By Susan King. Photo: IMAX/Cosmic Picture. Source: latimes.com

Not all superheroes wear capes or have powers that enable them to leap tall buildings with a single bound or wield a heavenly hammer. Sometimes they just have cold noses and four strong paws.

But man’s best friend’s devotion to getting the job done, courage and empathy have saved countless lives, whether it’s rescuing survivors from disaster areas or helping war veterans with their psychological issues.

The new IMAX movie “Superpower Dogs,” opening Saturday at the California Science Center, follows six brave and accomplished canines.

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By Brian Truitt. Photo: Hilary Bronwyn Gale. Source: usatoday.com

Who wants to live forever? A bunch of ambitious movie characters.

Juan Ponce de Leon may have been looking for the Fountain of Youth back in the 16th century, but pop culture more recently has offered all sorts of ways to explore immortality, from the search for the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to pretty much every vampire movie ever.

The new thriller Self/less (in theaters Friday) puts a scientific spin on those themes. Directed by Tarsem Singh (Immortals), the plot centers on wealthy New York industrialist Damian Hale (Ben Kingsley), who is constantly reminded how his cancer-ridden body is failing him.

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By Neil Genzlinger. Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images. Source: nytimes.com

Is that political commentary lurking beneath the grunts and four-word sentences of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone?

“Escape Plan,” an enjoyable enough version of the action movies these stars have been feeding off lately, puts the two of them in a supermaximum-security prison where assorted terrorists and other extremely undesirables are housed. It’s an off-the-grid detention center, privately run, and the administrators think nothing of inflicting abuses of all sorts. This film is not likely to be shown on movie night at Guantánamo.

Mr. Stallone’s character makes a living by going undercover as an inmate and trying to break out, to identify the weaknesses in the prison security system. He is hired for a black-ops assignment that quickly turns sinister. Mr. Schwarzenegger is the inmate he teams with to try to escape.

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By Ann Hornaday. Photo: Media Films. Source: washingtonpost.com
Once in a while a movie comes along that doesn’t just affect how you think or feel, it performs its own kind of physical alchemy, burrowing its way into your consciousness so thoroughly that you feel permanently marked and changed.

“Blue Is the Warmest Color,” Abdellatif Kechiche’s long, sprawling, boldly immersive coming-of-age drama, works just this sort of magic. A naturalistic portrait of the sexual and romantic awakening of a teenage girl — played in an astonishing breakout performance by newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos — “Blue Is the Warmest Color” at first seems like nothing new: Portraying the day-to-day life of Exarchopoulos’s character, also named Adèle, Kechiche hews to the time-honored French tradition of dressed-down, realistic staging and style, devoting long, seemingly spontaneous sequences set at Adele’s high school and at home with her working-class parents.

Those unforced, quotidien rhythms don’t perceptibly change once Adele meets Emma (Léa Seydoux), a fresh-faced, blue-haired art student she first glimpses on a crowded street, then pursues into a lesbian night club. The two women fall into a rapturous, physically electric affair, with Adèle at first bewildered and finally beguiled by Emma’s assured delivery of a sentimental education.

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