What happens 'Here?' Not much

   Watching the new movie Here, I felt as if I were peering into a diorama devoted to mundane helpings of Americana. Set mostly in a single room and spanning a variety of eras, Here's narrow focus seems intended to open wide vistas of life in different eras.

   But the movie sacrifices depth for an artificial sense of breadth as it delivers a series of domestic scenes, many featuring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as husband and wife.

    Director Robert Zemeckis, who directed Hanks and Wright in Forrest Gump, uses AI to de-age or age many of the characters as he tires to deliver meaningful moments in the lives of successive owners of the same house.

    OK, but was it necessary to show how the site on which the movie's modest home was built looked during prehistoric times? And did Zemeckis need to acknowledge a time before the arrival of settlers?

   The movie includes segments in which a Native American couple falls in love in a wooded setting so idyllic I half expected Bambi to nuzzle up against one of them.

   The movie's parade of vignettes features a full menu of ordinary events: births, deaths, marriages, divorce, Thanksgiving dinners, and Christmas celebrations, all of which serve as signposts that, I guess, are intended to encourage a sense of unfolding lives. Add a few cultural shifts and a bit of nostalgic set decoration and you've got the idea, a tableau of American life.

  Based on a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here mostly concentrates on Wright and Hanks, who play Richard and Margaret, a couple who meet as 17-year-olds during the 1950s. Economic concerns and Margaret's unexpected pregnancy force the couple to move in with Richard's parents, a hard-drinking dad (Paul Bettany) and a devoted mom (Kelly Reilly). 

    Scenes of the house's other occupants come and go, appearing as if they were someone else's memories. During the early 1900s, we meet Pauline (Michelle Dockery), who occupies the home with her pilot husband (Gwilym Lee). She fears flying will kill him.

   During the 1920s, Leo (David Fynn) and Stella (Ophelia Lovibond) take over. They like to drink and party and remain oblivious to anything that might resemble a problem. Leo invents a recliner that catapults the twosome into the upper economic rungs.

   To show what happens once Richard and Margaret move away, we meet a Black family (Nicholas Pinnock, Nikkie Amuka-Bird, and Cache Vanderpuye) that offers a glimpse of life in the 21st century.

     Lest the proceedings be swamped with greeting-card sentiment, the movie introduces a slew of unrealized dreams. Bettany's character fails to advance on his job. Hanks' Richard abandons his artistic aspirations to sell insurance, and Wright's Margaret feels stifled by living with her in-laws. She once hoped to go to law school.

    Eric Roth's screenplay tackles serious themes but they come off as obvious signposts: Problems unfold as if on schedule, and the movie’s deep focus images draw unneeded attention to themselves, as does a stationary camera that turns the screen into a near-theatrical space.

     Even with the introduction of a case of Alzheimer's, Here proves less maudlin than I expected, but that doesn't mean Zemeckis resists all schmaltz, and some scenes  -- notably those involving Benjamin Franklin (Keith Bartlett) and his son William (Daniel Betts) -- become distractingly silly.

   Zemeckis seems to be aiming for something poignant, meaningful, and broadly appealing, but, for me, Here had about as much emotional impact as a bouquet of artificial flowers. When you sort it all out, there's too little “there” in Here.

Kenneth Branagh takes Poirot to Venice

 Kenneth Branagh continues his Agatha Christie preoccupation with A Haunting in Venice, his third in a series of films based on Christie novels. As is the case with much of Christie's work, Haunting  delays its big revelation until the end, allowing ace detective Hercule Poirot finally to disclose whodunit. 

  I won't do that with this review. Here's my take: Haunting is an adequate -- though hardly exhilarating -- thriller seasoned by supernatural suggestion that goes against the ultra-rational Poitrot grain.

  As a director, Branagh, who also plays Poirot, takes advantage of otherworldly possibilities, trying for a few jolts and a large helping of eeriness. But the film doesn't register as a superior slice of horror, if that's what Branagh had in mind.

    Christie purists will note that Branagh has based his film on the author's novel, Hallowe'en Party, and shifted its location from England to Italy. By confining most of the tale to the creepy confines of an old  palazzo, Branagh misses an opportunity. The labyrinthian alleys and byways of Venice could have augmented the movie's mystery and terror.

    The story begins in 1947 when Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer played by Tina Fey, invites Poirot to a Halloween party. She wants the great sleuth to expose a psychic (Michelle Yeoh) who claims to communicate with the dead, one of whom happened to be the daughter of the palazzo's owner (Kelly Reilly). The girl, we learn, entered the realm of the departed after committing suicide.

    Not surprisingly, the mystery doesn't end when Poirot discover that the psychic is a fraud. The plot contrives to allow Poirot to do what he always does: hunt a killer. 

    The visual atmosphere ranges from dim to dark and Branagh also employs a charged angle about the palazzo's past. At one time, the place housed orphans who were abandoned to die. Their ghosts are said to have haunted the place ever since. 

    The supporting cast of characters -- or more precisely suspects  -- includes a visiting American (Kyle Allen), a psychologically damaged physician (Jamie Dornan), his precocious son (Jude Hill) and others who expand the list of red herrings.

     We're meant to wonder whether a stream of mysterious occurrences will shatter Poirot's commitment to reason, causing him to rethink his rejection of otherworldly claims. Let's just say that Poirot's skepticism, forged by many murder investigations, has deep roots.

      Earlier in this review, I called Haunting adequate,  hardly a ringing endorsement for a whodunit that generates too little concern about who  committed the dastardly deed.

     It's not so much that we figure things out early on; it's that we're not given enough reason to immerse in the gloomy game Poirot must play.

     

    

A priest and his fallen flock

If one were to judge only by the movie Calvary, it would be possible to proclaim Ireland the unhappiest place on Earth.

Starring Brendan Gleeson and directed by John Michael McDonagh, Calvary upsets every known cliche about the irresistible charms of small Irish villages.

Calvary has been referred to as a mixture of dark comedy dialogue, whodunit tropes and serious ruminations about the decline of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

I suppose all those things are true, but Calvary is also a probing look at how a society grapples with its sins. Whether you buy into the movie's ideas about sacrifice and forgiveness or not, you'll be forced to admit that Calvary is stern stuff, immersing us in a microcosmic world of cynicism, violence and cruelty.

The story centers on Gleeson's Father James, a man who became a priest after his wife died. Father James has a grown daughter (Kelly Reilly), who visits him from Dublin after a suicide attempt. Her wrists still are bandaged.

Gleeson gives a masterful performance as a priest who seems as rooted in the world as any of his parishioners. Bearded and bulky, Gleeson suggests struggles that are deep and abiding.

Flawed as he is, Father James might be the perfect man to tend to a flock that's deeply troubled and seems to have little or no respect for the church.

Chris O'Dowd plays a butcher whose wife (Orla O'Rourke) is having an affair with an African mechanic (Isaach De Bankole). O'Dowd's character doesn't seem to care.

The town's top cop (Gary Lydon) dabbles in homosexual sex with an obnoxious male prostitute (Owen Sharpe). The town's richest resident (Dylan Moran) made his fortune with unscrupulous dealings, and now regards everything in life as meaningless.

A smirking local doctor (Aidan Gillen) seems driven by his own death wish: He's constantly smoking.

A sick and aging American writer (M.Emmet Walsh) is living his final days in Ireland. He wants Father James to help him procure a gun so that he can end his life before his suffering peaks.

Running through all of this is the threat that opens the movie: During a session in the confessional, an unseen man tells Father James that he plans to kill him.

A victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest ("I was seven years old when I first tasted semen"), the man says that he wants to balance the scales of justice by killing a good priest.

The priest who abused the man is long dead, but by some twisted logic, the would-be perpetrator has come to believe that he can set the world right by murdering an innocent man.

The story unfolds during the course of a week as Father James moves about his community, and we try to guess who wants to kill him.

It quickly becomes apparent that McDonagh, who previously worked with Gleeson on The Guard (2011) and In Bruges (2008), has more than mystery in mind. In some ways, it doesn't matter who has it in for Father James. What matters is McDonagh's depiction of a disillusioned, fallen world in which only one character seems genuinely touched by faith.

Marie Josee-Croze plays the wife of a man killed in an auto accident while passing through town. She qualifies as the most spiritual person in a story full men and women stuck in the mud of their own rancid lives.

The main questions that McDonagh raises may go something like this: What's left when the major upholders of morality -- in this case the church -- prove corrupt? How do people function in a world bereft of kindness and beset by indifference when they've lost all belief in their own effectuality?

One presumes that the town in which the movie takes place is meant to be seen as a hothouse where big issues can grow. When you step back from the movie, you may decide that its concerns are as conceptional as they are literal, an exploration of characters and events that McDonagh wants us to view metaphorically.

The movie's most haunting scene takes place in jail. Father James visits a young man who raped, killed and cannibalized several girls. The young man -- played by Gleeson's son Domhnall Gleeson -- fantasizes about meeting his victims in heaven where he expects to find a beautiful moment of reconciliation.

When he describes his imagined redemption, the young man's face seems nearly beatific. The moment represents a mixture of sickness and aspiration that you won't soon forget. Like the movie itself, it leaves you shaken to the core.

'Heaven' is best when earthbound

A best-selling book finds its way to the screen.

If a four-year-old boy awoke from a coma and told you that he had just visited heaven, seen Jesus, met his long-departed great grandfather and had experiences that banished all his fears, would you have the heart to suggest that the boy wait until he's old enough to investigate what neurobiologists might have to say about his story?

Neither would I. I'd smile, and wish the boy well.

Of course, there was just a such a boy, and his Nebraska-based family made his experiences the subject of Heaven Is for Real, a blockbuster best-seller that helped establish a publishing mini-trend: cheerleading for the afterlife.

Those seeking adult affirmation about heaven may wish to try Proof of Heaven: A Doctor's Experience With the Afterlife by Eben Alexander. A movie based on Alexander's book reportedly is being developed.

As Variety reported on April 14, Hollywood is displaying a growing faith in Christian movies. Put another way, Hollyood's always eager to find another lucrative niche market.

Stripped of some of the boy's more apocalyptic declarations -- the coming war between Satan and Jesus that will destroy the world, but vanquish evil forever -- the movie version of Heaven Is for Real has been carefully crafted to keep its tone down-to-earth.

Greg Kinnear's Todd Burpo -- a pastor in a small rural church -- provides the movie's entry point. Todd struggles to come to grips with what his son Colton (a cute Connor Corum) tells him, information about heaven disclosed casually and sporadically by Colton -- almost in time-release fashion.

Colton's visit to heaven takes place while he's in a coma after emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix.

When Todd thinks that his son may be dying, he fumes at God. Later, he's taken aback by the boy's account of things he only could have seen if he had an out-of-body experience.

The movie includes some transparently obvious skepticism -- not so much to question the authenticity of young Colton's story but to give the proceedings an aura of objectivity.

And an end-of-picture speech by Kinnear - the movie's Frank Capra moment -- suggests that the boy's vision of heaven may have been tailored by God to match the expectations of a four-year-old; i.e., Colton sits on Jesus's lap, sees other kids and meets a second sister he would have had had his mother (Kelly Reilly) not miscarried.

Colton has one older sister (Lane Styles), but the story doesn't pay much attention to her.

Director Randall Wallace probably knew that he couldn't make the movie without showing Colton's heaven.

We see Colton's grassy version of heaven, his vision of angels and even a full-faced picture of the Jesus Colton encounters, which arrives like an exclamation point at the end of the movie.

For the most part, though, Wallace's approach is less ethereal than earthly, which I suppose is in keeping with the matter-of-fact attitude Colton displays toward heaven.

Such a tone suggests -- at least to me -- that significant commercial calculation went into how this material would be presented by Wallace, who had a hand in writing the screenplay and who is best known for having written the screenplay for Braveheart. Wallace tries not to overplay the movie's heavenly hand.

At times, Heaven Is for Real plays like an after-school special. At other times, it grapples (albeit gently) with the community's attempts to decide what to make of Colton's story.

Not all of Todd's congregants are willing to accept the boy's story, and one woman (Margo Martindale) sees it as a potentially destructive to the church over which Todd presides.

We're not exactly entering spoiler territory if I tell you that Todd does not loose his job over any such dissension or that the movie's most touching scene is one in which Kinnear and Martindale share their grief.

Kinnear, of course, operates at his likable best. He and Reilly create a convincing portrait of a couple struggling with financial issues in a rural community that seems to lack for rich benefactors.

Heaven Is for Real isn't likely to gain much audience beyond those looking for family entertainment with a Christian spin, presumably a sizable enough group to keep turnstiles spinning through the Easter holiday. Other religions are left out of this particular heaven.

Colton's story also includes a couple of pivotal trips to Denver, where the family visits the Denver Butterfly Pavilion. Colton eventually overcomes his arachnophobia and holds a tarantula named Rosie in the palm of his tiny hand.

I'm not sure why I feel compelled to share this detail, perhaps only as a way of saying that it's one more localized element in a movie that presents what appears to be a decidedly middle-American vision of life on Earth and of the world to come.

Imperiled plane, imperiled pilot

Denzel Washington takes flight as an alcoholic airline pilot.

Flight -- the latest film from director Robert Zemeckis -- has all the markings of another Hollywood thrill ride. With Denzel Washington playing a commercial airline pilot, the movie seems headed for the kind of territory in which the steely expertise of a seasoned pilot saves an imperiled plane. You half expect an airborne version of Unstoppable, a terrific action movie in which Washington played an engineer trying to head-off a runaway train.

Although Flight features some of the most harrowing airborne sequences ever, it's as much about an imperiled life as an imperiled plane. From the opening scenes in a disheveled hotel room, it's clear that Washington's Whip Whitaker has a drinking problem that he tries to temper with head-clearing snorts of cocaine.

The story revolves around Whip's two lives: His life as a dissolute drunk and his life as a guy who believes he can leap from an alcohol-infused stupor to his highly demanding job without losing a step. It's the kind of confidence that comes from having done it before -- probably a lot.

But a flight from Orlando to Atlanta changes everything, and introduces some welcome moral complexity into Zemeckis's movie.

Whip is flying drunk when his plane experiences a grave mechanical failure. He's able to call on training and reflexes to deal with the situation, but there's no gainsaying his intoxication. He's a completely irresponsible hero who saves 96 of the plane's 102 passengers -- and does it without a miscue.

In a moment of extreme crisis, the captain in Whip takes command of the drunk, even to the point where Whip flies the plane upside down in order to slow its fall.

After its compelling opening and horrific crash-landing, the movie establishes itself as something else, the story of an addict whose ability to deceive himself and others is threatened by a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the crash.

Washington -- who's now almost 58 and beefier than when he was younger -- gives a memorable performance as a man who has gone through a bitter divorce and seldom sees his teen-aged son. Whip has nothing going for him other than twined abilities: He can fly and he can lie.

The movie's early scenes introduce another character, a young heroin-addicted woman (Kelly Reilly) who, after an overdose, will meet Whip in the Atlanta hospital where he -- and the surviving passengers and crew -- are taken after the crash. For a time, Whip's life mingles with Nicole's at the family farm where Whip retreats to hide from the press.

I don't know if it was absolutely necessary, but a scene in which Whip, a cigarette smoker, meets Reilly's Nicole in the hospital is a real crowd-pleaser. Not because of anything Reilly or Washington do, but because of a monologue delivered by a cigarette-smoking cancer patient (James Badge Dale).

Clearly, this is Washington's show, although the supporting cast is quite good. John Goodman adds robust comic relief as a take-charge drug dealer, one of Whip's wayward pals. Don Cheadle plays the smart, amoral lawyer who's asked to guide Whip through his NTSB ordeal, and Bruce Greenwood portrays a long-time friend and union representative who's eager to turn attention away from pilot fallibility and onto failing equipment.

Washington's scenes with Cheadle are particularly interesting. As savvy as Cheadle's ("I can fix anything") character is and as wobbly as Washington's Whip becomes, Washington takes charge of every moment, never entirely letting go of Whip's defiance, bravado and percolating contempt.

Melissa Leo has a small but effective turn as an NTSB lawyer who wants to expose Whip for what he is.

Now, the movie is not without problems. It seems unlikely to me that a man such as Whip could hide his addiction from his employers. The movie suggests that others have served as Whip's enablers, but still. Moreover, the way in which the screenplay dispenses with the co-pilot's knowledge of Whip's condition struck me as far-fetched.

Zemeckis makes up for some of these problems with a agonizingly tense scene in which Whip -- in an attempt to straighten himself out -- tries to resist the siren call of a miniature bottle of vodka in a hotel mini-bar.

Back to live action after forays into animation with Polar Express and A Christmas Carol , Zemeckis doesn't flinch when it comes to showing alcoholic behavior. And I wondered whether the director of Forrest Gump and Back to the Future wasn't trying a little too hard to establish his hard-boiled bona fides.

Not to worry: After all the hard drama, Zemeckis brings the movie in for a soft landing with scenes that take some of the sting out of its previous tough-mindedness and which struck me as false.

Whatever its shortcomings, Flight benefits greatly from Washington's strength: Even when the movie falters, Washington's never anything less than riveting as a pilot whose life has spiraled out of control -- even while he's thinking that he's far too slick to land with a crash.