Nadine Byrd is not having the best time. Her life is already terrible enough just being a teenage girl in her junior year of high school, and her dad dying when she was in middle school hasn’t made things better. So, it’s only natural that when she discovers that her best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) is sleeping with her older brother Darian (Blake Jenner), it sends her spinning into a crisis and more alone than ever. A classic teen movie scenario if there ever was one, “The Edge of Seventeen” provides a much-needed palate cleanser to the endless young adult movies that have been coming out ever since “The Hunger Games” first launched Jennifer Lawrence into the spotlight.

In most teen movies, the main character is misunderstood but fundamentally still likeable. They may not be popular, but they’re funny, warm–someone you might actually want to hang out with. Not Nadine. Portrayed by Hailee Steinfeld (finally putting her “True Grit” skills to good use), Nadine is a selfish, often abrasive presence defined as much by her myopic world view as she is by her own self-hatred. She resents her older brother purely because he seems to be popular and liked by his classmates in comparison to her, and Krista’s burgeoning relationship with him only feels like a further betrayal of their relationship.

It’s in these moments that “The Edge of Seventeen” truly shines and a big part of that is writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s script. Nadine rips into people with some ferociously harsh lines and generally she pushes everyone away with her mix of awkwardness and intense selfishness. But the moments of embarrassment that come always feel couched in some sort of truth so that even the most outlandish things feel like something that could happen to you. One of these occurs at a party soon after Krista starts dating Darian and drags a reluctant Nadine with her. Left alone, she tries to strike up a conversation with a drunk girl outside that seems to go well until she compares Nadine to Danny DeVito from “It’s Always Sunny”.

The adults in her life don’t seem to be as helpful as they could be either; her history teacher, Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson, perfecting a tired, funny educator) wishes she would stop bothering him, and her mother (Kyra Sedgwick) can’t seem to connect with her daughter in any way. Of the two adults, she seems to connect with Harrelson’s character the most and their rapport gives some of the funniest scenes in the film. Rounding out the cast are Alexander Calvert as her unobtainable crush and Hayden Szeto as the guy who just wishes she would acknowledge him. It’s a testament to the writing that the latter never comes off as pitiful or obsessive and in fact Nadine hurts him much in the same way she hurts everyone.

It’s refreshing to see a movie so willingly accept that teenagers can be terrible and selfish without turning them into stereotypes or one dimensional characters. Nadine is obviously dealing with a lot of issues in the wake of her father’s death and her own insecurities haven’t helped that; she’s surviving the only way she knows how, which is to be as abrasive as she can. What “The Edge of Seventeen” remembers is that there’s a person lying underneath the snark and given the wealth of jokes and scenes throughout, it’s enough to start a hunger for Craig’s next project. Whatever it is, you can be certain that Nadine won’t be forgotten so easily, nor will this wonderfully dark comedy.

Photo: Argent Pictures, IMDb

Ever since it premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation” has been a fountain of buzz and hype. Along with its title — reclaiming a name from D.W. Griffith’s infamous 1912 racist masterpiece — the Sundance viewing audience reveled in its telling of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner, a story Parker had been trying to bring to screen for at least seven years. It won both the grand jury prize and the audience award for dramatic feature in the lead-up to Fox Searchlight paying a record-breaking $17.5 million for the distribution rights.

Unfortunately, this spotlight on Parker (known for movies such as “Beyond the Lights,” “Red Tails” and “Non-Stop”) soon turned against him once a 1999 rape charge against him and his writing partner Jean Celestin resurfaced. Parker was found not guilty while Celestin’s conviction was overturned, followed by the accuser’s suicide in 2012. Parker’s refusal to comment on the case and whether or not he had affirmative consent didn’t do much to help his public image, nor did comments in 2014 about gay roles being “emasculating.” What tends to get lost in controversies like this is the quality of the actual film itself, as many attempt to separate the artist from the art.

So does “Birth of a Nation” live up to the hype? It’s certainly a powerful and spiritual experience, but the film is a rather straightforward biopic, starting with Turner as a child being told he is destined for greatness. From there, it goes on to show his life as a slave (played by Parker himself) who is favored by his master Samuel Turner and his mother (Armie Hammer and Penelope Ann Miller, respectively, both giving fairly decent performances despite feeling flat). He then learns to read and begins touring the various plantations where he is exposed to the greater horrors of slavery. These scenes are appropriately gratuitous and horrifying, though the horrors feel pulpier than the somber scenes of “12 Years a Slave,” Steve McQueen’s Best-Picture-winning masterpiece. Parker doesn’t shy away from getting into the nitty-gritty of the violent acts committed against the slaves and manages to keep it from being exploitative.

Both Cherry, Turner’s entirely fictional wife played by Aja Naomi King and another slave (Gabrielle Union) are victims of sexual assault in the film and to its credit, both are portrayed tastefully. Union spoke out about being a victim shortly after the controversy. However, the fact that Parker and Celestin felt the need to invent a rape in part to give reason for Turner to rebel makes one wonder about their history — to say nothing about the way it refashions a female character as a motivation for the protagonist and an act of sexual assault as a way of making the villain more villainous. It can’t help but seem as if Parker is attempting to make himself into a greater hero for a past event or trying to show how much of a good guy he is.

The script would be the weakest part of the film even without those two questionable incidences. Far too often the dialogue is blunt, the characters speaking in literal terms and putting forth heavy-handed symbolism to show Turner’s religion. More frustrating is the way that Parker and Celestin don’t expand upon themes they introduce, preferring to stick to moments that become jarringly cornball when compared with the rest of the film. Turner himself isn’t portrayed beyond a surface level, although Parker commits wholeheartedly to the performance.

What saves the film is Parker’s direction, despite its occasional heavy-handedness and questionable motivations. He stages the final rebellion sequences as a tense and cathartic revenge fantasy that nonetheless shows what happens when someone gets pushed too far. He also manages to create some striking images: whether it be the time-lapse of the cotton field in the morning or more surreal moments. Despite its many flaws inherent to a first-time director and a script that feels like it could have been perfect awards bait, Parker has crafted a unique film that almost deserves to be seen just because it exists. It’s a shame his own views and past can’t help but creep in from time to time.

Photo: Relativity Media, IMDb

In  1997, an employee of the Loomis Fargo security company pulled off one of biggest heists in the history of the U.S., and by himself at that. Given our endless fascination with true crime stories, it’s easy to imagine a grim and gritty thriller that follows the aftermath as the participants try to stay ahead of the law. Finally seeing its release after over a year’s delay due to the bankruptcy of Relativity Media, “Masterminds” is… not quite that. Attempting to be more of a “Fargo”-esque comedy about incompetent criminals, the film aspires to be like the “Anchorman” of this mix but falls far too short of that goal.

Zach Galifianakis, introduced sporting a Prince Valiant hairstyle that the filmmakers must’ve assumed would get instant laughs (it didn’t),  plays robber David Ghantt, a North Carolina armored truck driver in a bit of a happy-dead-end (including an impending marriage to Kate McKinnon’s Jandice). At the urging of Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig) and her friend Steve Chambers (Owen Wilson), Ghantt steals almost $17 million from his employees and absconds off to Mexico, awaiting both Campbell and the rest of his money.

And that’s basically it. For a film focused so much on a robbery, “Masterminds” spends very little time on the actual process, instead showing the aftermath of the robbery and the various ways that Ghanttt is screwed over before finally getting wise. This wouldn’t be that big of a problem if the screenwriters (Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer and Emily Spivey) had bothered to give any of the characters personality beyond the broadest characteristics. In particular, the film seems to treat Ghantt as an idiot and to his credit, Galifianakis commits wholeheartedly to the performance.

The rest of the cast also does well with their parts: McKinnon and Leslie Jones (FBI Special Agent Scanlon), hot off the heels of their breakouts on “Ghostbusters” despite this filming before that, make the most of their meager screentime. The former especially leans wholeheartedly into the weird and unsettling nature of her character, giving shades of the zany comedy it so wants to be. Jones unfortunately gets a lot of jokes about how masculine and unladylike she looks, but at least manages to play a law enforcement officer with enough humor to suggest future movie roles. In fact, the only true blind spot is Jason Sudeikis as an assassin; at first coming off a touch unusual, he soon overstays his welcome and becomes grating on the whole film.

“Masterminds” as a whole features the detailed, retro-kitsch production design director Jared Hess is known for. His classic “Napoleon Dynamite,” while polarizing, had enough sweet moments and memorable lines to forgive the thin plotting and broad characterizations. He’s left with none of that here, instead resorting to gross-out gags and props that are funny for one second before becoming tiring. At its best, the film leans into “Anchorman”-style surreal jokes and gets off a few good lines. At its worst, it feels like a disparate mix of the aforementioned films and Wes Anderson that feels much longer than a 94-minute film should. “Masterminds” is not as terrible as it could’ve been, but it zips past the good parts and leaves us stranded with things that only appear to be funny.