Raineau — along with fellow scribe Lauren Schacher — pens this contrived dramedy with all the creative titillation of a diaper rash. Transparently raunchy and stretched out for cheapened chuckles, Hooking Up yearns to be strident in its running gag involving Darla (Brittany Snow, “Pitch Perfect 3”), a magazine sex columnist who is hopelessly addicted to the very same hot subject matter she is paid to write about. In fact, Darla is so wrapped up in her sex-addiction that we are shown just how deep her affliction is — the opening moments has the lusty Darla uncontrollably bonking the stuffing out of her sex-addiction support group classroom leader . . . and this is just before their meeting is conducted. Indeed, Darla is an undisciplined mess and her wild-minded whims are just as toxic as her crass demeanor. In short, Darla has no filter whatsoever.

As imagined in contrived sitcom land fashion, a disillusioned outsider named Bailey (Sam Richardson, “Office Christmas Party”) accidentally wanders into the wrong group meeting that just so happens to include the uncouth Darla. Bailey is a testicular cancer survivor and is trying to cope with the rejection from his childhood sweetheart. However, wandering into the wrong support group may prove to be just what the teddy-bearish Bailey needed as he manages to strike up a distinctive rapport with the edgy, carnal-craving Darla. Together, this unlikely duo will embark on a sordid adventure as they hit the traveled roadways in an effort to figure out the things that have unraveled for them.

For Darla, she has reached her ultimate limit when her glossy magazine editor Tanya (Jordana Brewster, “Furious 7”) had fired her on the spot for holding sexual dalliances with a co-worker. Somehow, Darla is convinced that by hopping from place to place (particularly where she participated in some of her memorable, juicy sexual exploits) it may rectify some of her nostalgic naughtiness and give legitimacy to her developing blog entitled Sex Drive (how clever, huh?). In terms of Bailey, he is offered a chance to try and cope with his returning cancer diagnosis while in the company of a bed-hopping blonde companion known for having more than her share of a good time sexually. Plus, Bailey is hoping that the presence of decadent Darla could work to his advantage and, through the right set of circumstances, help him win back his dismissive woman’s heart. Overall, the film asks the audience to buy into the silliness, seediness, and sympathies of this defeated tandem who are trying so desperately to grasp at redemption through an ill-advised road-trip.

Can Darla get back in the good graces of Tanya and salvage her sexual writing career without playing victim to her overwhelming sex addiction? Will Bailey convince his true love that he is a complete man despite his cancerous manhood at stake? Are Darla and Bailey the living proof that complete opposites can attract and share a common goal in both loneliness and acceptance?

Tediously realized, Hooking Up does somewhat benefit from the off-the-cuff, high-spirited performances from both Snow and Richardson. The tired premise of the uncontrollable sexpot and her sickly travel companion could have been more enjoyable had the follow-the-dots material been more challenging for them, however. The whole contrasting of lost personalities through the arbitrary avenues of rudimentary self-discovery is something of an overplayed hand that ultimately feels monotonous and manipulative. Perhaps Darla and Bailey needed to be quarantined in favor of taking this cheeky R-rated joyride to nowhere.

Uncertain of his own sexuality and needing his parents support, Jared acknowledges that he wants to change the behavior that he believes to be wrong and is willing to attend a 12-day conversion course that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation by using religion as a justification and coercive techniques as its method. The facility that he is sent to is called “Love in Action” and is run by the well-meaning but authoritarian pastor Victor Sykes (Edgerton). Like a Chinese re-education camp, those enrolled must follow rigid rules such as surrendering their cell phones and turning over any notebooks they may bring. They are also not allowed to discuss the details of the program with their parents or guardians who stay at a nearby hotel.

Sykes believes that homosexuality is a choice and that “tough love” techniques are effective in producing results. These techniques include forcing recruits to acknowledge their sinful ways and express anger towards their parents. They are also compelled to draw up a family tree showing which family members were sinful. This kind of borderline sadistic behavior is exemplified by counselor Brandon (Flea, “Baby Driver”) who, on one occasion, prevents Jared from leaving the bathroom, calling him a “faggot.” Using shame and physical abuse to intimidate, Sykes zeroes in on Cameron (Britton Sear, “Unfinished Business”), a quiet, heavy-set boy who will not acknowledge his “sins,” bullying him by having family members beat him with a bible and immersing him in a bathtub until he nearly drowns.

Fellow converts Jon (Xavier Dolan, “Bad Times at the El Royale”), Sarah (Jesse LaTourette), and Gary (Troye Sivan, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) support the program or, in Gary’s case, just tell Sykes what he wants to hear until it’s time to leave. Refusing to condemn his father, however, Jared retrieves his cell phone, calls his mother to pick him up, and bolts from the facility. As the troubled teen, Hedges delivers a sensitive and nuanced performance that has encouraged Oscar talk and Crowe and Kidman provide exceptional support. While Jared is a symbol, he is also a human being and his growth from a taciturn, compliant individual to one who stands up for himself and outwardly expresses his feelings is inspiring. The most compelling scenes of Boy Erased, however, revolve around his relationship with his parents.

Edgerton is cautious about portraying Jared’s dad as a villain and makes clear that the parents love for their son is real even if they have different ideas about what is best for him. In a pair of impactful scenes between Jared and each of his parents that take place four years later, Marshall realizes that a reevaluation of the ideas he has held his whole life may be necessary and Nancy moves from being a submissive echo of her husband to asserting herself not merely as a wife and mother but as a thinking individual who cannot close her eyes to the harm that is being done to her son.

Much progress has been made since the time not too long ago when being gay was considered by many professionals to be a mental illness that required drastic treatments such as castration, hypnosis, or electric shock. Even though virtually every leading health organization has denounced efforts to change one’s sexual orientation, and reaffirmed that attempts to do so could result in serious health risks, gay conversion therapy is still flourishing and has been banned in only 14 states in the U.S. In addition to being a superbly crafted film, Boy Erased delivers a potent message that may help these remaining states realize that the only fix that gay people require is acceptance, support, and unconditional love.

One afternoon, she spots a pretty brunette as she’s driving along, and decides to follow her. Once she determines where the young woman lives, she returns day after day, and begins tracking her every move. In one instance, Janie falls asleep in her car outside the house and is discovered by the woman, who knocks on her window in concern. Janie is thrown, but recovers enough to tell the woman, who introduces herself as Savannah (Sara Malakul Lane, “12/12/12”), that she’s just waiting for a friend. However, her obsession intensifies as Janie peers into Savannah’s window at night, uses her hidden spare house key to stealthily enter Savannah’s home, and even tracks down Savannah’s boyfriend’s home. Each day, she returns home later and later, and Irma, her caretaker, becomes more agitated about her adventures. She warns Janie to be careful, because “there are a lot of ways this world could hurt you.”

Irma’s treatment of Janie is intense (while strangely unclear); there are therapy/punishments that involve Janie lying on the couch reacting in the form of seizures to the high pitch of a tuning fork and Irma’s yoga sessions are extreme and forceful, rather than relaxing and focused. It doesn’t appear that Irma is a healthcare professional of any kind, but the established situation is never fully explained. As Janie begins to feel more and more like herself, she starts separating herself from Irma’s grasp, despite Irma’s warnings that these behaviors are what led to her illness concerns before. Irma forebodingly tells her that she promised Janie’s father years ago that she “. . . would spend the rest of my life worrying about you and caring for you, whether either one of us likes it.”

I think you see where this is going.

Sun Choke is a potent thriller that moves slowly, yet cuts deeply. Written and directed by Ben Cresciman, the film chronicles the simple tale of a woman struggling with her psychological identity and existence, and mainly exhibits scenes through her distorted points of view and tension-laden experiences. Inside her home, you worry for Janie who comes across as meek and battered at the hands of Irma; however, in the outside world, she gathers her strength and boldly violates the sanctity of Savannah’s privacy time and again. Sarah Hague is extraordinary as the enigmatic Janie, vacillating between a timid woman who answers to “little girl” in her home and an authentic, on-the-brink threat to a kind stranger just trying to be friendly. Her center-parted straight brown hair and icy blue eyes pierce whomever she speaks with, and her descent into psychological breakdown is truly chilling.

The film boasts well-executed technical elements as well. The sound design is masterful, blending a haunting original score by Bryan Hollon and the enhancement of everyday ambient noises by sound mixer Amanda Beggs. The tinkling of broken glass, the slosh of feet walking through puddles, and the swish of clothing all shout through the speakers, adding to the palpable tension. Cinematographer Mathew Rudenberg represents Janie’s weakening grip on herself through medium long shots that accentuate the isolation she feels in her own home, and editor Jason Jones wields a variety of rapid-fire extreme close-ups to amplify Janie’s increasing confusion at the stimuli she encounters, both inside and outside her mind.

While the action of Sun Choke is mostly subdued, it’s engrossing and fascinating, driven by outstanding performances by its lead and supporting actresses. There are elements of the backstory that are left vague and unexplained, but the film leaves a definitive impression on the viewer. The characters and situations latch onto you and refuse to give in, mirroring Janie’s obsession and degrading stability. It is a truly disquieting psychological piece that you won’t soon forget.

It’s been done before, of course, but often movies so deep into the state of unconscious experience try to blur the lines of reality so that we’re forced to question the veracity of what we’re seeing. Horsehead, however, never tries to trick us since the nightmare sequences are treated as such an intense sensory barrage that it’s hard to mistake one experience for the other. Basset wants us to be aware when we’ve slipped below, which quickly occurs more often than not.

What makes Horsehead such a curiously intriguing and oddly memorable picture is how the visions are captured so cacophonously without becoming obnoxious and so relentlessly without becoming repetitive. It’s a tough spot that Basset puts himself in because the movie’s impact hinges entirely on the evocative nature of the visions and on beautiful star Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux’s ability to make us care with what often amounts to a silent performance.

The story begins simply with Pointeaux’s protagonist Jessica returning to her rural childhood home in a small French town. Jessica’s grandmother has recently passed away and so a visit is in order, although tension between Jessica and her mother Catelyn (Catriona MacColl) is clear from the moment she arrives. Jessica’s stepfather (Murray Head) is an amiable guy who does his best to smooth over the rift between mother and daughter, usually with little success.

Upon arriving, Jessica is soon besieged by visions that link her to the deceased grandmother and hint at an eerie secret involving the church, Catelyn’s pregnancy years prior, and a disturbing humanoid figure who fulfills the promise of the pic’s title rather literally by having a disturbing horse’s head on its shoulders. The creature is partially brought to life with a frightening mask that adds a tangible quality to the surging surrealism.

Jessica soon falls ill and begins to dip into the dream world so often that the movie eventually treats the waking world as a brief pit stop. Basset hurls us into the nightmare visions and teases out the truth of what’s happening, but where Horsehead really finds its stride is in the depiction of the nightmares and the sense of assaulting horror that they contain.

The plot and the answers that Jessica seeks are mainly trivial, which isn’t to suggest they don’t leave an impression, but that the ideas are ones we’ve encountered before. They’re well executed, but that’s the point here. Basset acknowledges that the narrative elements aren’t particularly original, so he packages them in an original way. He comes at us with an energy and strange mix of sexy and nasty that breaks down our sense of cinematic surroundings and determinedly inserts us into Jessica’s dreamscape experiences, aligning us with her perspective.

To do this effectively, Basset has to leave behind certain conventions of modern horror cinema and commit to a visceral eruption of his imagination, complete with grinding sound effects and poetic flashes of gore. The visions rarely have any dialogue spoken in them and even the lines that exist are attributed to flashbacks, so while the sound mix is aggressive, Basset still forces himself to explore the nightmares through inventive imagery.

A logline for the movie mentions horror icons Mario Bava and Dario Argento as influences and while the Grand Guignol style and emphasis on visuals support that suggestion, I also found shades of Takashi Miike in here due to the clarity of vision and relentlessness of delivering it. Others may find further influences, but regardless of who or what has imprinted on Basset, it’s clear that this new filmmaker has both imagination and the skill to bring it to light. Horsehead takes its inspirations and morphs them into something fresh and interesting, a cinematic nightmare enveloped by its own experience.

Luckily, with the new Brian Wilson-centric, Love and Mercy, a fittingly harmonious balance in this field is reached. Instead of following one linear storyline through the film, we instead are shown two pivotal glimpses into the Beach Boys songwriter’s life — one spanning from the heyday of the California rock band as a young Wilson (Paul Dano, “Prisoners”) composed the monumental Pet Sounds album in 1966 and spiraled toward the ill-fated follow-up record, Smile, and the other centered around a middle-aged Wilson (John Cusack, “The Raven”) in the 1980s out of the public eye and under the close watch of his therapist, Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti, “San Andreas”).

With this, the creative forces behind Love and Mercy establish a kind of compromise that is likely to appease die-hard Beach Boys fans as well as casual cinema-goers. By depicting the hugely prodigious and perhaps best-regarded period of the band’s career, fans will get their fill of songs they love as well as a visualization of the mythology surrounding this era. Likewise, more casual viewers will be equally transfixed on the dramatic center of the film in our protagonist’s haunted mental state and as the more mature Wilson finds love in Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1”) faces his demons and tries to piece his life back together.

But more than that, there is a real sense of artistry achieved in this film, and that can be something of a rarity in this somewhat constrictive biographic formula. As the movie opens, we are shown a one-sided view of what could presumably be an interview with Wilson around the time of Pet Sounds, but we only see Dano. Was there anyone else there asking a question, or was that just a conversation with himself? Fittingly, as we transition into the main part of the film, this suggested theme is brought to the forefront as the audience is merely shown a blank screen, yet we begin to hear faint traces of voices and of music creeping in all around us, seemingly without origin — a glimpse into the complex mind of Wilson himself.

All things considered, Love and Mercy may inherently work best for Beach Boy-fanatics or pop music nerds. There are occasional moments of gratuitous inclusions for fan-service that play about as well as dramatizing a passage from a Wikipedia page. However, the strength of the film’s dramatic current along with the palpable earnestness of the principal actors make this more of a nitpick than anything. And if we’re all being honest, what biopic doesn’t have a few of those moments?

Boasting a uniquely enthralling sense of storytelling and some, frankly, spellbinding performances by our four main leads, with a special emphasis on Paul Dano’s young Brian Wilson, Love and Mercy stands as a heartbreaking trek into the delves of tragedy and the empowering, romantic story of a way out — the perfect formula for a great biopic.

Cohen, being a social worker, discovered that playing music to people suffering from dementia often had a great impact on not only their demeanor, but even their memory. Asking each of them to tell him what their favorite songs were, he found that even those with severe dementia and/or Alzheimer’s disease were roused by hearing these songs again, and could even recall other aspects of their youth. He asked writer/director Michael Rossato-Bennett to film his work for a day, and seeing the effect Cohen was able to have upon patients at a nursing home, Rossato-Bennett then continued to follow and film Cohen’s work for three years. Over the span of those three years, the team visited several nursing homes and affected the lives of many patients.

Alive Inside begins by showing us a few of these patients in their first interactions with Music & Memory, in which Cohen explains to them that they can listen to music through something called an iPod. He places headphones over their ears, and we watch their eyes light up, realizing instantly the reasoning behind the film’s title. Their faces — and sometimes even bodies — spring to life when hearing music, as was the case with Denise, who hadn’t been able to walk by herself for years, but upon hearing Schubert’s “Ave Maria” again cast aside her walker and began dancing. It’s clear that this vitality has always been inside these people, but with little encouragement to express it, it has been left dormant.

As the film progresses, it delves further and further into the issue of medication and other forms of care provided for old people, and how it is insufficient in terms of providing the happiness that music has been proven to provide. Yet while various professionals appear on camera to tell us just how little the cost of providing music for these patients is in comparison to the millions spent on developing drugs that are ineffective, the film fails to offer much of an explanation of why this is the case. It’s generally understood that some form of red tape is holding back funding, but little is said of what Cohen’s efforts have been to combat these obstacles. The film is also incredibly light-handed in relation to the patients; very often, no backstory for them is provided, and when it is, it is cursory. With little context with which to truly appreciate Cohen’s struggle, and little understanding of the situations of these individuals, we’re left feeling a little like we’ve seen a 78-minute Kickstarter advertisement, rather than a documentary.

In keeping with this theme, the film rounds off with a look into how the video of Henry, one of the Alzheimer’s patients Cohen first played music to, went viral on YouTube, prompting hundreds of young people to visit their grandparents and other elderly people in order to play music to them and help the cause. As a documentary, Alive Inside doesn’t offer much in-depth analysis for what has been shown in the film, and fails to consider the project on a long term scale for patients, instead settling for showing us merely their immediate responses to hearing music. These responses, however, are so inherently uplifting that we’re not too concerned with how informative the film is, and simply enjoy the experience.