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Here's how weird this weekend is at the movies: There's nearly nothing new out of Hollywood, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the art house list.
The studios didn't want to face "Avengers: Age of Ultron" in its second week, so the only Hollywood entry is a bit of female-powered counter-programming: "Hot Pursuit," a creaky and desperately manic buddy comedy. Reese Witherspoon plays a straitlaced cop who's assigned to escort a woman (Sofia Vergara) who's linked to a lethal Mexican drug lord. The humor is forced and frenetic, with none of the chemistry needed to make this kind of movie work.
The rest of this week's movies are playing on the art-house circuit.
"The Salt of the Earth" is a luminous documentary that profiles photographer Sebastião Salgado, whose work has chronicled humanity around the world at its best and worst. The movie is at its best when Salgado tells the story of how he found his beautiful images, and when the movie lets those images speak for themselves.
"The D Train" is a scorchingly funny comedy, starring Jack Black as a high-school reunion committee leader who's roundly disliked by the rest of the committee. But when he dares to ask the school's most popular alum (James Marsden) to come home for the reunion, things take an unexpected turn. Black and Marsden are both hilarious, drawing sharp portrayals of guys keeping up appearances in the face of harsh reality.
"Maggie" shows that Arnold Schwarzenegger can do some serious acting when called upon. He plays a Midwestern farmer who tries to care for his runaway teen daughter (Abigail Breslin), who has been infected by a zombie virus. Director Henry Hobson brings a dense, brooding atmosphere to the drama, which is oddly devoid of action sequences.
The comedy "5 Flights Up" stars Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman as an old married couple contemplating selling the fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Brooklyn that has been their home for 40 years. Keaton and Freeman's lived-in charms make this one worth seeing.
Lastly, there's "Welcome to Me," a dreary comedy about a manic-depressive (Kristen Wiig) who goes off her meds, and then wins the lottery and uses her millions to start her own self-centered talk show. The humor is mean-spirited and shrill, and not even Wiig's gift for humanizing her outlandish characters can rescue the film.