As faith-based films go, “Miracles from Heaven” is a bit of a soft-sell.

Faith is present and the faithful are tested — by bad fortune, by the medical establishment, by their fellow churchgoers. But when good things happen to a family whose little girl is snatched from the jaws of an untreatable, fatal illness, they know who gets the credit.

It’s a feel-good movie “based on real events” and built around an emphatic, emotional performance by Jennifer Garner. She plays Christy Beam, a Texas mom who lives every parent’s nightmare. Her angelic little girl, Anna (gets sick). And nobody seems to know what’s wrong.

They live in a big house in relative affluence.

“It’s a good life, Christy Beam,” veterinarian husband Kevin (Martin Henderson of “Everest”) recites, as a mantra. “It’s a good life, Kevin Beam,” Christy beams back.

They’re solid church-going folks, part of a modern “spirit-filled” evangelical congregation where the music is provided by a Christian pop band and the preacher (John Carroll Lynch, very good) who knows sermons go down easier when they’re entertaining — lighthearted.

But the Beams are bowled over when Anna gets sick. And Christy has to get her back up as doctor after doctor misdiagnoses the ever-sicker child. Veteran character actor Bruce Altman has the gravitas to reassure us that yes, his character’s diagnosis is the correct one. Anna is dying and it will be an agonizing death.

Director Patricia Riggen (“Under the Same Moon”) plays up the emotions, the strain and the desperation facing the family, Christy in particular, as she looks for that one doctor who will tell her something different. Desperation sends them to Boston, without an appointment, where a specialist (Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez of “Instructions Not Included”). His news isn’t much better. But as he clowns around the patient, we and they can hope.

Queen Latifah plays a comically sympathetic waitress who shows mother and daughter around the city. Treatment begins, and then something totally outside the treatment changes everything.

The movie flirts with supernaturalism. But the Beams’ story is anchored in smaller miracles — the reliability of friends, the kindness of strangers.

The movie shows how church can be a judgmental place, as the family’s fellow congregants first suggest to her that some sin has brought this punishment from God down on Anna, and then question the “miracle” they claim has healed her.

It can be cloying, with Derbez and Latifah landing their (welcome second act) laughs a little too hard. To its credit, it has only one “God’s Not Dead” worthy poisonous line — “I’m not going to Hell. Hell’s in California!”

But Garner makes us believe in her plight, in Christy’s anger at her faith and her church. And her desperation convinces us that whatever happened, somebody who goes through something as awful as this deserves if not a pass, at least the benefit of the doubt and our full, undiluted sympathy.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic material, including accident and medical images

Cast: Jennifer Garner, Kylie Rogers, Queen Latifah, Martin Henderson, Eugenio Derbez
Credits: Directed by Patricia Riggen , script by Randy Brown, based on the Christy Beam book . A Sony/Affirm release.

Running time: 1:49

“Take Me to the River” is a quietly disturbing slice of Southern Gothic that isn’t Southern at all. It’s a Nebraska-California culture clash/sexual abuse story confined and contained in a single family, on a family farm over a reunion/birthday celebration weekend.

This debut indie feature from writer/director Matt Sobel doesn’t quite stand up to close scrutiny, but it is unsettling in the extreme, nervously touching on a whole array of taboo subjects.

Logan Miller (“Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse”) is Ryder, a  gay California teen whose parents (Robin Weigart, Richard Schiff) are dragging him to the farm she grew up on for her mother’s birthday.

Ryder’s a hip, sassy kid. But he needs to tone it down around his unsuspecting relatives.

“They can’t fight you unless you give them something to fight against…I know these people. They’re not very accepting.”

But he can’t help himself. The too-tight shorts come out, the campy sunglasses go on. His snarly, rube cousins want to know where he got them.

“Uh, the 80s?”

All his younger cousins — girls — adore Ryder. Molly, a precocious nine year old played with guileless cunning by Ursula Parker, drags Ryder off to show him the farm.

A scream, blood on her dress, and Ryder stands accused — not out loud — by some, especially Molly’s mad-eyed dad, Keith (Josh Hamilton of TV’s “Madame Secretary”).

It’s what happens next that truly shocks. Nothing. As in, Ryder’s family doesn’t pack up and leave, his mother (Weigart is on TV’s “Jessica Jones”) is too convinced she can smooth this over. His dad (Schiff, from TV’s “The West Wing”) is ineffectual and seemingly spineless.

Keith is threatening in the extreme. Their car is vandalized (“California Perverts!”). And yet Josh is lured over to Keith’s house for lunch — just an uncle and aunt, their three little girls, and the awkward teen semi-accused of assaulting one of them.

Scenes seem included for shock value — Ryder singing a song he won an award for, in high school, that touches on gay sexuality — rather than logic.

But the family intrigues are…intriguing. Ryder, and we, are curious about what is going on, what sort of Greek tragedy his mom’s family is playing out.

You want to credit “Take Me to the River” more than it deserves, but it’s not bad. And it suggests that both Sobel and Miller, whose Ryder seems tragically wrong-footed and guileless at every turn, are talents worth keeping an eye on in the future.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, sexual subject matter

Cast: Logan Miller, Robin Weigart, Ursula Parker, Josh Hamilton, Richard Schiff
Credits:
Written and directed by Matt Sobel. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:24

The rise and fall of cyclist Lance Armstrong earns a brisk and surprisingly nuanced treatment from director Stephen Frears in “The Program.”

The veteran Frears, of “The Queen”, “The Grifters,” “High Fidelity” and “Philomena,” finds the good and bad in Armstrong, the disgraced Tour de France winner who realized he’d need to cheat to keep pace with the best cheaters in his sport, and proceeded be the greatest cheat of them all.

Ben Foster (“The Messenger”, “3:10 to Yuma”) brings his usual intensity to the fiercely competitive Armstrong. He gets across the almost absurd competitive drive, the arrogance and menace (ESPECIALLY the menace) and the compassion, the athlete who started his LiveStrong Foundation and took his role as cancer survivor determined to inspire others seriously.

The script gives Foster moments where we see guilt sneak onto Armstrong’s face as he comforts this cancer sufferer or that one. He knows he’s let the world down long before we find out.

The most daring thing Frears does is let Armstrong be human, get past the arrogance that had him bullying anyone who dared to question him or his achievements (despicably, his shut-them-down defense was always “because CANCER”). We see the focus and mania the great athletes always possess.

“After the disease, I never want to be that close to losing again!”

The film is based on reporter David Walsh’s years of dogged reporting on cycling and Armstrong, and Irish actor Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids”) brings a cynical whimsy to Walsh that has never come out in Walsh’s public appearances. He knows the sport, interviews Lance just as he’s getting his start racing in Europe and while noting “he’s not lacking in confidence,” sizes him up as only “a great (one) day racer.” He could never win the Tour.

But in one memorable scene, watching Lance sprint through the pack going UP a mountain (“He used his brakes, four times, going UPHILL!”) the slack-jawed Walsh knows.

Frears packs a lot into a 103 minute film. We get quick lessons in “power to weight ratios” and the body mass (shape) efficiency necessary to win at cycling. A lot of this stuff comes from another disgraced character in this saga, Dr. Michele Ferrari (Guillaume Canet of “Joyeux Noel“). The Ferrari scenes — in his office, in medical conferences — show how he realized that Erythropoietin, or EPO, a red-blood cell generating drug developed to treat anemia and kidney disease, could be a great boon to athletes.

The script and Canet’s way of playing these scenes make Ferrari come off as someone who knows he’s breaking the rules, but who honestly sees nothing unethical with making athlete’s bodies more efficient machines.

Frears can afford to paint this story in quick, illustrative scenes — broad strokes — because Armstrong’s story has been covered ad nauseum, through Oprah, TV movies and documentaries (Alex Gibney’s “The Armstrong Lie” is definitive) and “60 Minutes,” which credulously and breathlessly bought into his “miracle,” only to have revisit him after their gullibility was exposed. Brief scenes taking us through cancer and his rise to glory make the movie feel truncated, a “just the highights/lowlights” picture.

But “The Program” wisely hangs on Foster’s fierce performance, transforming himself into Lance. There’s joking among his awed (or cowed) U.S. Postal teammates about who will play Lance in a planned film about Armstrong — Matt Damon or Jake Gyllenhaal.

Foster reshaped his body (as did Lance) for racing and looks absolutely at home on a racing bike. Foster remakes his screen personality as Armstrong’s ego and swagger got the better of him, a cocky momma’s boy who took to intimidating riders, reporters and others who insinuated he was cheating, clenching his teeth and glaring/staring down those who questioned his “miracle.”

Lee Pace is properly amoral as Lance’s all-knowing manager, and Jesse Plemons makes a strong, guilt-ridden impression as teammate and “good soldier” Floyd Landis, whose downfall brought on Armstrong’s. Dustin Hoffman has a cameo as the risk assessment investor who put Armstrong on the record, lying about his cheating.

It’s not a Greek tragedy, and it’s certainly too soon portray Armstrong, a willing and cunning cheat, as that sort of figure. But Frears has done Armstrong’s sinful and inspirational side justice. And Foster has demonstrated once again why he’s one of the most formidable, under-appreciated talents in the cinema, giving a performance that transcends villainy and finds the ego behind the EPO, and the hero behind the yellow bracelets.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Ben Foster, Chris O’Dowd, Lee Pace, Jesse Plemens, Dustin Hoffman, Guillaume Canet
Credits: Directed by Stephen  Frears, script by John Hodge, based on the David Walsh book. An eOne release.

Running time: 1:43

It’s got the always-funny Sam Rockwell and Jemaine Clement, Will Forte and Danny McBride in it. And the can-be-funny Amy Ryan and Leslie Bibb show up in support.

The team behind “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre” wrote and filmed it.

And the premise, a credulous Biblical archaeologist starts faking his Bible-confirming discoveries? Seems like a natural.

So why isn’t “Don Verdean” funnier?

Start with the title character’s makeup and Rockwell’s performance of Don Verdean. He’s a low-rent scientist catering to the science-denying corner of American religion, Fundamentalist Christians. He’s famous in those circles for “finding” the shears that the Philistines used to shear Old Testament hero Samson’s strength-giving locks.

But fame for this thinker of unspecified credentials means he lives in the smallest late model Winnebago on the road, traveling from church to church, giving presentations, selling books and trying to (gently) stare down his critics.

He’s a believer, and bringing people to Christ is what he sees as his mission. “The Lord guides my hand” as he searches the Holy Land (without permission) for his “World changing discoveries.”

But  fortune smiles on him when a slippery Super Church pastor, Tony Lazarus (Danny McBride) and the hooker he was caught with and then married (Leslie Bibb, a hoot) commission Don to bring the wonders of The Holy Land “over here, where they belong.”

A bungled first discovery — Lot’s Wife (turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah) — shows the flaws in Verdean’s methodology. The Bible is his map, shady testing (discovering the acidic soil that MUST have been Sodom) his science and a shadier, and incompetent Israeli hustler (Jemaine Clement) is his Holy Land hook-up.

Don’s as gullible as those he sells his story to.

As they cover up the Lot’s Wife fiasco (the stone formation has a penis), Don Verdean, his trusty True Believer assistant (Amy Ryan) and these inept Israelis scamper about Israel, chased by gun-waving cops, frantically trying to locate Goliath’s skull through Biblical direction, intuition and prayer.

And they’re doing it on a budget — just a couple of days to find something tangible from the fog of Judeo-Christian myth. You can see the dilemma. So true believer Don takes a shortcut into fakery. Boaz the Israeli (Clement) figures it out and aids and blackmails him. He wants to come to America, get women and have his own Pontiac. A Fiero, apparently.

Will Forte has a wicked twinkle and some clever bits of business as the equally disgraced competitor to Pastor Tony in their corner of MegaChurch Utah. He’s just waiting to expose them all, adding more pressure to Verdean’s work.

Director Jared Hess is so centered in PG niceness that even his scoundrels are soft around the edges, and that works against the film. Don Verdean seems more confused than despicable, and never remotely as desperate as this bottom feeder no doubt is.

Hess and his co-writer wife Jerusha are Mormons, and their films can be patronizing, with a “Who us?”  racism about characters outside their worldview. Making Don Verdean an innocent and Boaz (Clement gives him a thick Arnold Schwarzenegger accent) the truly unscrupulous one is excused because, what, he’s called “Israeli” and not a Jew?

Hess refuses to judge the gullible and one wonders if the writer and director had some notion of centering this on Mormon penchant for “Biblical proof” artifact hunting, but lost their nerve.

Ryan has nothing to play here, but McBride, Forte, Bibb and especially Clement push their characters into caricature in search of laughs. And they find a few.

But the normally dependable Rockwell seems uncertain of what to do with Verdean, determined to play the straight-arrow straight man, struggling to find Truth or something that will pass for it with the good-hearted folk he never once thinks of as “rubes” who are his clientele.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for crude and suggestive content, some language and brief violence)

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan, Danny McBride, Jemaine Clement, Will Forte, Leslie Bibb
Credits: Directed by Jared Hess , script by Jared and Jerusha Hess. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:35

Disney is making bank with “Zootopia,” which is managing better second weekend numbers than I would have figured. A 35% or so fall-off, a $51 million weekend.

Viewers responding to its anti-fear, anti-bigotry, anti-elephants refusing to serve animals who are “different” from them?

Maybe. It’s a blockbuster and parents have to relish its messages about not pre-judging others.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is showing there’s still money in that monster movie franchise. No, JJ Abrams doesn’t want to call it that. Don’t buy the spin, it’s a monster movie. And it’s pulling in over $24 million for the weekend, tops among new films opening.

“The Young Messiah” is bombing. Not even $5 million, unless thousands of churches drag their congregations to Sunday afternoon showings. “Risen,” by comparison, is over $32 million. Better movie, more money.

“The Brothers Grimsby” is the end of Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic headliner days at the movies. He won’t hit $4 million. 

“Deadpool” is now closing in on $330 million.

Christian believers can take comfort in the fact that Hollywood hasn’t forgotten how to make old fashioned Biblical epics. Starting with “The Nativity Story” a few years back, and continuing through this year’s surprising “Risen,” studios have been able to attract name actors and top drawer production talent to tell snippets of The Greatest Story Ever Told.

They’re not spending a lot of money on these, but usually that doesn’t show.

In “The Young Messiah” it does.

It’s an “inspired by the Gospels” tale “rooted in history.”  OK, it’s an adaptation of an Anne Rice novel about the formative months in the life of young Jesus Bar Joseph, Jesus of Nazareth.

But a few nice casting touches and a handful of marvelous scenes don’t hide the fact that this Italian production looks little like the Middle East. And the model-pretty Brit-urchin they’ve cast in the title role seems better-suited for a touring company “Oliver!” revival than playing the Son of Man.

The story takes Jesus (Adam Greaves-Neal) and his parents, Joseph (Vincent Walsh) and Mary (Sara Lazzaro) from Egypt, where they fled Herod’s paranoid wrath, back to their homeland. Herod the Great is “Herod the Dead.”

Jesus is seven, but they tell everybody he’s six. Because Herod the Younger, given a sadist/hedonist edge by Jonathan Bailey, is still worried about some child that might have escaped the slaughter of newborns his father ordered in Bethlehem when Jesus was lying in a manger.

The child is beautiful (Does Mary curl his hair?) and kind. And in Alexandria, he is bullied. Satan (Rory Keenan, blond and demonic and quite good) is behind that. But Jesus, who doesn’t know “Who” he is, saves the bully who dies picking on him. The “He can raise the dead” whispers start and make their way to Herod even as the family makes its way back to Galilee. 

Sean Bean brings his usual gravitas to Severus, the crusty Roman Centurion Herod charged with tracking down this miracle worker.

“There’s a Messiah under every tree, every rock.”

A casting coup — putting Christian “Me and Orson Welles” McKay in the role of Cleopas, an avuncular uncle who travels with Joseph, Mary and Jesus. Another nice touch, making his son James (Finn Ireland) the resentful cousin who has hated The Young Messiah since birth.

As the family is pursued through a Holy Land that is wetter and greener than any we’ve seen on the screen before (Italy makes a poor substitute for even the greenest corners of Palestine), James and Cleopas wonder when Joseph and Mary are going to let the kid know who he is.

“How do you explain God to His own Son?”

“The Young Messiah” cannot help but be compared with “Risen,” a minor hit in the same genre still in theaters. They’re both about Romans hunting Jesus and crucifying Jews all along the way.

But “Risen” is more like a thriller, and much more thrilling, and benefits from a better sense of intrigue and a beatific turn by Cliff Curtis as the crucified and risen Jesus, whose body the Romans are trying to track down.

“The Young Messiah” has little urgency to its chase, and bloodless crucifixions on crosses that look like props from community theater Passion Plays.

But it does have a couple of electric moments. Jesus, tested by rabbis who would be his teacher, flummoxes them with his Torah knowledge and seven year old logic. And in confronting the terror (Satan) that only he sees, Jesus faces his first Real test — evil that wants to thwart his destiny.

“I tell you, chaos rules, and I am ITS PRINCE!” the demon growls.

The whole affair feels more promising than presentable, with unruly costumes and a Holy Land where no one sweats and no garment ever seems to get dirty.

The direction, by Cyrus Nowrasteh (“The Stoning of Soroya M.”) lacks urgency or art. The performances are, for the most part, emotionally flat.

Believers may relish hearing “The Lord’s Prayer” chanted as the refugee family makes its way through a gauntlet of crucified criminals, or in catching Sarah (Jane Lapotaire) pepper her speech with quotations from The King James Version.

But discriminating movie-goers will do their due diligence and compare “The Young Messiah” to “Risen,” and wonder why Focus Features didn’t spend a little more money and get it right.

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for some violence and thematic elements

Cast: Adam Greaves-Neal, Sara Lazzaro, Vincent Walsh, Christian McKay, Sean Bean

Running time: 1:51
Credits: Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, script by Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, Cyrus Nowrasteh, based on the Anne Rice novel. A Focus Features release.

Believers may relish hearing “The Lord’s Prayer” chanted as the pilgrims make their way home through a gauntlet of crucified criminals, or in hearing Sarah (Jane Lapotaire) pepper her speech with King James Version quotations.

Once more, dear friends, to “Cloverfield” we go.

Another trip into monster-movie land. Another blast of J.J. Abrams hype. Another movie floated to us in an attempted sea of secrecy.

Does it live up to the brand, the hype, the attempts at hiding what we cannot NOT know about what’s going on?

Nope.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is, we know from the commercials, a survivors of “the event” of “Cloverfield” tale. They’re holding out in a bunker. Or it’s an abduction picture, with the unutterably gorgeous Mary Elizabeth Winstead (“Smashed,” TV’s “Mercy Street”)  scheming, battling to get out, to escape the clutches of the hulking, menacing and plainly-a-bit-deranged John Goodman.

Is this just a seriously inferior version of “Room”, or a mostly humorless riff on “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” with a fetching hostage yearning to break free? Or did this Howard fellow do her a favor when he plucked her from a road accident and brought him into his lair, buried beneath his rural Louisiana farmhouse?

It turns out that putting “Cloverfield” in the title of your movie, much of the guesswork is gone. And all the armed survivalist Howard’s protests about “ingratitude,” as he endures this or assault or trickery might have a point.

“There is nowhere for you to go.”

Then again, there are fates worse than what’s been going on on the surface, and there’s no guesswork to those either, as we’ve seen Howard’s explosive tirades, and scores of movies about this sort of creep.

The best the team of screenwriters can come up with here is keeping Michelle (Winstead) in the dark about what’s happened in The World. But since we know, remembering the shaky-cam special that was “Cloverfield,” we don’t fear for what she finds when she gets up there (Nor does she, judging from her lackluster performance).

Aliens invaded — Godzilla monsters, civilization under assault. We remember even if she doesn’t.

Howard’s paranoid refusal to share details (Does he have any?), the lack of media access (Is there any media left?) and the slim bits of corroboration of the OTHER possible hostage/rescued survivor (John Gallagher Jr. of “Short Term 12”) are all Michelle has to go on.

It’s just that Howard’s behavior is creepier and more immediately threatening than anything her imagination could create.

The slim pickings of the script leave long stretches of dull downtime between the few showcase moments of violence. Director Dan Trachtenberg doesn’t compensate for this.

The spectacular car wreck may have you wondering what they put poor Winstead through to get that shot in the can. But seriously, we’ve seen spectacular, in-the-car-camera crashes before. The shaky cam returns for the finale, for those who might have nodded off long before.

What “10 Cloverfield Lane” (And how does that title logically tie-in to the labeled found footage the military had its hand on for “Cloverfield”?) relies on most heavily is performance. And Winstead, a good actress, gives us little suggestion of terror and Goodman leaves little doubt about Howard’s malevolence.

Gallagher? He’s just dull at playing an exceptionally dull character

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is built on the fear of an unknown that we know. Turns out, all that secrecy and hype and branding the “Cloverfield” name were not just this product’s marketing strategy. That’s all they had. Period.

So, “Room” is still in theaters. It’s more harrowing, more terrifying, more thrilling and moving than “Cloverfield Lane” could ever hope to be. And it stars an Oscar winner and reminds us that the scariest things on Earth are actually on Earth. Go see that instead.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material including frightening sequences of threat with some violence, and brief language

Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.
Credits: Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, script byJosh Campbell Matthew Stuecken, Damien Chazelle . A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:44

Exotic India!

Well, HERE’s a place to set a horror story! A new place, a new sort of story!

It’s all RIGHT THERE on “The Other Side of the Door.”

Only it isn’t.

Here’s another dead child story with the requisite story beats, the requisite jolts, the requisite tropes. Nothing to see here. Barely even a hint of India, for starters, which is where our unhappy American family has relocated to run their antiques exporting business.

But let’s start with what works. Sarah Wayne Callies plays Maria, a woman so riven by grief that she pummels her husband (Jeremy Sisto) in bed for being able to sleep after their loss.

Maria can’t sleep without nightmares. And she may never be able to “go on” as before. Driving in India she wrecked their car, crashing into a river. She had two children in the back seat. She could only save one.

You don’t have to be a parent to find that scene, her helplessness, her little boy’s cries for help, wrenching.

It’s not something anybody could get over. And Callies (“The Walking Dead”) plays it that way. It’s her best scene and stands out because everything else Maria reacts to in the movie fails to phase her. After you’ve stood down zombies (“Walking Dead”) it takes a lot to frighten you, I guess.

The movie starts to go wrong with the inscrutable, faintly creepy housekeeper, Piki (Suchitra Pillai). She doesn’t seem sympathetic or the least bit touched by her American employer. And yet she reaches out.

“What if I could bring your son back to you just one more time, to say your final goodbyes?”

Maria leaps at the chance and travels to a remote village, wandering into a dead jungle to an abandoned temple. Scatter Oliver’s ashes on the steps, lock yourself inside, and wait. But whatever you do, no matter what Oliver says, “Do NOT open the door.”

Everything else in this, and I mean everything (right up to the cop-out finale) plays according to formula. She opens the door, runs back home, and all of a sudden their surviving child (Sofia Rosinsky) has an invisible playmate, and Maria has to go back to reading bedtime stories to the ghost of Oliver.

And those aren’t a hint of the horrors to come.

A creepy-crawly Indian spirit has been awakened, the Guardians (wild men painted in the ashes of the dead) stare Maria down and bear witness to her transgression. And things die.

A few frights pay off, but most don’t. The performances are TV-series flat — designed for close-ups.

Leaving us little reason to peak at what’s on “The Other Side of the Door.” Horror’s same old same old. In India.

MPAA Rating: R for some bloody violence

Cast:Sarah Wayne Callies, Jeremy Sisto, Sofia Rosinsky, Suchitra Pillai
Credits: Directed by Johnannes Roberts, script by Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:36

Monty Python’s Terry Jones uses puppets as a way of livening up a talking-economic-heads documentary about capitalism’s psychology-driven business cycles in “Boom Bust Boom.”

But the biggest smirks in “Boom Bust Boom,” an otherwise most informative explanation of why we should never, ever believe it when this or that generation of economists tries to explain away the possibility of a Next Great Depression (“This time it’s DIFFERENT. We have the Internet! More information, you see!”), is the presentation of John Cusack as one of the on-camera expert witnesses.

It’s a film with famous economists — some living, some dead, played by puppets — historians and psychologists, all explaining the human nature that sets us up for the cycles capitalism lives through — boom, “euphoria” driven bust, boom again.

And John Cusack. “One semester at NYU” is all the Internet Movie Database gives him, as far as credentials. But he’s got opinions, especially about the meltdown of 2007-8. And he’s outraged. So anyway.

Jones, co-writer, presenter and with his son Bill Jones co-director, takes us through the history of market-driven bubbles, from tulip mania in 16th-17th century Holland, to Britain’s “South Sea Company” government scam based on potential trade in South America, depending on how a then-raging war with Spain came out, to the Great Depression and the Great Recession.

The late John Kenneth Galbraith (in puppet form, with an actor reading from his work) intones about the “inordinate desire to get rich quickly with a minimum of effort,” the driving force behind every bubble — tulips, to market derivatives.

Every few decades, people who clamor “Let the MARKET decide,” get their way and convince the rest of us that regulating these licensed gamblers is a sin against liberty. And every few decades, they run the world economy into a ditch.

The film blasts longtime Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan as being one of those market cultists, catches him admitting he was wrong, and notes that he went on being wrong after admitting that to Congress. And thus the Great Recession was born.

On Monkey Island, off Puerto Rico, a psychologist (Laurie Santos) observes how other primates can be conned into thinking they’re getting a better deal merely by seemingly switching up the number of grapes they can buy with monkey money, creating the illusion of “bargain” when in fact there is none. Trump voters, no doubt.

The object of this short, clever blend of interviews, movie clips (“Life of Brian”) and “South Park” explanations, is to keep us on our guard, to not let the new Rick Santellis or Ben Cramers convince us “This time it’s DIFFERENT.” When it isn’t.

And besides, they of all people, don’t know. Any more than John Cusack.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Terry Jones, James Galbraith, George Magnus, Laurie Santos, John Cusack
Credits: Directed by Terry Jones, Bill Jones,Ben Timlettt, script by Terry Jones, Theo Kocken . A release.

Running time: 1:11

It’s a cut throat industry, that music business. Infested with sharks, drowning in money and drugs, easy sex, a world of “loaded dice and poisoned chalices,” where success is dictated by luck or timing. It’s a wonder anybody gets out of there alive.

Or without killing somebody.

“Kill Your Friends” is a murder-your-way-to-the top dark comedy, a music biz saga based on John Niven’s darkly comic novel.

It’s anti-heroic narrator is Steven Stelfox, cleverly given a kind of sexually ambiguous ruthlessness (as substitute for talent and hard work) by Nicholas Hoult (“Mad Max: Fury Road”).

Steven quotes Conan — the Barbarian, not the ginger chat show host. You know the bit about reveling in crushing “your enemies — See them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!”

He sneaks into the boss’s office and breaks into his computer to get an edge, steals new issues of music industry mags intended for colleagues and shreds them, steams open envelopes.

He’s an “A&R Man,” that’s artists and repertoire — the talent scout responsible for finding the next big thing — singer, songwriter, band.

“God, I hate bands!”

OK, maybe not a band.

And he’s hellbent on taking over the A&R department at Unigram Records in 1997 London. It’s the Cold Play era, and Steven is indulging self-absorbed Brit rappers, ditzy/slutty girl groups with no singing talent, that sort of thing, trying to keep his gig.

Mainly, though, he’s partying and clinging to his lazy, doltish rival (James Corden) to keep him from getting promoted by pretending he’s his best friend, feeding him cocaine and urinating on him when he passes out — anything to make Roger look bad at work the next day.

Only it doesn’t work. Hapless Roger (Corden) is in line for a bump when the sabotaged head of A&R (they always get the blame for hard times) is sent packing. Steven, half-calculating and coke-fueled with rage, beats Roger to death. And then shows up at the office as if nothing has happened, expecting the job Roger was to get.

A cop (Edward Hogg) might close in. Or he might not. He’d love a record deal himself.

Steven narrates the tale (a literary crutch) to the camera, ripping on colleagues and clients alike.

“This pair of sex offenders have just raped up to the tune of 40 grand.”

But Hoult lets us see just how tough it is for even a mediocrity with Machiavellian talents to survive in this world, in his more vulnerable moments.

“These decisions are made under the influence of drugs, alcohol, peer pressure and fear.”

Nobody wants to be the numbskull who misses out on the next Cold Play or Spice Girls.

“Kill Your Friends” wallows in the depravity of the it, the inanity of the music and the mendacious morons meant to pass judgement on it, deciding who gets a shot and who labors in obscurity. The wallowing including too many club scenes, too many stoner orgies, and too much blood.

It’s like a Bret Easton Ellis takedown of Britpop.

But the few human touches stand out, and the deck stacks up against Steven at every turn. Even killing his would-be boss hasn’t kept him from being out-of-step with the scene, the music or musicians. An indie pop band The Lazies is pushed by his protege (Craig Roberts) and ambitious young secretary (Georgia King, quite good).

And Steven just doesn’t get it.

“Indie kids really think what they do matters,” he sneers to the camera.

As you’d expect from a movie based on Niven’s script of his own novel, the dialogue stands out and stings. Steven’s promise of recording success is followed by the unspoken promise that he’ll “drop you faster than a Plymouth hooker’s knickers” if you fail.

This could have been a lighter picture, sort of a semi-dark Nick Hornby spin on music. That might have been less accurate, but more watchable.

But Steven is a hard character to keep even at arm’s length. He’s a paragon of what’s wrong with music, the script would have us believe. He’s out of step and out of date, getting blasted at parties and humiliating himself, coming on to talent and chasing them away. He’s a clueless cliche even in 1997.

And yet he is just as likely to deliver a hit as the talented people he encounters, including his biggest threat, an A & R legend played by Tom Riley.

The cynicism destroys any chance that a sense of fun — even perverse, murderous fun — will ever creep into “Kill Your Friends.” It’s as if Hoult is too clever at playing too venal and loathsome for his and his movie’s own good.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, alcohol and drug-abuse, sexual situations with nudity and profanity

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, James Corden, Rosanna Arquette, Georgia King, Tom Riley
Credits: Directed by Owen Harris, script by John Niven, based on his novel. A Well Go USA Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:42