It seems Hollywood is always a step behind when it comes to addressing our rapid shifts in technological development and this occasionally thought-provoking but narratively inert thriller is a perfect example of that disconnect. The Circle warns of the dangers of digital interconnectivity and full immersion into social media but it takes these concepts to such hyperbolic highs that it feels more alarmist than enlightening. Besides coming across as technologically tone-deaf, the movie also introduces more plot points and storylines than it can possibly keep up with and cuts many of them off with an abrupt ending that’s lazy and unsatisfying.

The story involves a bright young woman named Mae (Emma Watson), who gives up her dead-end job to join The Circle, a nebulous Apple/Facebook/Google-type digital conglomerate headed up by the charismatic Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks). She soon distinguishes herself among her cohorts (“guppies”, as they’re affectionately titled) and rises up the ranks to become one of the company’s chief creative strategists, pitching ideas to improve their TrueYou platform. After spending more time at The Circle, Mae begins to peel back the picture-perfect corporate culture to reveal darker secrets that lurk under the surface with the help of a mysterious employee played by John Boyega.

Director James Ponsoldt, who’s responsible for winning indie dramas like The Spectacular Now and The End of the Tour, has a talent for bringing out the intimate and human dimensions in his stories, so it’s no wonder that he’s such a poor match for this material given its preference for machine over man. Save for a pair of performances by Glenne Headly and the recently deceased Bill Paxton as Mae’s parents, the movie is sorely lacking any kind of emotional anchor upon which to tether any kind of techno-paranoia that may develop from the story. Mae’s doting boyfriend Mercer, played with a stunning lack of conviction by Boyhood star Ellar Coltrane, could be seen as the film’s moral backbone if it bothered to take a defined stance on the role technology should play in our day-to-day lives.

Ponsoldt doesn’t get much help from a Dave Eggers-penned script, adapted from his 2013 novel, that introduces far too many plotlines that seem to come out of left field (Mae’s story, for instance, takes a complete 180 around the halfway mark) and negate whatever narrative momentum has already been established. He has so much that he wants to say about how this kind of new technology could affect how we live and yet very few of his points are woven into the story with the kind of cohesion that would make them salient or intriguing. It plays like a half-baked episode of Black Mirror that has all of the neat gadgetry and starring roles figured out but doesn’t have enough new insight on its subject material.

Despite its apparent lack of focus, there are nuggets of inspired concepts buried within the needlessly convoluted story that suggest a more pointed or satirical take on how interact with our plethora of devices. There are visual cues like the slow proliferation of screens at Mae’s desk to the sea of illuminated emblems in an audience enamored with their tablets that subtly remind us just how inundated we are with bright new distractions every day. In the film’s best scene, Mae tells an employee conducting her job interview that her greatest fear is unfulfilled potential and if that’s the case, there’s no doubt that The Circle would have terrified her.

The new sci-fi horror mashup Life follows a crew of astronauts aboard the International Space Station as they successfully secure a speeding space probe from Mars that may hold the secret of life forms beyond Earth. After taking a sample from the planet’s soil, the ship’s biologist (Ariyon Bakare) discovers a single-celled organism that he’s able to revive with atmospheric adjustments and the slimy new passenger soon turns into a more complex being before their very eyes. When an experiment goes wrong in the lab one day, the new creature (who comes to be nicknamed Calvin) escapes his containment area and becomes increasingly hostile towards the astronauts on board.

The good news is that everything prior to the title card, say the first 15 minutes or so, is first-rate and includes a one-take tracking shot that expertly captures the crew in the middle of a mission as the camera zips around effortlessly in the zero-gravity environment. The bad news is that subsequent hour or so is poorly scripted, unmemorably acted and worst of all, highly derivative of other space horror films like Alien and Sunshine. From a conceptual standpoint, it feels like a rebuttal to The Martian, which is about one astronaut stranded in space who uses his intelligence and scientific know-how to navigate through his dire situation.

Life inverts this scenario and instead assigns us to a group of scientists with the kind of lackluster decision-making capabilities that have seemed to plague screaming teenagers in slasher movies for years now. Nearly every choice or plan that’s made by any character seems ill-advised and devoid of any common sense, to the degree that they’re not believable as top researchers in their respective fields, much less as reasonably smart people to begin with. This is a movie about the search for intelligent life and it seems that before Calvin enters the space station, there’s none to be found on board among the incompetent crew.

It also doesn’t help that the characters are not very well-established either, as director Daniel Espinosa is clearly in a big hurry to show us his ever-expanding digital monster rather than give us a crew worth rooting for in the first place. That’s a shame since the cast includes charismatic and capable performers like Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson who aren’t able to use their star power to put some life into their one-dimensional roles. The screenwriting duo of Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick eschews any wit and flavor they may have had left from last year’s Deadpool script and instead settles for flat, perfunctory dialogue peppered with technical goobledigook for good measure.

The film doesn’t score many points on the dramatic and science fiction fronts but if you’re expecting a simple, space-set slasher movie, then there is some fun to be had as the crew members are dispatched in creative and often unexpected ways. The visual design for Calvin starts off a bit silly, as he initially flops around the lab like a squishy sponge but he continues to grow into a more sophisticated and menacing foe throughout the story. Aside from some of these horror elements and a promising opening sequence, Life is generally underwhelming and frequently reminds us of how much better it could have been.

Hugh Jackman dons the CGI claws one last time as the mutant Wolverine for the brutal and sobering Logan, which is as startling a left turn into dramatic territory for the superhero genre as last year’s Deadpool was for the comedic sides of things. The X-Men series has always been attuned with the more fantastical and frivolous trappings of comic book fare –often the glut of superpowers across its myriad of characters can seem arbitrary and sometimes a bit silly– but the character of Wolverine has always been treated with more weight and seriousness in the film adaptations. It’s not surprising, then, that Logan feels like a culmination of the more mature themes that the character has established and is a perfect send-off for Jackman’s iteration of the brooding berserker.

Set in 2029 after the X-Men have disbanded and any remaining mutants are mysteriously absent, we follow an aging “Wolverine” (he just goes by Logan now) as he wastes his days as a nondescript limo driver in Texas while also caring for the now brain-damaged Professor Xavier (Sir Patrick Stewart). After meeting with a desperate new client, Logan reluctantly accepts a job to transport a young girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) to a location nicknamed “Eden” in North Dakota, which allegedly provides safe haven for those with special powers. While on the road, they are pursued by the devious Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and his mechanically-enhanced henchmen from the shady corporation Transigen that’s behind other “manufactured mutants” like Laura.

Director James Mangold, also responsible for the excellent 2007 remake 3:10 To Yuma, envisions this chapter in Wolverine’s story as a modern-day Western about a man whose lifetime of suffering and regret has finally caught up with him as his ability to heal fades away. His unrelenting focus is on the human side of these seemingly impervious superheroes, who we’ve previously seen manage incredible acts of courage and strength but now struggle just to get through each day as their bodies continue to fail them. The effects of their ailments can manifest themselves in exaggerated supernatural form–for instance, Xavier’s dementia triggers seizures that create a kind of “psychic earthquake” for those who surround him–but Mangold also gives equal attention to the constant necessities of sleep and sustenance (and, yes, bladder relief) along the way.

Aside from being an overt, Shane-referencing Western, Logan also functions as a throwback road movie with a sci-fi twist that has shades of superb contemporaries like Midnight Special and even the time-traveler Looper at the heart of its story. At times, it feels like a contrasting character study between two men dealing with the inevitability of time in polar opposite ways; Xavier with a sense of quiet humility and  Logan with a great deal of bitter resentment. Most important for fans of the series, though, this is an uncompromising, R-rated action feature that will satiate the bloodlust of hardcore Wolverine fans who have been denied the ultra-violent carnage that the PG-13 films previously kept at bay.

Even if this is used as a justification for the gratuitous and, dare I say, needlessly excessive action scenes, I still found the film to be more exhausting than exhilarating in the execution (pardon the term) of its combat. The opening scene, in which Logan confronts a pack of would-be car jackers, is well-choreographed and tightly edited but every subsequent scene of claw-imposed brutality begins to feel redundant and tedious throughout its punishing 140 minute runtime. Still, there’s plenty of other creative elements at play during Logan, in addition to a pair of terrific performances by Jackman and Stewart, that make it a worthy swan song for the Wolverine.

Up to this point, Jordan Peele has been most notable for the sketch comedy series Key & Peele and last year’s so-so comedy Keanu but he’s clearly stepped up his game in a big way for his directorial debut. Get Out is my favorite kind of horror movie: one that mines the small anxieties and absurdities of everyday living to create an increasingly feverish nightmare scenario that paradoxically feels more plausible as it gets stranger. What’s more, it has a tongue-in-cheek perspective on modern race relations that most major studios would try to shy away from or push to the side but this film uses to create something that’s both timely and trailblazing.

British actor Daniel Kaluuya, who starred in my favorite episode of Black Mirror, plays Chris, a talented black photographer who has been dating his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) for a few months and finds that the time has come for a weekend trip to meet her family. Aside from the typical nerves that arise from meeting a significant other’s parents for the first time, Chris worries that Rose hasn’t told her white family that she’s dating a black man, even though she can’t imagine her liberal parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) having any issues with their relationship. All seems to be going well during the initial meet-up but as time progresses, an unplaceable tension gives way to creepy behavior and a sense that something sinister may be afoot.

Not only is the acting in Get Out uniformly fantastic but the casting of each character (with one glaring exception) is spot-on in both major and minor roles. Kaluuya’s unassuming mannerisms are a perfect fit for a character that endures increasingly bizarre circumstances and Williams brings layers of depth to a role that seems similar to the one she plays in the HBO series Girls but proves to have much more going on under the surface. There’s even some hilarious comic relief in the form of comedian Lil Rel Howery, who’s often an audience surrogate and the voice of reason against the abnormal twists that develop as the plot progresses.

Peele is markedly assured as a first-time director; he knows just how far to take each scene and is so skilled at playing with the expectations and empathies of his audience. He also addresses racism in admirably nuanced fashion, not settling for easy targets and low-hanging fruit but instead exposing the condescension and tactlessness that can occur in communication between black people and even the most well-intentioned of white people. The film’s best scene documents a barrage of these types of interactions,  in which privileged partygoers are eager to engage with Chris about his superior physique and the greatness of Tiger Woods (even though Chris mentions that he’s not a golf fan).

Aside from the racial commentary, the film works on its own terms as a ruthlessly efficient thriller that expertly ratchets up the tension and diffuses it in ways that are sometimes funny, sometimes scary but always surprising. The influence of directors ranging from Spike Jonze to Michael Haneke is evident from details that pop up in the costume design and the visual effects, which indicates that Peele clearly did his homework when crafting his project. I’ll no doubt pick up on more of these embedded elements during the inevitable repeat viewings that I have for Get Out, one of the finest achievements of the horror genre in the 21st century.