Privilege (Peter Watkins, 1967). This is exactly what I want a movie with a 1967 copyright date to be. The sole credited screenplay of novelist Norman Bogner, Privilege follows the story of Steven Shorter (played by Manfred Mann lead singer Paul Jones), a rock singer who is coopted by British authorities so they can insidiously control the upstart youth culture. Set in a near future, the film is groovy satire, just prescient enough to avoid being little more than an artifact of distant days when the counterculture seeped into cinema with sporadic success. Jones is a middling actor, but he does absolutely nail one expression: a rictus of antsy anguish. Luckily, that’s the main mode of his character. Peter Watkins directs the film with a freewheeling verve marked by moments of smart cynicism that nicely sell the whole conceit.

Sully (Clint Eastwood, 2016). This dramatization of events surrounding “The Miracle on the Hudson” shows what happens when filmmakers have a compelling incident but no real story to tell. To instill some drawn-out drama, the film is structured around the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the famed plane crash, with scoffing bureaucrats casting doubt on the heroism of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks). It plays phonier than the nightmare plane crashes that come to Sully in the night, seemingly for no other reason that for director Clint Eastwood to throw some CGI-painted destruction onscreen. You know, for the ticket-buying kids. Eastwood’s main problem, though, is a plodding indifference that gives the film the look and feel of a nineteen-eighties TV movie made with rushed near-competence to capitalize on recent news events.

Indignation (James Schamus, 2016). After years as the head of Focus Features and the chief creative partner of Ang Lee, James Schamus makes his directorial debut with the sort of project that has felled many a filmmaker: an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel. In the early nineteen-fifties, a young man named Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman) escapes his humble roots to attend the posh Winesburg College. He has his struggles, but he also falls under the spell of a classmate name Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), who operates with a memorable sexual forthrightness and shares hints of a troubled past. Schamus is also responsible for the adapted screenplay, which is filled with strong scenes, including a daring centerpiece that confines the action to a tense meeting between the college’s dean (Tracy Letts) for several riveting minutes. But there’s also a staid quality that can make the film seem a little square. It needlessly undercuts the potency of the film’s ideas, including the notion that identity politic battles aren’t exactly a new addition to college campuses.