A family deals with Alzheimer's

Hilary Swank leads a strong cast in the drama What They Had.

There's no faulting the acting in writer/director Elizabeth Chomko's What They Had, a story about the impact of Alzheimer's on a family already dealing with typical issues of generational conflict and parental approval.

Hilary Swank portrays Bridget, a woman who travels with her teenage daughter (Taissa Farmiga) from California to Chicago when her brother (Michael Shannon) asks for help.

Shannon's Nicky, who remained in Chicago, has cared for his mother (Blythe Danner) and father (Robert Forster) but he's reached the end of his rope. Danner's Ruth has wandered off in her nightgown on a cold Chicago night and the family is frantic about the harm that might befall her. The drama centers on what to do about Ruth, a once-competent woman who's increasingly removed from reality and who soon turns up unharmed.

Forster's Bert resists putting his wife in memory care, even if he can live a nearby assisted living facility that would allow him to visit at will. He refuses to let go of his marriage and insists that he's perfectly capable of taking care of Danner's Ruth by himself.

Shannon gets a much-needed opportunity to play a normal guy -- albeit one who's struggling with and frustrated by difficult problems. Shannon's Nicky owns a bar that's not doing as well as he'd hoped. He's constantly battling with his father. Dad berates Nicky for not finishing college and becoming a bartender. It means nothing to Dad that his son owns the bar.

Forster, in fine form, plays an ardent Catholic, a down-to-earth guy who believes in marriage as an "until-death-do-us-part" proposition? Bert isn't one for nuance, but he's never treated like an idiot. Forster keeps him real and helps us understand that Bert can't reconcile his memories of better days with the situation in which he now finds himself.

Swank's Bridget seems conflicted about nearly everything: her role as a mother, her daughter's refusal to enroll in college and her relationship with the husband (a briefly seen Josh Lucas) she left in LA.

It's hardly a surprise to say that the always impressive Shannon gives a strong performance, but he does. He captures Nicky’s genuine concern and snide humor, as well as his fury.

Danner plays a wife and mother convincingly addled by her medical condition, yet still showing traces of a woman who's able to laugh at herself.

Not every moment in What They Had rang true to me. Bridget's listless marriage, for example, receives too little attention to make it a convincing part of the story. But the movie never feels less than fully lived-in by a cast that couldn't be any better.

'Too Late,' another LA neo-noir

John Hawkes breaks the mold as a Los Angeles private detective.

Dividing its story into five segments that unfold without regard to chronological order, the LA-based neo-noir Too Late boasts a technical feat that's worth mentioning: Each segment consists of one shot that runs for 20 minutes thanks to something called a Techniscope-format 35 mm reel. (Normal 35 mm reels accommodate 12 minutes of filming.)

Not only does the movie take on a cinematic challenge, but it also asks a lot from a cast led by John Hawkes, who plays Mel Sampson, a private investigator.

Hauck, who wrote the screenplay, challenges his actors with a ton of self-consciously written dialogue: I'm supposing that Hauck, who also wrote the screenplay, wanted to plunge us into a noir world where no one talks like they would in real life, but in 2016, the writing can seem awfully self-conscious.

Besides, we've been down these neo-noir back alleys too many times before, which is why I heard a kind of ironic (and unintended) echo in the movie's title. Given the movie's dense plotting, this could be a case of too much, too late.

The always intriguing Hawkes by no means delivers a formulaic performance as a detective who winds up encountering a variety of women after a shocking murder in the early going. At every turn, Hawkes breaks the mold.

Among the movie's women, Vail Bloom qualifies as the most exposed -- literally. She does much of her acting naked from the waist down. Dichen Lachman works the hard-boiled side of the street as Sampson's long-time love interest.

Hauck certainly has an eye for strange locations (a dreary drive-in theater that also boasts a boxing ring), and his convoluted, Tarantino-like structure slowly and sometimes improbably resolves itself.

But Too Late has difficulty getting beyond what appears to be a meta-narrative about characters trapped in the shadow of previous movies with nothing much at stake besides whether Hauck can make the pieces of his noir jigsaw finally fit neatly together.