“Alex Strangelove” is a confident film about a confusing time. Right off the bat, our teenaged hero Alex Truelove (Daniel Doheny, “Adventures in Public School”) tries to fit everyone in his high school into different species of animals, just to make sense of them all. The bully in his class is a Great White Shark. The kid who dresses outlandishly is a Peacock Spider. And although he’s not quite sure, Alex thinks he himself might be a penguin. Or he might be gay. Or he might be bisexual. He doesn’t really know yet.
It’s a complex inner journey, and writer-director Craig Johnson (“The Skeleton Twins”) brings it to life in just about every way he can.