World's Fair - try to make sense of it all. 2 hrs. 10 PG (action, violence, adult themes) - S.R.

Where Hope Grows **1/2 Solid performances by Kristoffer Polaha as a washed-up baseball player and David DeSanctis as a grocery worker with Down syndrome elevate this faith-based movie beyond what could have been just an offering on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. Director-writer Chris Dowling is never heavy-handed with his messages of family, success, addiction, and loss, choosing to let them play out in what feels like an organic relationship between two guys who meet at a time when both could use a friend. 1 hr. 35 PG-13 (drinking, sexuality, some language) - W.S.

Welcome to Me *** Kristen Wiig is Alice, a lonely, divorced, unemployed veterinary tech in her mid-40s whose various psychiatric ailments are so intractable they qualify her for disability checks. She spends her days watching years' worth of old Oprah episodes on VHS tapes. Then she hits the lottery for $86 million and decides to become the star of her own TV show, Welcome to Me, which has no guests, only herself. Wiig proves herself a master of timing, wringing every ounce of comic embarrassment she can from the disastrous show. 1 hr. 27 R (profanity, nudity, sexuality, some drug use) - T.D.