“Whiplash”
R, 106 minutes, Sony
In “Whiplash,” the promising feature debut of writer-director Damien Chazelle, J.K. Simmons plays a music professor named Fletcher, a tightly coiled martinet who joins a long line of cinematic drill sergeants, football coaches, prison bulls and dysfunctional fathers as a towering patriarchal figure who breaks down an impressionable young man, the better to build him back up. Contains strong profanity, including some sexual references. The Sundance favorite, which also stars Miles Teller (“The Spectacular Now”) as the impressionable drummer, earned a Golden Globe for Simmons and five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
“Big Hero 6”
PG, 108 minutes, Disney
This animated tale of the friendship between a boy and his robot features a plus-size health-care droid named Baymax who resembles a more socially awkward Pillsbury Dough Boy. The movie borrows a key strand of its DNA — the boy-bot dynamic — from “The Iron Giant,” yet it’s really nothing like that 1999 film. With a plot built around the formation of a team of misfit heroes, it’s more like an “Avengers” origin story for the Saturday morning cartoon crowd.
“Horrible Bosses 2”
R, 108 minutes, Warner
Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day once again play three amateur miscreants who find themselves resorting to crime in order to strike back at the authority figures who have messed them over. For their part, the three lead actors keep a saggy snore of a plot afloat through their proven improvisatory chemistry, infusing their characters’ arguments, cross talk and scheming banter with a contagiously stupid-funny fizz that the surrounding movie doesn’t nearly deserve.
“Code Black”
Unrated, 82 minutes, Music Box Films
Though set in the busy emergency room of Los Angeles County General Hospital, where the frenetic drama is at times reminiscent of the television series “ER,” this documentary is less about saving lives than it is about saving the American health-care system. That’s the most critical patient in this fascinating tale, which follows a group of idealistic residents in emergency medicine being trained in the hospital that, according to the film, gave birth to the modern E.R.
Television series: “Sons of Anarchy: Season Seven,” “Mountain Men: Season 3,” “Midsomer Murders, Set 25” (five feature-length British mysteries, Acorn), “Lilies” (BBC period drama about sisters in 1920s Liverpool, Acorn), “The Carol Burnett Show: Together Again,” “Serangoon Road” (first original series from HBO Asia, with Don Hany and Joan Chen, Acorn) and “My Little Pony – Friendship Is Magic: Adventures of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”
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