Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984). Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez) is a Los Angeles punk rocker who bumbles his way into work repossessing cars. He soaks in the tutelage of Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), a grizzled veteran of the trade, and strikes up a romance with a young woman (Olivia Barash) he encounters while making his rounds. Along the way, the plot also makes space aliens being smuggled in the trunk of a vintage Chevy Malibu. Repo Man is splendidly weird in a way that makes its deliberately offhand qualities come across as charming rather than amateurish. Although writer-director Alex Cox might have deeper ideas about society, capitalism, and class divides in mind, the film is ultimately more notable for its loose, brash comedy and slaphappy satire. Cox’s strong visual sense serves him well here, giving the proceedings added jolts of energy and invention. Stanton is terrific in a role that maybe only he could play effectively, and Tracey Walter makes the most of his philosophizing mechanic role.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (David Wain, 2026). It’s a little slapdash in an empty-out-the-whole-comedy-junk-drawer sort of way, but Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is mostly a winning effort. Zoey Deutch is extremely appealing in the title role, a naive Midwesterner whose jokey proposal to her fiancé (Michael Cassidy) of a tryst allowance for a chosen famous person immediately backfires (it involves a very funny cameo performance that I’d rather not spoil). Gail seeks to balance the scales by trekking to Hollywood and offering herself up to the star she selected, Jon Hamm (who plays himself). The premise invites raunchy juvenilia, and that’s certainly represented. Director David Wain (who co-wrote the screenplay with Ken Marino) stealthily swirls in enough earnest affection for the characters to make the film strangely sweet-natured. Amusing cameos abound, and John Slattery is terrific playing himself in a larger supporting role. He delivers a resolutely unflattering self-portrait that is also consistently hilarious.

The Christophers (Steven Soderbergh, 2026). This intellectually twisty drama comes across like Steven Soderbergh melding one of his slightly flashier forays into bigscreen, adult-oriented storytelling with a similarly characteristic smaller-scale effort. In a performance of marvelously measured ostentation, Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a renowned painter whose career and reputation have taken some hits from years of inactivity and acts of self-sabotage. His grown children (James Corden and Jessica Gunning, effectively unlikeable) are eager for the looming posthumous bump in value his art is likely to receive, especially if they can get their hands on some fabled unseen painting. They conspire to get fledgling artist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) hired on as Julian’s assistant so she can essentially case the house for their future plunder. The Christophers is undoubtedly at its strongest when it really settles in with McKellen and Coel. The film is filled with spirited, prickly debates about art and legacy, all nicely scripted by Ed Solomon. It’s the plotting where Solomon occasionally stumbles. Soderbergh directs with his customary invention and command of narrative mechanics.