While The Shitheads doesn’t turn completely, it never fully recovers from what ends up feeling like an out-of-place, car-into-a-brick-wall choice of a tonal crater.

Vox Lux does at least try to confront an undiscussed truth about today’s pop culture within a sociopolitical context. Plus, Portman and Raffidy (as well as Stacy Martin, who plays Portman’s unappreciated sister Eleanor) deliver solid performances in this relentlessly, effectively miserable narrative.

The mystery is solidly structured, but the answers it gradually yields are silly at best and lazy and offensive at worst.

Its low-gear celebration of fandom-inspired ingenuity, and belief in the power of creating as a reparative balm, earns it enough well-deserved smiles when things fall predictably into place in the latter stages.

Nocturnal Animals packs a real punch and confirms that “A Single Man” was no fluke.

This ambitious approach is, unfortunately, more intriguing than effective.

T2 Trainspotting isn’t a bad film at all. In places, it’s terrific, but it too often drags in a pool of its own despondency, a miserable and melancholy movie that almost looks a bit embarrassed to be so.

Director Jono McLeod’s filmmaking itself is inventive and odd, and that’s almost enough – emphasis on the word almost – to make up for the fact that the story itself is something of a letdown.

Bolstered by an infectiously reckless joie de vivre and artfully handled hard-hitting truths, Cuties diffuses the impulse to dismiss it as just one more example of a trend.

This isn’t a glorious rebirth, it’s a functional facsimile, and it’s a wholly satisfying piece of slasher entertainment regardless.

Despite the film’s good intentions it’s an underwhelming adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, with cute side gags that make more of an impression than the characters or the story.

Disturbing, honest and compelling, The Stanford Prison Experiment turns a well-known story into must-see storytelling, depicting the ugly truth through gorgeous filmmaking.

The Little Stranger has all the disquieting atmosphere of a total void, and like a total void, not a lot happens in it. You might get sucked into the cold, but you’ll grow bored quickly.

In the hands of lesser performers and lesser filmmakers the premise could have fallen apart quickly. The Idea of You, however, has performers who know exactly what they need to bring to deliver a believable, compelling romance worth getting swept up in.

Adapting Eric Jager’s 2004 non-fiction book with screenwriters Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener, Scott spins a medieval yarn that is by turns gruesome, grotesque, gorgeous and inconsistent.

Though Bidegain’s effort has its moments, it never gels into a cohesive, intimate-yet-expansive whole.

It effectively makes the case for the startling musical genius of Brian Wilson, using celebrity testimony and musical examples to paint a clear portrait of the troubled songwriter, producer and singer as a protean pop creator. And the frustrating thing about “Long Promised Road” is that it makes that case and then keeps making it for an hour and a half.

Serving as the anchor to a drama that otherwise frequently holds you at a distance, Melliti gives an understated yet riveting performance as a young woman finding her way in the world. The film lives and dies on her shoulders, making it all the more exciting to see her carry it with such nuance.

Given that we already have a documentary that captures the event so successfully from inside the era, it’s curious that the filmmakers don’t try to mine a perspective beyond nostalgia

While Zeman’s enthusiasm is occasionally infectious, his conjectures, explained in voiceover, are riddled with platitudes and self-centered sound bites that say more about an egotistical need to be the first at something, to be the one who found 52, than about our connection with our large swimming counterparts.

Mimi Cave knows how to captivate and how to repulse, usually at the same time. She knows how to make us laugh and hate ourselves for laughing. “Fresh” is a breakneck emotional roller coaster, and like many roller coasters, it’ll also make your stomach churn.

By nature of its central subject, it’s a piece of work that infuriates and excites. It’s a deeply upsetting movie, and then, sporadically, a hopeful one.

As shot by his frequent collaborator, the cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and cut together by Kogonada himself, Zi blurs the lines between tone poem and hangout movie, letting both merge together to become something unexpectedly moving.

For better and for worse, Carax never goes for half measures and Annette never stops being bold and weird.

Chappaquiddick may or may not be what actually happened, but it gets at enough piercing truths.

In description, A Faithful Man sounds like quite a rich brew, but it is actually more of an exercise than anything else, a chance to play a kind of cinematic shell game with four main characters who are never quite what they seem.

Delightfully unpredictable and surprisingly shocking, this is the kind of wintry wickedness that will see you through both Halloween and Christmas, especially if you like those holiday flavors together.

The King of Staten Island can test the patience of all but fervid Davidson devotees, but it also manages to be an affecting comedy that moves softly through some dangerous territory.