Palo Alto

In Gia Coppola's debut feature "Palo Alto," Emma Roberts plays April, a hard-working and conscientious high school student who spends most Saturday nights babysitting for her soccer coach, Mr. B (James Franco, looking edible in his black tracksuit).

The Double

In Richard Ayoade's new stunt of a movie, "The Double," Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon James, a mouse of a man employed in data entry in a dimly lit, windowless, seemingly subterranean sea of cubicles overseen by fast-talking Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn), a conceit that owes as much to Jeunet and Caro as to Dostoevsky.

Chef

You can't say Jon Favreau lacks for chutzpah.

The Cold Lands

Tom Gilroy directed a little gem called "Spring Forward" that snuck onto my top-ten list at the tail end of 2000.

Bicycling with Moliѐre

Gauthier (Lambert Wilson), the distinguished and dashing middle-aged star of a hit French medical series, day-trips to the picturesque île de Ré, where he surprises his old acting buddy Serge (Fabrice Luchini) with a proposition.

For No Good Reason, Belle, Ida



Ida

For No Good Reason






Belle

Capsule reviews on the weekend's art-house offerings:

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Almost all the joy that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone brought to the rebooted "The Amazing Spider-Man" two years ago has been sucked out of the fun-free zone that is "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," which makes up in volubility what it lacks in coherence and dramatic thrust.