Movies: New and Noteworthy

I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story This documentary looks at the man who has played Big Bird and Oscar on Sesame Street since 1969.

Iris Documentarian Albert Maysles' latest is on fashion icon Iris Apfel.

Mad Max: Fury Road A loner teams up with a mysterious woman to survive in a dangerous, post-apocalyptic world. Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron star.

Pitch Perfect 2 The Barden Bellas, a college a cappella group, enter an international competition that has never been won by an American team. Anna Kendrick and Elizabeth Banks star.

Tangerines A farmer from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia remains in a war zone to harvest his crops, but soon finds himself pulled into the conflict in his midst.

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.

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 ensue. 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 - 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: 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 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.

Far From the Madding Crowd *** The most recent adpatation of Thomas Hardy's proto-feminist novel is stately, handsome, appeallingly old fashioned. 1 hr. 59 PG-13 (Some sexuality and violence) - M.E.

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.

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.

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.

Hot Pursuit ** Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara team up for a comedy in which the main jokes seem to use women in the punchline. Cooper (Witherspoon) most 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.

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, 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.

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.

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.