Samba, The Outrageous Sophie Tucker

Samba

The Outrageous Sophie Tucker



Two selections from the arthouse make it five consecutive 2.5-star ratings this weekend:

Paper Towns

Nat Wolff – the third wheel in “The Fault in Our Stars” and the hair-trigger dangerous kid in “Palo Alto” - softens his edges considerably in the YA romantic mystery “Paper Towns” (also from a book by “Fault” scribe John Green), and here’s the movie that proves, yes, the camera truly is drawn to him.

Pixels

“Pixels” is not “Citizen Kane.” Neither is it “cinematic chlamydia.”

Southpaw

Another fully committed performance by the gifted Jake Gyllenhaal sets the boxing family drama “Southpaw” above most pretenders to the throne.

Lila & Eve, An Open Secret

Lila & Eve

An Open Secret





"Lila & Eve" crashed and burned out of Sundance, but Samuel Goldwyn acquired it from a new division called Lifetime Films, and that's exactly what it is: a woman-centered, Lifetime TV movie with a big-screen cast.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Kyle Patrick Alvarez's "The Stanford Prison Experiment" is not a documentary but a dramatization of Philip Zimbardo's August 1971 psychological study in which 24 male students were chosen from 75 volunteers ($15 a day was quite the lure back then) to serve as the guards and prisoners at a fictitious three-cell prison in the basement hallways and cleared-out offices of the university's Jordan Hall.

Irrational Man, Mr. Holmes

Irrational Man

Mr. Holmes





Murder is fun in Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man,” which takes a while to get revved up but builds great comic momentum – and an inexorable logical argument for selective homicide as a societal good – in a special last half-hour that relegates the trifling “Magic in the Moonlight” to evanescent memory.

Trainwreck



 



Watching Judd Apatow’s “Trainwreck,” I had the same feeling I had at Paul Feig’s “Bridesmaids” five years ago (or Martin Brest’s “Beverly Hills Cop” 30 years ago): revelation.

Self/less, Cartel Land

Self/less

Cartel Land





Sominex sci-fi.

Terminator Genisys, Magic Mike XXL, Jimmy's Hall, A Murder in the Park, Amy

Terminator Genisys

Magic Mike XXL



Jimmy's Hall

A Murder in the Park



Amy

Capsule reviews on a mixed week of movies: