Sci-fi satire Companion uses the viewer’s expectations against them in a clever-enough way, but because it ultimately confirms those expectations, it’s an empty experience. The twisty story, in which a racially diverse group of attractive young adults have a boozy weekend in the woods, lays out the dynamics and the character types before its first reveal of Iris (Sophie Thatcher) being a robot created to pose as Josh’s (Jack Quaid) girlfriend/masturbatory aid. Companion proceeds to tell me nothing I don’t…

Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here takes its time. A Brazilian family of seven is slowly introduced and observed going about their daily routines in their beachfront home in 70’s Rio. The eldest daughter is overseas on a year abroad, and those left behind eagerly await her letters. Friends come over for dinner and drinks, neighbors may as well be relatives, soccer is played in the street. Salles constructs this idyllic world, built out of kindness and negotiation and courtesy and…

The idle, hipster, New York rich have never been as ripe for the guillotine as they are in Rick Alverson’s The Comedy, a title that implies the arc of the film far more than its uncomfortable contents. Experimental comedy pioneer Tim Heidecker stars as the fittingly-named Swanson, a trust-fund kid who’s reached middle age by being as ironic and insincere as possible with his like-minded friends. Alverson opens his film with these pasty, shiftless layabouts jumping around in shirtless mayhem,…