This week’s movie releases

Arriving making an awful lot of noise, featuring an awful lot of stars and no doubt destined to make an awful lot of money, Avengers: Age of Ultron marks the return of Marvel’s superhero team to the big screen. Once again written and directed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, this sequel to 2012’s box office-topping The Avengers sees the crew forced to come together to save Earth from the evil Ultron (James Spader). With Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, plus Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgård, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Set in a Maine prep school, Words & Pictures stars Clive Owen as a failed writer and alcoholic English teacher, despairing at his students’ obsession with their smartphones, and Juliette Binoche as a once-successful artist struggling with rheumatoid arthritis and who has recently arrived on campus. Much needling and flirting soon ensues in this romantic drama, directed by veteran Australian filmmaker Fred Schepisi (The Russia House).

Weaved from a string of 1980s classics, Walking on Sunshine is a British musical set on the Italian coast where Maddie (Annabel Scholey) is getting ready to walk up the aisle with Italian beau Raf (Giulio Berruti). Trouble arrives in the form of her sister (Hannah Arterton), who, unbeknownst to Maddie, also had a vacation romance with Raf. The film marks the movie debut of singer and former UK X-Factor winner Leona Lewis.

After a string of live-action versions, Asterix: The Land of the Gods is an all-new digitally animated adaptation of the comic series about the famous indomitable Gaul. Based on the book The Mansions of the Gods, it finds Asterix and his wild boar-gobbling sidekick Obelix having to deal with the building of a luxury Roman housing estate next to their unconquered village.

Prized at the Sundance and Berlin Festivals and presented by Angelina Jolie, Difret is a docudrama from Ethiopia based on the true story of a lawyer’s battle to defend a 14-year-old girl who was abducted in order to be married off – a common practice in parts of the country – and then subsequently shot her prospective husband while trying to escape.

Blood oranges

Set in Georgia during the ex-Soviet state’s 1992-1993 war with Abkhaz separatists, Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar nominee Tangerines concerns two Estonian migrant farmers who decide to remain to harvest their crop after fighting breaks out. When the conflict arrives nearby, they end up taking in two injured combatants, one from each side, who promise to kill each other once they regain their fitness.

Directed by Martín G. Ramis, Spanish thriller El Hijo Bastardo de Dios is the story of a disabled man forced to look after his nagging mother who concocts a malevolent plan to escape his hellish life and find happiness.