Movies: New and Noteworthy

COMING THIS WEEK

By Steven Rea

99 Homes Drama about flipping and foreclosing Florida properties, with Andrew Garfield as a construction worker who gets evicted, along with his mother and his little boy, from their family home. Michael Shannon is the real estate broker who forces them out. A wary alliance is forged in Ramin Bahrani's Great Recession tale. R

He Named Me Malala Davis Guggenheim's documentary about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head by the Taliban for insisting that girls had the right to attend school. PG-13

Pan "Welcome to Neverland!" bellows Hugh Jackman's Blackbeard in Joe Wright's elaborate reworking of the J.M. Barrie children's fantasy. Rooney Mara swashes and buckles as Tiger Lily, Garrett Hedlund is Hook, and newcomer Levi Miller plays the boy hero, Peter. PG

Big Stone Gap A small town's leading lady (Ashley Judd) finds her life changed forever when a family secret is uncovered. Patrick Wilson and Whoopi Goldberg also star.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon This documentary looks at the history of the comedy magazine and its various spin-offs.

The Final Girls A high schooler is mysteriously transformed into the world of a 1980s slasher flick that starred her late mother.

Freeheld A New Jersey police officer fights for her partner to receive her pension benefits when she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Julianne Moore and Ellen Page star.

Knock Knock Keanu Reeves stars as a devoted family man who gets more than he bargained for when two stranded young women knock on his door.

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

Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution This documentary looks at the controversial organization dedicated to black power. 1 hr. 53 No MPAA rating - G.T.

Mistress America A screwball comedy about female friendship, betrayal and theft, starring the crazily gesticulative Greta Gerwig as a know-it-all New Yorker who decides to mentor a lonely college freshman new to the big city, played by Lola Kirke. Noah Baumbach directs, from a screenplay he and Gerwig collaborated on, between breaks watching Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges. 1 hr. 24 R (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Black Mass Johnny Depp utterly transforms himself, in the role of James "Whitey" Bulger, the Boston mobster who racketeered and murdered his way to power in the '70s and '80s. Directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), with strong performances from Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Edgerton and Dakota Johnson. Dark, bloody, harrowing. 2 hrs. 02 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Captive David Oyelowo plays a psychopath wanted for murder who takes as a hostage a single mother (Kate Mara) struggling to overcome a drug addiction. Her reading and sharing passages from the book "The Purpose- Driven Life" helps diffuse the tense hours they spend together as he battles the "demon" inside his mind. 1 hr. 37 PG-13 (mature thematic elements involving violence, and substance abuse) - W.S.

Learning to Drive Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley team up for a small, artfully crafted story of companionship, loneliness, resilience. She's a New York literary critic who has just been dumped by her husband; Kingsley is an Indian Sikh who gives the suddenly shell-shocked and single middle-aged woman driving lessons. The driving metaphors don't need any added emphasis: Put the car (and your life) in forward; be aware and anticipate; control your rage; know where you're going. 1 hr. 30 R (profanity, sex, adult themes) - S.R.

The Martian Matt Damon gives a commanding, oftentimes darkly comic performance as an astronaut left for dead by his NASA crewmates when they beat a hasty retreat from Mars. With a limited supply of food and water and no means of communication, he has to figure out how to survive - and how to contact Mission Control - hoping they can bring him home. Stirring, suspenseful, science-rooted stuff from director Ridley Scott; with Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kate Mara and Michael Peña. 2 hrs. 21 PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Time Out of Mind Richard Gere sheds every vestige of his white-maned movie star persona in the role of a homeless man, moving across an indifferent cityscape, trying to find a reason to keep going. A powerful film, shot on the sly, documentary-style. In cameos: Steve Buscemi, Jena Malone, Kyra Sedgwick, Ben Vereen. 2 hrs. 1 No MPAA rating (profanity, violence, sex, adult themes) - S.R.

Everest *** Dramatic thriller based on the true story of the struggle for survival faced by members of a Mount Everest climbing expedition when they are caught in a blizzard. 2 hrs. 01 PG-13 (intense peril and disturbing images) - G.T.

The Face of an Angel **1/2 A journalist and a filmmaker investigate a murder suspect. Based on the Amanda Knox story. 1 hr. 41 No MPAA rating (violence, explicit sexuality, profanity, smoking, drugs) - T.D.

Goodnight Mommy ** Twin brothers notice mysterious differences in their mother after she returns home from reconstructive surgery. German with subtitles. 1 hr. 09 R (violence) - G.T.

Hotel Transylvania 2 *** In this sequel that's better than the original, Dracula (Adam Sandler) has just become a new vampa (a vampire grandpa). Everyone is waiting to see whether Dennis will be like his mom (Selena Gomez) and sprout fangs, or end up like his dad and be human. If Dennis doesn't get his fangs by the time he turns 5, it will be too late, so Dracula plans to scare the monster into the infant. One reason the film works so much better is that the action is divided between life in the monster and human worlds. 1 hr 27 PG (some scary images, rude humor) - W.S.

The Intern *** Anne Hathaway is an e-commerce entrepreneur, Robert De Niro a retiree who becomes her eager aide, in Nancy Meyers' impossibly charming generation gap comedy - make that generation chasm. The business and personal crises fly, but don't worry, De Niro's septuagenarian gent is ready to provide sage counsel. And Rene Russo, as the company's in-house masseuse, is ready to provide back rubs. PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

The Keeping Room *** As the Civil War nears its conclusion, three women - two sisters and a slave - must defend their home from two rogue soldiers. 1 hr. 26 R (strong violence including a sexual assault) - M.E.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials *** The saga continues with the Gladers facing their most difficult challenge yet. 2 hrs. 11 PG-13 (violence and action, some thematic elements, substance use, language) - G.T.

Meet the Patels *** This adorable documentary about actor Ravi Patel trying to find a suitable wife also shines a light on what's it like to be the child of immigrants, wanting to live an assimilated life, while also honoring culture. 1 hr. 28 PG (thematic elements) - M.E.

Mississippi Grind **1/2 Curtis and Gerry (Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn) are gamblers floating in a bubble of old blues music and lost country songs, eating at barbecue joints, drinking in dive bars, sharing a lifestyle that makes them toxic to those around them. 1 hr 48 R (language) - G.T.

Pawn Sacrifice *** This weirdly trippy movie re-creates the monumental 1972 chess match between tormented American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) and Soviet grand master Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). As the title rather clumsily implies, Pawn Sacrifice presents the descending-into-madness Fischer as an expendable gamepiece in a ruthless geopolitical contest waged by shadowy intelligence agencies on behalf of powerful governments. 1 hr 54 PG-13 (brief strong language, some sexual content, smoking) - G.T.

Peace Officer *** In this documentary that looks at police militarization in the United States, a former sheriff confronts the SWAT team he founded. 1 45 No MPAA rating (violence) - G.T.

Saving Mr. Wu *** Only the fourth film from Ding Sheng, this fact-based crime thriller has great photography and tense action sequences. TV star Wu Ruofu (Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau) is snatched by a small gang of professional hoods, and the leader is arrested 18 hours later. The movie truly excels in its quieter moments during the parallel set of conversations gang leader Zhang Hua has with Wu and later with the police. 1 hr 45 No MPAA rating (violence, profanity, smoking) - T.D.

Sicario *** Emily Blunt is an FBI agent who joins a task force of Feds and freelancers in pursuit of drug lords and violent cartels. Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro also star in Denis (Prisoners) Villeneuve's bloody cross-border thriller. 2 hrs. 01 R (violence, profanity, sex, adult themes) - S.R.

Sleeping With Other People *** Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey (Allison Brie) are disasters in relationships. So instead of ruining each other with sex, they strike up a friendship that turns into something more. But Leslye Headland's second film (after the polarizing Bachelorette) dissects the rom-com and puts it back together again to feel wholly fresh. 1 hr 41 R (sexual content, language, drug use) - M.E.

Straight Outta Compton *** Legendary gangsta rappers N.W.A. get the biopic treatment. The film follows Ice Cube (played by the real rapper's son, O'Shea Jackson Jr.), Dr. Dre, Eazy E, and crew as they come up in Compton - easily the movie's best part - through their record- company-related woes, featuring Paul Giamatti wearing cinema's worst hairpiece. 2 hrs. 02 R (profanity) - G.T.

The Visit **1/2 Hansel and Gretel with a shakycam, M. Night Shyamalan's toe-dip into low-budget horror is a "found footage" pic, a slow-build affair with funny gags thrown into the mix, in which a camcorder-toting teenage brother and sister hop the train from Philly to spend a week in the country with the grandparents they've never met. Nana and Pop Pop prove to be scarily strange. 1 hr. 34 R (violence, scares, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

The Walk *** Joseph Gordon-Levitt tries on zee French accent and zee balancing pole to play Philippe Petit, the French daredevil who high-wired his way across the Twin Towers back in the summer of 1974, when the World Trade Center skyscrapers were new - and untainted by terrorism.Robert Zemeckis, a maestro of visual effects and digital innovation, directs this eye-popping, vertiginous spectacle. 2 hrs. 3 PG (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

A Walk in the Woods **1/2 Robert Redford plays real-life travel writer Bill Bryson, who decides to hike the Appalachian Trail - no, really, hike it, not going to visit his mistress - with his pal (Nick Nolte), a chubby, wheezing, recovering alcoholic. Redford gets a chance, long overdue, to be funny during the charmingly hopeless endeavor. 1 hr. 38 R (language) - G.T.