A guide to movies playing at theaters in the New York City area, as well as select festivals and film series.

Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases: nytimes.com/movies[1].

'Anomalisa' (R, 1:30) Directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, this sad, stirringly painful stop-motion puppet whatsit centers on a floundering soul (voiced by David Thewlis) who, while on a business trip, has an affair with a stranger (Jennifer Jason Leigh). An invaluable Tom Noonan voices everyone else. (Manohla Dargis)

★ 'April and the Extraordinary World' (PG, 1:45) A tricky, eccentric, visually ravishing alternative-history animated sci-fi film from France. Marion Cotillard voices the title heroine, an intense young woman trying to find out who is abducting the great scientists of early-20th-century Europe. (Glenn Kenny)

★ 'Barbershop: The Next Cut' (PG-13, 1:52) Ice Cube returns as Calvin Palmer, whose Chicago haircutting establishment is once again the scene of much sexual, political and race-conscious banter. In this reprise of the popular comic franchise, directed by Malcolm D. Lee, the high spirits are shadowed by violence and anxiety, and the blend of comedy and social consciousness is unusually potent. With Common, Nicki Minaj and, of course, Cedric the Entertainer. (A.O. Scott)

'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' (PG-13, 2:31) They fight. You lose. (Scott)

★ 'Born to Be Blue' (No rating, 1:38) In this moody biographical fantasia, Ethan Hawke gives what is arguably his deepest performance, playing the self-destructive jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, who died in 1988 following years of heroin addiction. The portrait he creates is of a wounded boy genius who lives for only two things: his trumpet and his drugs. As a young man, Baker was movie-star beautiful ("the James Dean of jazz," some called him) and the romantic fantasy of scores of women, powerfully embodied by Carmen Ejogo as a fictional composite named Jane. (Stephen Holden)

'The Boss' (R, 1:39) In her new laugh-in, Melissa McCarthy plays an investment guru with a motivational racket who ends up selling you-go-girl inspiration. The movie isn't much good, but Ms. McCarthy can't help but make you laugh. (Dargis)

★ 'City of Gold' (R, 1:31) Laura Gabbert's documentary about the Los Angeles Times food writer Jonathan Gold is a smart, ardent love letter to his city, his appetite and his art. (Scott)

'Criminal' (R, 1:53) Kevin Costner gets to show off his collection of tics and other eccentricities in this slick thriller. He plays a convict who is on the receiving end of a neural transplant, a radical procedure the C.I.A. authorizes in an effort to preserve the information in the head of one of its operatives who has been killed. It's all pretty ridiculous, and the ending goes overboard, but Mr. Costner keeps it entertaining. (Neil Genzlinger)

★ 'The Dark Horse' (R, 2:04) The New Zealand film rides on the impassioned performance of Cliff Curtis, the Maori actor who plays Genesis (a.k.a. Gen) Potini, a chessmaster suffering from severe bipolar disorder. Avoiding the sentimental pitfalls of movies about underdogs in competition, it follows his struggles once he takes it upon himself to train the alienated Maori teenagers in Gisborne to compete for the junior national chess championship in Auckland. (Holden)

'Deadpool' (R, 1:48) Jokes and bullets are tossed like confetti in "Deadpool," a feverishly eager-to-please comic-book movie about a supervillain (Ryan Reynolds) who suits up like a superhero. Bang, boom, splatter. (Dargis)

'Demolition' (R, 1:40) Jake Gyllenhaal diligently applies himself to playing a painfully familiar type in American movies that imagine they have Something To Say: the Man Who Cannot Feel. There are metaphors aplenty, and they are wielded with the heaviness of the sledgehammer that his character, an investment banker whose wife dies in a car crash, uses to demolish the remains of his former life and be "free," which means outlandishly manic. (Holden)

'The Divergent Series: Allegiant' (PG-13, 2:00) A flaccid blend of eugenics, purloined children, memory-wiping gas and laughably unlikely scuffles, this third installment (directed by Robert Schwentke) is so lacking in narrative momentum that we can almost hear the hum of a plot idling in neutral. (Jeannette Catsoulis)

★ 'Embrace of the Serpent' (Not rated, 2:05) This majestic, spellbinding film is a tragic cinematic elegy for vanished indigenous civilizations in the Amazon jungle. Viewed largely through the aggrieved eyes of a shaman whose tribe is on the verge of extinction at the hands of Colombian rubber barons in the 19th and 20th centuries, this complicated mixture of myth and historical reality shatters lingering illusions of first-world culture as more advanced than any other, except technologically. (Holden)

★ 'Everybody Wants Some!!' (R, 1:56) The last weekend before the start of classes at a Texas college in the fall of 1980. Weed is smoked, beer is drunk, skirts are chased. This rambling, nostalgic excursion, courtesy of Richard Linklater, is sweet and wholesome and surprisingly absorbing, given how little of consequence seems to happen. (Scott)

★ 'Eye in the Sky' (R, 1:42) This suspenseful film about an American drone attack[2] on a terrorist meeting place in Nairobi, Kenya, is grim farce in which unpredictable human behavior repeatedly threatens an operation of astounding technological sophistication. Helen Mirren, in one of her fiercest screen performances, plays the chilly officer in charge of an operation to capture a radicalized Englishwoman she has been pursuing for years. But as the moment of capture arrives, her plans abruptly change when a cyborg beetle, a small surveilla nce device, reveals two inhabitants strapping on explosives for a suicide mission. (Holden)

'The First Monday in May' (PG-13, 1:30) The Metropolitan Museum ff Art teams up with Anna Wintour for a costume exhibit and benefit gala. Andrew Rossi's film is a very controlled peek behind the scenes that could have used more visual splendor and more genuine candor. (Kenny)

'Francofonia' (No rating, 1:27 in French, German and Russian) The latest film by the Russian director Alexandr Sokurov is a meditation on art, war and accountability, focusing on the fate of the Louvre and its artworks during the Nazi Occupation of France. (Scott)

'Green Room' (R, 1:35) A punk band on a hand-to-mouth tour of the Northwest falls afoul of a gang of white supremacists in this nasty, witty siege movie, craftily directed by Jeremy Saulnier ("Blue Ruin.") Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and Imogen Poots are all good, but Sir Patrick Stewart steals the movie as a menacing skinhead graybeard. (Scott)

'Hardcore Henry' (R, 1:36) Hold on to your hat, watch out for your stomach — this movie gives the viewer a frantic subjective-camera experience, taking the exclusive perspective of a semi-robotic soldier charged with foiling the scheme of a psychotic tech magnate with telekinetic powers. This sci-fi action extravaganza, set and shot in Moscow, is not entirely recommendation-worthy, but it's certainly novel, its video-game similarities notwithstanding. (Kenny)

'Hello, My Name Is Doris' (R, 1:30) An irresistible, stealthily touching Sally Field plays an outwardly ridiculous woman in her 60s who falls in love with a much younger man (Max Greenfield). The director Michael Showalter oversells the goods, but resistance is futile. (Dargis)

'I Saw the Light' (R, 2:03) This big-screen memorial stars a fine Tom Hiddleston as the music megastar Hank Williams in a movie that's as pretty as an old-fashioned, hand-tinted postcard and just as inert. Marc Abraham wrote and directed; Elizabeth Olsen co-stars. (Dargis)

'The Invitation' (No rating, 1:40) There's nothing much amiss at first about the dinner party in Karyn Kusama's low-budget chiller, even if the hostess's white dress looks like nothing so much as a canvas that's crying out for a nice splash of red. (Dargis)

'The Jungle Book' (PG, 1:46) Stuffed with computer-generated flora and fauna (a real boy plays Mowgli), Disney's latest take on the Rudyard Kipling tales is being touted as a live-action movie but there's scarcely anything alive in it. The whole thing is lightly diverting, and canned. (Dargis)

'Knight of Cups' (R, 1:58) In Terrence Malick's latest movie, Christian Bale plays a Hollywood screenwriter grappling with spiritual crisis in the company of beautiful women. The real star is the cinematographer, the three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki, who infuses Los Angeles with a transcendental glow. (Scott)

★ 'Krisha' (R, 1:22) A family drama in alternately appalling and queasily hilarious extremis, this first feature takes place over an epically terrible Thanksgiving. The young director Trey Edward Shults cast family members in central roles, including an aunt, Krisha Fairchild, and together they turn this modest movie into an expressionistic tour de force. (Dargis)

'London Has Fallen' (R, 1:39) In this sequel to "Olympus Has Fallen," the president of the United States once again is snatched by terrorists, and only his favorite Secret Service agent can save the day. It's dumb and uninvolving, a collection of ugly sentiments served via clumsy dialogue. (Genzlinger)

'Louder Than Bombs' (R, 1:49) In his first English-language feature, the Norwegian director Joachim Trier ("Reprise," "Oslo, 31st August") assembles a family dealing with the aftermath of tragedy. In spite of its overall sensitivity and some good performances (notably Isabelle Huppert as a war photographer and Devin Druid as her teenage son), the film is plot-heavy and unconvincing. (Scott)

'The Measure of a Man' (No rating, 1:33, in French) In Stéphane Brizé's quietly stirring drama, a middle-age Frenchman (an excellent Vincent Lindon) tries to find his equilibrium after losing his job. With the help of Mr. Lindon, Mr. Brizé turns one individual's story into a social tragedy. (Dargis)

'Midnight Special' (PG-13, 1:51) The latest from Jeff Nichols ("Mud," "Take Shelter") is a lean and tense genre puzzle — a backwoods crime thriller that's also a heady science-fiction allegory. Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst give it emotional weight, playing the protective parents of an exceptional child. (Scott)

★ 'Miles Ahead' (R, 1:40) In this pleasurably impressionistic movie, Don Cheadle plays Miles Davis as a mercurial fantasy figure who's part boxer, part gangster, part time-traveler and 100 percent enigmatic genius. Purists may howl at the portrait, but Mr. Cheadle – who also directed and cowrote – understands that some legends are bigger than any one telling. (Dargis)

'Miracles From Heaven' (PG, 1:49) Jennifer Garner stars as a woman who loses her faith when one of her children falls ill. The movie smartly looks to be inspiring rather than preachy, and except for some mawkishness in its late scenes, comes off as unexpectedly watchable. (Jaworowski)

'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2' (PG-13, 1:34) A washed-out recycling of ethnic clichés and exhausted jokes, Kirk Jones's embarrassingly awful sequel returns us to the smothering bosom of the Portokalos family — a yapping clan of upraised shoulders and upturned palms. (Catsoulis)

★ 'My Golden Days' (R, 2:00) A must see, this latest from the brilliant French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin is an elegy for young love and its lingering ache that turns on a man (the great Mathieu Amalric) who looks back at his life and the love he let slip away. Two exciting young newcomers, Quentin Dolmaire and the luminous Lou Roy-Lecollinet, co-star. (Dargis)

★ 'Neon Bull' (No rating, 1:41, in Portuguese) The astonishing second narrative feature by the Brazilian documentarian director Gabriel Mascaro is a movie about animal smells. An intoxicating reflection on the interconnection between taste, scent, instinct and desire, the film, gorgeously photographed by Diego Garcia ("Cemetery of Splendor"), immerses you in the intensely pungent world of vaquejada, a rodeo sport popular in northeastern Brazil. (Holden)

'New York, New York' (No rating, 1:46) That the world is full of con men is a warning that is central to this noir-ish film, which bounces to Shanghai and back during brighter economic times for America. The script tends to be vague and cryptic but Du Juan and Ethan Juan are perfect as the thwarted lovers. (Helen T. Verongos)

★ 'Our Last Tango' (No rating, 1:25) This documentary by German Kral is a combination of things, all fascinating: a portrait of the former partnership of the tango dancers María Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes; a stylized staging of their romantic and artistic history by young dancers; and a celebration of the tango itself, which still bewitches with its gently jagged grace and torrid suggestiveness. (Andy Webster)

'Remember' (R, 1:35) Christopher Plummer turns in a fine performance, and the director Atom Egoyan proves himself an expert button-pusher, in this psychological thriller. Mr. Plummer's character, Zev, who is slipping into and out of dementia, is sent in search of a Nazi who escaped justice. Martin Landau plays the friend who is pulling Zev's strings. The ending is a bit of a cop-out, but the tension builds efficiently throughout. (Genzlinger)

'Rio, I Love You' (R, 1:50) The third anthology in a series that began with "Paris Je T'Aime" (2007) and continued with "New York, I Love You" (2009) compiles 11 directors' takes on Rio de Janeiro. If the movie adopts an unfailingly rosy attitude toward the city — Fernanda Montenegro plays a grandmother who lives on the streets by choice — tourism is what it has to sell. (Ben Kenigsberg)

'Sing Street' (PG-13, 1:45) John Carney, best known for "Once," is a filmmaker with many songs in his heart and his heart on his sleeve. This sweet, rough-edged romance, set in Dublin in the 1980s, stars Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as a teenager who starts a pop band to impress a girl (Lucy Boynton). (Scott)

★ '10 Cloverfield Lane' (PG-13, 1:46) Sneakily tweaking our fears of terrorism, Dan Trachtenberg's tale of a captive girl (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), her dour jailer (John Goodman) and whatever is lurking outside their shelter is a master class on narrative pacing and carefully managed jolts. (Catsoulis)

★ 'Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt' (No rating, 2:05, in German, English and Hebrew) This rigorous, thoughtful documentary, directed by Ada Ushpiz, restores Arendt to her rightful place as an indispensable thinker about the nature of totalitarianism, past, present and future. (Scott)

'Wedding Doll' (No rating, 1:22) A young woman (Moran Rosenblatt) with a mild mental disability strives for independence in Nitzan Gilady's drama, and most of all for a husband. But she is undone by obstacles and tormentors — and a script that goes to extraordinary, and exasperating, lengths to stack the deck against her. (Webster)

★ 'The Witch' (R, 1:32) This finely calibrated shiver of a movie from Robert Eggers follows a Puritan family that, in 1630, sets off to live alone in the New England wilderness. Something wicked this way comes. (Dargis)

★ 'Zootopia' (PG, 1:48) This smart, funny animated film from Disney tells the story of a determined bunny named Judy Hopps who wants to become the first of her kind to be a police officer in Zootopia, a metropolis where animals live and work together, having set aside their genetic tendencies to eat one another. There are witty jokes for all ages and messages about inclusion and intolerance that are more nuanced than in most such fare. (Genzlinger)

Film Series

Chantal Akerman Films (through May 1) It is no exaggeration to say that the Belgian-born filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who died in October, changed the way that movies approach time and space. Because of their deliberate, experimental use of duration, her films are best appreciated in theaters. BAMcinématek is offering a career-spanning retrospective that runs through May 1 and includes some of Ms. Akerman's hardest-to-see works. A full schedule is at bam.org/chantalakerman[3]. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Green, 718-636-4100. (Kenigsberg)

An Early Clue to the New Direction: Queer Cinema Before Stonewall (Friday through May 1) This extraordinary survey of the early history of queer representation in the movies stretches all the way back to the beginning of the medium: "Dickson Experimental Sound Film," an 1895 attempt by Thomas Edison's studio to synchronize motion pictures with a phonograph, is a film of two men dancing. (It screens in a shorts program on Saturday.) Filled with rare titles, the Film Society of Lincoln Center series also features coded Hollywood depictions of homosexuality (Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope," showing on Sunday and Monday; Vincente Minnelli's "Tea and Sympathy," showing Wednesday and Thursday), direct portrayals (the 1961 British drama "Victim," starring Dirk Bogarde as a barrister who is blackmailed for being gay) and many experimental films (such as Jack Smith's "Flaming Creatures," showing on April 30). The first film will be " Mädchen in Uniform" (Friday and Tuesday), a 1931 German feature with an all-women cast, set at a boarding school whose students — especially a newcomer — are infatuated with the kindest, most motherly teacher. At various times at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, West 65th Street, 212-875-5601, filmlinc.com[4]. (Ben Kenigsberg)

Fassbinder's Top 10 (Friday through Thursday) Rainer Werner Fassbinder died in 1982 at 37, having directed more than 40 features. As a warm-up to a run of "Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands," a documentary on his astonishingly prolific career, the Metrograph is presenting 10 films that he named as his favorites shortly before his death. In some of the selections, you can see elements that also surface in Fassbinder's work — whether it's in the topsy-turvy gender politics of Nicholas Ray's 1954 film "Johnny Guitar" (showing on Friday), or in the ambiguity and artifice of Josef von Sternberg's "Dishonored" (showing Sunday). In that 1931 film, Marlene Dietrich plays an Austrian spy whose moral flexibility perhaps prefigures that of the title character in Fassbinder's great "The Marriage of Maria Braun." 7 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, 212-660-0312, metrograph.com[5]. (Kenigsberg)

'La Luna' (Monday) Bernardo Bertolucci completists may have to wait a long time for another chance see the maestro's semi-notorious and almost completely unavailable 1979 drama, which Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times, called "the work of a good poet on an absolutely terrible day" when it opened the New York Film Festival[6] that year. Mr. Bertolucci had already aimed for grand emotions in "The Conformist" and "Last Tango in Paris." "La Luna" makes its operatic ambitions clear with its premise: It concerns a widow ed diva (Jill Clayburgh) and her relationship with her drug-addicted teenage son (Matthew Barry) — a dynamic that takes a turn toward incest. Mr. Barry will appear at the screening. At 7 p.m., Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, 212-505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org[7]. (Kenigsberg)

New Voices in Black Cinema (through Sunday) This annual series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music draws from recent African-American cinema and titles from around the globe. It wraps up this weekend with a collection of short films, as well as documentaries about topics such as seeking healing through faith and L.G.B.T. youth in Kenya. A full schedule is at bam.org/newvoices[8]. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100. (Kenigsberg)