Movies: New and Noteworthy

COMING THIS WEEK

By Steven Rea

Tomorrowland Disney has been keeping a tight lid on news about its big-budget sci-fi feature, which takes its name from the theme parks and looks to be taking George Clooney on a wild ride across space and time. The good news: Brad Bird of The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol directs. PG

Lambert & Stamp The Beatles had Brian Epstein, the Stones had Andrew Loog Oldham, and the Who. . .? The Who had a couple of guys with no experience, no connections, but who somehow managed to talk themselves into representing Daltrey, Moon, Townshend, and Entwistle. A documentary about Kim Lambert and Chris Stamp and the glorious rise of the "My Generation" band. R

Poltergeist Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are the unlucky suburbanites whose house gets invaded by evil spirits that abduct their daughter and freak everybody out - except maybe the parapsychologist played by Jared Harris. "I want you all to clear your minds," he advises. "They already know what scares you." A reboot of the '82 hit. PG-13

Saint Laurent Gaspard Ulliel stars as the famed fashion designer in this biopic.

Slow West A teen travels the 19th-century Colorado frontier in search of his beloved with the help of a mysterious guide.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where Hope Grows (not previewed) An unhappy former baseball star whose career is short-circuited meets a grocery store worker with Down Syndrome named "Produce" and gains a new view of life through their friendship in this faith-based film. 1 hr. 35 PG-13 (drinking, sexuality, some language).

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.