Review: "The Little Stranger"

“The Little Stranger” is a very different sort of ghost story.

There are thumps in the night and strange scratchings on wardrobes and all of that. But it’s more a tale of psychological obsession than supernatural boogums. It’s a claustrophobic, deeply immersive gothic horror film that takes its own sweet time getting to the scares -- and even then they come sideways from where you expected.

Domhnall Gleeson plays Dr. Faraday, a youngish country physician who finds himself summoned for a house call at Hundreds Hall, the crumbling mansion of the noble but decaying Ayers family. He’s intrigued -- his mother worked there as a maid decades ago, and he himself visited the place for a ceremony as a young boy, a grand day that lives large in his memories.

Now, in the post-World War II years, Hundreds is looking more like Dozens. The only residents are the matriarch, Angela (Charlotte Rampling), and her children Roderick (Will Poulter) and Caroline (Ruth Wilson), plus a maid, Betty (Liv Hill), who’s barely into her teens. Every year they have to sell off more of the immense acreage to pay their taxes and keep the brandy cart stocked.

Roddy was in the RAF during the war and left badly scarred and crippled. Faraday -- no first name is every supplied -- has an idea to treat his limp with electrical impulses, and over the next few weeks something like a kinship forms. The mother is serene and superior, her funds meager but her entitlement in high reserves, and she looks upon Farraday as an uppity village boy who made good but will never be their equals.

Caroline is intriguing, though. Described as the smartest of the clan, she’s stuck caring for her brother and mother, not to mention trying to keep the house from falling down around them. While Faraday carefully plays the role of the family friend, Caroline sees to it that most of his attention falls on her. People in the community talk about the state of affairs, but without resentment.

This is a very interior performance by Gleeson, a chameleon-like actor who is quietly asserting himself among the finest performers of his generation. Faraday often wears a stern look, staring at people with a mix of keen observation and concealed longing. With his strawberry locks pasted against his skull and bits of fiery hair above his eyes and lips, he seems both very old and very young at once.

Without giving away too much, it seems the root of the family’s problems lies with the eldest daughter, Susie, who took ill and died not long after Faraday’s childhood visit. Angela becomes convinced that her spirit is still residing in the halls, and physical manifestations start appearing to confirm her suspicions.

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s last film was the mesmerizing “Room,” and some of that same sense of closed-in space is at work here, too. While Hundreds Hall is vast, it weighs upon the characters like a putrefying corpse in danger of suffocating them. Lucinda Coxon (“The Danish Girl”) wrote the screenplay based upon the novel by Sarah Waters.

I appreciated the dusky, warbling moods of “The Little Stranger,” though the film teases out the mysteries of its narrative to the breaking point, and then a little further. It’s mostly interesting as a psychological portrait of a man who is always helpful and polite, the very picture of a true English gentleman, yet seems to have a smudge on his soul he can’t quite blot out.

Review: "Searching"

“Searching” may seem like a breakthrough movie, though it’s not. It’s a pretty good one, but it’s hardly the first mainstream film to take place entirely through the computer screens we use to chat, search the internet and connect with others. The horror film “Unfriended” did it four years ago.

Yes, the movie is just what it sounds like: the only shots of people we see are through their chat windows, or live feed television coverage of unfolding events. Otherwise, it’s a whole lot mouse cursors scrolling around clicking on stuff, opening up and windows and typing.

It’s actually a lot more engaging than you’d think. Director Aneesh Chaganty, who co-wrote the script with Sev Ohanian, makes his feature film debut keeping things moving along pretty briskly. John Cho anchors the movie as David Kim, a dad desperately searching for his missing teen daughter, Margot (Michelle La).

It’s essentially a mystery-thriller, with David finding out that he didn’t really know his daughter at all. Her mom (Sara Sohn) passed away two years earlier, and they’ve been stumbling forward without ever really communicating with each other about the loss.

At first David thinks Margot is just being a typical teen, forgetting to empty the trash and blowing off his voice messages and texts. But then he finds out she left early from the study group she was at the previous night, and didn’t go camping in the mountains as had been suggested.

He hacks into her email and social media accounts on her laptop, and is surprised to find that the Margot reflected there seems rather… sad and lonely. She doesn’t seem to have any close friends, eating alone in the cafeteria every day, and other kids only have vague impressions of her. She gets invited along to stuff mostly out of a sense of obligation to her mourning.

Eventually the police are brought in, and David is at first comforted by the presence of Detective Sergeant Rosemary Vick, a veteran in the missing persons department. She seems on the ball and determined. More clues appear, things grow hopeful then dire, and the case eventually becomes a media sensation.

It is rather interesting, and also depressing, to see an entire movie that plays out like the experience of sitting at your computer. Part of me couldn’t help wondering if any of the online platforms paid for product placement, or were shut out if they didn’t pony up. For example, Facebook and Instagram play prominent roles but Twitter not at all. Ditto for Venmo but not PayPal.

All of us are spending so much time creating and annotating these digital facsimiles of our own lives, like a funhouse mirror where we lose our sense of self in the many reflections. How much of what people see of us is only what we want them to see? And do we start to believe the stories we tell about ourselves?

“Searching” drags a little toward the middle, but speeds up for a twisty ending that’s like something straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. It just goes to show that, even if you use a lot of cool new tools, filmmaking is at its heart a very tried and true process.

Review: "The Bookshop"

Oh, those repressed Brits! So impossible to say what they mean! How they must stammer and not look each other in the eye or express their true feelings! I’m not sure if ever a people got as much cinematic mileage out of having a large piece of lumber ensconced in their collective backsides.

Part "Remains of the Day," part "Local Hero" and with a few bits 'n' pieces of other British pastoral flicks tossed in, "The Bookshop" is set in a quaint little village where big things are happening beneath the workaday hustle and bustle.

Emily Mortimer plays Florence Green, a widower of early middle years who arrives in the lovely (fictional) seaside town of Hardborough in 1959. She lost her husband in the war, and now has the idea to open up the bookshop she’s always dreamed of. She buys a dilapidated old house in the middle of town, known as The Old House, fixes it up and is set to open her doors.

It seems that Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), the local wealthy matriarch, has her own ideas for the house. She invites Florence to her latest grand party and suggests that instead she give the house over for a local arts center.

When women of Mrs. Gamart’s station offer suggestions, what they really want is acquiescence.

But Florence resolves to push on, and at first things go well. Books fly off the shelves, and she even takes on an assistant in Christine (Honor Kneafsey), who is about 12 and from a working-class family. Christine is very honest; if she were an adult we would call her blunt. She took the job making it clear she doesn’t clear for reading herself, and loathes boys. But the two get on marvelously.

Her best customer is Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy), the town’s mysterious widower. He lives in a dilapidated great mansion, takes frequent walks and consumes books voraciously. Brundish does not actually come into town, at least not during the daytime. So Florence sends him books, three or four at a time, with the understanding that he can return anything he doesn’t like. None ever are, and he takes an especial liking to the works of Ray Bradbury.

Eventually the two have tea, to talk about Florence’s dilemma of whether to order 250 copies of “Lolito,” the controversial new book from Vladimir Nabokov. She carries through with the plan on Brundish’s recommendation of the novel. It causes a scandal in the bucolic town, which is all the reason Mrs. Gamart needs to launch a slow-moving but inexorable campaign against the bookshop.

Written and directed by Isabel Coixet from the book by Penelope Fitzgerald, “The Bookshop” is a keen observation of manners. The townsfolk act solicitously toward Florence, from the banker to her attorney, yet there’s a sense of predatory interest in their gaze. They’re not sure how to take a woman of independence and courage, and curiosity soon melts into malevolence.

Milo North, an indolent local bachelor played by James Lance, hangs around the edges of the story, appearing to pitch woo at Florence while also making certain to stay in the good graces of the Gamarts.

It’s a tender performance by Nighy, playing man of great sensitivity and pain, who reaches out after decades of solitude to another person through their shared love of books. It’s not exactly a romance, since he’s about 30 years older than her, but in a different time and place…

“The Bookshop” is a bittersweet story, one that celebrates the need for hopes and dreams while recognizing that they usually don’t come true. Or even when they do, other people have dreams that may conflict, which often leads to nightmares. True bravery comes from carrying on even knowing this.

Reeling Backward: "Rio Lobo" (1970)

Even in 1970, "Rio Lobo" was something of an outdated relic.

It was the final film directed by Howard Hawks, made during John Wayne's post-"True Grit" period of diminishing returns, with only his final film, 1976's "The Shootist," really standing out in his filmography. (What, you don't recall "McQ" from '74?)

The following year he would make "Big Jake," another "last" picture for its director, George Sherman, which also featured a revenge/payback theme. That's actually a throughline in Wayne's final decade of films, as his characters generally react to the wrongdoing of others, rather than seeking out trouble like his younger cowboys would.

("Jake" and "Lobo" have been released together as a Blu-ray set, so I'll be featuring them next to each other in this series.)

Hawks and Wayne had of course paired up together before, for "Rio Bravo" in 1959, which was a deliberate cinematic retort to "High Noon" with a very similar plot, and for "El Dorado" in 1966, which was essentially a remake of the same formula with some of the actors around Wayne swapped out.

"Rio Lobo" has been called the third remake/response to "High Noon," which would seem to show the depth of how miffed Hawks and Wayne were at it. I don't really think that description holds water, though, as this is a light-hearted adventure story about former Civil War enemies teaming up to overthrow a corrupt sheriff and his rich landowner boss.

In this telling, Wayne and his fellows are the dangerous interlopers riding into the eponymous town -- and nobody's fretting about their coming.

The story is straight as an arrow: while seeking out the traitors who sold information to the Rebs during the war, former Union Col. Cord McNally (Wayne) follows the clues to the fictional Texas town, where everyone lives in fear for their lives of the brutal sheriff and his crew -- though not enough, apparently, for anyone to leave.

Of course, it turns out one of the deputies and the land baron were the traitors, so McNally gets to play the hero while getting his payback. His allies are Pierre Cordon, a French/Mexican Confederate captain played by Jorge Rivero, and Cordon's wily sergeant, Tuscarora Phillips (Christopher Mitchum, son of Robert).

The trio tangled at the tail end of the war, and it was actually the Rebs who killed McNally's beloved lieutenant while stealing a shipment of gold. But the good colonel figures those were acts of war performed in the line of duty, and they're soon sharing drinks and good cheer. He wants the pair who sold them the information about the shipments. The former Confederate soldiers know only the faces but not the names.

They also pick up Shasta Delaney (Jennifer O'Neill) along the way, who's a much more self-assured female than we're used to seeing in Westerns. She bosses McNally and Cordon around, not merely accepting the latter's romantic interest but actually directing it according to her whims.

Shasta gets a nice speech about what it's like to be a woman living on the frontier, constantly being pawed by men who think they have rights to her body. I kept thinking about how we never would have heard this sort of thing in a Hollywood movie even 10 years earlier. It plays as a prescient #MeToo moment by today's lights.

Her husband was killed -- he was a lout; she wasn't exactly sad about it -- and after some saloon work, Shasta hooked up with a traveling snake oil salesman, a kindly older gent who treated her like a father. But then they wandered into Rio Lobo, he was killed and she found herself being pursued by Deputy Whitey Carter (Robert Donner), an albino who is one of the aforementioned gropers.

Once they get to Rio Lobo, they find the sheriff, "Blue Tom" Hendricks (stalwart footballer-turned-actor Mike Henry), has a veritable army tracking everyone's moves within the town. They soon learn that Ketcham (Victor French) is the money behind the stink, forcing people to sell their land at a fraction of its value. He was formerly known as Sgt. Ike Gorman, when he was selling information to the Rebs.

Meanwhile, Tuscarora is taken captive by the sheriff, so McNally and his team head over to his father's place to recruit help. Played by famously googly-eyed character actor Jack Elam, the senior Phillips is a rootin', tootin' old hellion whose standard policy is to fire off his scattergun at strangers and ask questions later.

Soon the forces converge for the reckoning, which will involve a lot of shooting and taunts.

It's a good-looking, entertaining but rather disposable film. It does stand out for me in a few ways:

• It's one of the most purely plot-driven movies I've ever seen. There's literally no fat in the story, written by Burton Wohl and the legendary Leigh Brackett. Every scene, line of dialogue and character advances the plot in some way. The characters lack any sort of depth outside of their role in the unfolding story. Example: what does McNally do when he's not a Union colonel or hunting traitors? We have no idea.

• The women are surprisingly sexually frisky. In addition to Cordon's romance with Shasta, he also barges in on sweet young thing Amelita, finding her half-dressed while he's on the run from the deputies. She doesn't seem put out by this, and indeed appears ready to bed the stranger right then and there. Later, she gets her face cut up for assisting McNally & Co. Amelita is played by Sherry Lansing, a math teacher-turned-model who was trying her hand at acting. Lansing only made one other movie and, dissatisfied with her own skills as an actor, learned the business from the ground up and became arguably the most successful female producer in Hollywood history.

• The film is rather tawdry and violent for its G rating from the relatively new MPAA, which started labeling movies two years earlier. In addition to the partial nudity and innuendo mentioned above, a number of people are shot, with the DayGlo orange blood that was favored during that era spilling generously. One person even has his rifle explode on him, ripping his face and hands to bloody shreds. Today it would surely receive a PG-13 rating. Obviously, the concept of what constituted a "general audience" was still rather nebulous in 1970.

• This is as relaxed a role you'll ever see John Wayne in. He's constantly smiling and allowing himself to be the butt of the jokes, as when Shasta chooses to snuggle up to him instead of Cordon when the bed down on the trail because he's old and sexually nonthreatening. McNally even starts joshingly referring to himself as "comfortable," borrowing her phrase. Even when he's engaged in a shootout with the bad guys, he never seems particularly perturbed about it. For an actor whose roles were often defined by rage, it's a breath of fresh air.

In his early 60s when they shot the film, Wayne still cuts an impressive figure. As in all of his later roles, he constantly wears a jacket or leather vest to try to hide his belly, and the longer toupee he adopted in the 1960s sits lankly on his head like a dead gopher. But Wayne still has that twinkle in his eye, the rapscallion smile, the stern voice that made many an ornery assailant take a step back all on its own.

John Wayne had one of the most remarkable film careers, a star for 40 years without ever experiencing a dramatic dip in his popularity. Sure, his last few rides around the trail were more nostalgia tours than anything else. But he deserved those last laps, and "Rio Lobo" is a decent send-off for one of the great directors.

Video review: "American Animals"

“American Animals” is part documentary, part fictitious con job.

It’s the tale of one of the strangest robberies in history: four college students pilfering some very valuable books from the private library of Transylvania University in the early 2000s. Writer/director Bart Layton takes the audacious step of casting actors to portray the young men as they planned and carried out the heist, then intercutting this with interviews with the actual participants today, now in their 30s.

Warren Lipka (Evan Peters) is the ringleader, a headstrong athlete who doesn’t seem very interested in sports, school or much of anything. But he and dweeby art student Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) become obsessed with the idea of taking the books, valued at several million dollars. At first both think the other is serious, while they’re just playing around.

Soon it becomes clear, though, that this is more than just a passing fancy. They enlist Chas Allen (Blake Jenner), a rich doof, as their getaway driver, and Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson) as their logistics expert. They track movements, plan the timing, prepare elaborate costumes as old men and even meet up with fences to buy the hot books.

As this is all going on, the movie cuts to interviews with the real men recollecting the events we’ve just seen. They often contest the validity of the movie version, saying it’s just Hollywood hokum.

The film starts out as fun ‘n’ games, but then a strange thing happens. We start to realize these are real men who made an audacious and incredibly stupid move, and it’s still affecting their lives to this day. It was essentially an impulse decision, in long form. They became so enamored of the idea of doing this thing, they never stopped to think if they should.

Entertaining and oddly affecting, “American Animals” is less a crime story than the tale of young men who discovered themselves through a bungled heist.

Bonus features are decent, and include a deleted scene, making-of featurettes, a gallery of photo stills from production and a feature-length commentary track featuring the director and cast.

Movie:

Extras:

Frequent Stalling, Excessive Speeding and a Surly Cool: The Legend of The Beast

Not an actual photo of The Beast, who never wore Mags and whose paint was like flat earth.

We called it The Beast.

It seemed as long as a World War II destroyer, and only slightly less menacing. He was the color of a well-used playground baseball diamond, earthen brown with a slightly acrid orange tint. The Beast was perpetually angry, as demonstrated by the deep-throated rumble he spat forth whenever awoken.

He was strong, but old, and like all graying warriors rose from his sleep only reluctantly, memories of past battles scattering. Through his four large eyes he glared at a world that looked upon him as a relic, a dinosaur of a bygone era.

The Beast was a 1971 Mercury Cougar, which Dylan bought for $500 (from an uncle, I believe) during the summer between our junior and senior years at high school. Next to the sleek new Beamers and Volvos the richer students at Winter Park High drove to school, the Beast resembled a rotary phone beside a new iPhone. Parked next to my sky-blue 1972 Plymouth Duster, though, the Beast emanated a surly cool.

For a young man, the first car he owns himself without dependency on any parent is like a four-wheeled ticket to freedom. Yes, you say to yourself, my car may be old and ugly to look upon, but it's mine, bought with my own money, and by turning a key I can go anywhere I want.

He was so large and heavy, the Beast literally intimidated other drivers. One look at this expansive slab of rolling Detroit steel, and they knew their modern machines of plastic and fiberglass would end up in a pile of dust in any collision. So they steered clear, and it is a satisfying thing to watch other drivers get out of your way.

This burly heft tended to be a drawback, however, when you drive a car like that to the beach and it sinks into the sand up to the quarter panels. It took a handful of guys to push it out.

It would be fair to say that Dylan was an inexperienced car owner, and did not do everything a conscientious owner should -- things like pulling the oil dipstick, checking the tires or reading the instruments with more than a passing interest.

One time he brought the Beast to my house so my father could change the oil for him. The oil was so low it wouldn't even read on the dipstick. Dylan tried to maneuver the Beast up the portable tire ramps my Dad used, but he wasn't quick enough on the brakes and zoomed clear over the edge. The Beast came down on the ramps like a ferrous mastodon, crunching them. We disentangled them and tried again. Whomp! The ramps were starting to look rather gnarly.

At this point my father took me aside and asked me if my friend might, despite being a stellar student, have some kind of mental deficiency. I assured him that Dylan was merely spastic. On the third try we got the Beast to stay suspended, the oil was changed, and to my knowledge it was never done so again. The ramps, now twisted to a hunchback reflection of their former selves, were outlasted by the Beast.

Those who are passengers in a car driven by Dylan today might wonder who this timid and meek pilot is. As a teen, Dylan drove the Beast with a unchecked fury. He was like one fire-belched demon riding on the shoulders of another, screaming around the streets near his father's home with such reckless disregard that neighbors took to shaking their fists whenever the Beast drew near.

A late sleeper, Dylan always managed to make it from Maitland to the high school in an impossibly short span of time, never once getting a speeding ticket. On one occasion, which must represent some sort of unofficial land speed record, he drove from Orlando to Atlanta in 5½ hours, which averages out to about 85 m.p.h. Again, he never got a ticket -- even though at one point he saw a state trooper pointing a radar gun directly at him while he was doing north of 90.

This episode lends credence to the theory promulgated in some circles that the Beast's arsenal including a cloaking device.

Alas, although the Beast's speedometer and cloaking device worked perfectly, the fuel gauge stubbornly refused his duty. Dylan knew it was time to refuel after going 200 miles, which was a pretty simple calculation: 20-gallon gas tank times 10 mpg. If someone were to operate the Beast with today's gas prices, they would have to forego groceries just to keep his rapacious thirst slaked.

 One time Dylan and I were on a long trip with Mary Oglo and Moesha Claussen. We had decided it was time to let the girls drive, so they were up front while we lounged over a game of chess on one of those little magnetic sets in the back. We lost track of our time and distance, though, and soon the Beast was sputtering and coming to a rest on the side of I-75.

After a few fruitless minutes trying to flag down some help, Dylan finally convinced some folks in a run-down old RV to give him to a lift to the next gas station. The rest of us were quite convinced this was the last we would ever see of him, and that he would meet his fate is some sort of hillbilly torture orgy, a la "Deliverance."

The Beast being old, he had the usual list of infirmities. There were times when he would not start, or when he did made strange disturbing sounds that vaguely resembled groaning.

Perhaps his most public breakdown was at our high school graduation. Near the end of the ceremony, a tremendous Florida June downpour ensued. I searched in vain for Dylan, as he was my ride. There was a huge crush of graduates, parents and friends milling at the front door to the civic center where the event took place -- no one had brought an umbrella. And even if they did, they didn't want to brave a weather event that was fast approaching typhoon level.

Impetuous, I took off running toward the Beast, the inches-deep water sloshing up over my graduation gown. As I ran, I noticed another figure running parallel to me in the next row. It was Dylan, also splashing through the deluge at top speed, his black robes flowing. We made it to the Beast together, got inside and looked at each other. We could not have been more wet if we'd jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool.

We roared with laughter at our state, and at our fate at being the first ones to escape the mob. The rest would spend the next hour or more slogging through stalled traffic.

We were off, our fortunes before us, our past receding behind, and the Beast our noble chariot.

 Until the Beast hit a big puddle halfway through the parking lot, sprayed some water up his exhaust manifold, and promptly conked out. We tried to restart him, but the Beast was obstinate. Helpless in the continuing downpour, we watched as a stream of cars inched their way out of the lot, a mechanical caterpillar filled with people who gazed out their windows at the two bozos in the (literally) flooded brown junker.

Finally, one of the cars in this sad review contained Dylan's father, who somehow got the Beast started, and we were off again -- delayed, humbled and mortified.

The Beast continued to carry Dylan all through college at Rollins, although his mechanical problems mounted as Dylan's ability to fix them waned. There were times it seemed entire semesters passed without the Beast moving from his grim perch in the student parking lot, like an ancient drake dozing the eons away.

Finally, as college was ending, Dylan knew it was time to put the Beast out to pasture. As luck would have it, he got the Beast running again just in time to fetch a price of $750. For in the years Dylan owned him, the Beast had hit the magic age of 20, and was now considered a classic.

It is most likely that the Beast was soon sold for parts, or at most spent a few more years tooling around before heading to the junkyard. But I still like to think that somewhere the Beast and another curly-headed young man have formed a new partnership, an understanding between machine and man like the one Dylan had.

Somewhere, I secretly hope, the Beast still growls.

Review: "Puzzle"

The great thing about jigsaw puzzles, someone says, is that the end you know you’ve made all the right choices.

Agnes (Kelly Macdonald), a mousy housewife from the New York suburbs, is very good at puzzles. Crazy good. Which isn’t to say that she’s made all the right choices. She’s living one of those lives of quiet desperations we’re always hearing about. Puzzles end up as being not just a distraction for her, but a path out of the drudgery.

Agnes is married to Louie (David Denman), a well-meaning lunk who runs an auto repair shop. They have one boy, Gabe (Austin Abrams) about to graduate from high school and go off to college, and another, Ziggy (Bubba Weiler), just out of school and working (grudgingly) at his dad’s garage because his grades weren’t good enough.

They’re Catholic, and really mean it. Agnes’ entire existence pretty much revolves around keeping the house in order, cooking meals and attending church functions. They don’t watch the news or go anywhere other than their lakeside cabin for fishing. When Gabe brings home a girlfriend (Liv Hewson) who says she’s a Buddhist, Agnes admits she doesn’t really know what that means.

Her relationship with Louie is like a well-cared-for car that has lost its zip, or never had any.

He’s a decent guy, but he treats Agnes like an appendage rather than a partner. The movie opens with a party happening at their house, with Agnes carefully preparing beforehand and serving everyone instead of participating. It’s only when she brings the cake out that we realize it’s her birthday party.

That’s her life: she gets a party, but she has to bake, serve and clean up the cake herself.

She’s always been a whiz at puzzles. A 1,000-piece one that would take most people days is just a quick snap for her. Agnes decides to take a trip into New York City to find some more challenging puzzles at a specialty store, and sees an ad for a champion seeking a partner.

Who knew: there are people who actually do jigsaw puzzles -- puzzlers, they call themselves -- competitively.

This brings her to the door of Robert (Irrfan Khan), the indolent champion. He’s rich, having invented something for a big pile of cash years ago. Now he just does puzzles because he’s good at it and he never really has anything better to do. After wowing him with how fast she burns through a complex puzzle, they agree to practice twice a week in preparation for the national championships next month.

Soon Agnes is living a double life, making up stories about visiting her sick aunt to cover her absences. But she misses a few church meetings, even forgets to make dinner because she’s so busy puzzling. This sends the entire family into turmoil, with Gabe dreaming of a gap year traveling in Tibet, Ziggy thinking about culinary school and Louie scratching his big ape head at how everyone’s gone bonkers.

Director Marc Turtletaub and screenwriters Polly Mann and Oren Moverman, adapting the story from an Argentine film, are less concerned with the perambulations of the plot than emotions honestly explored. Macdonald is understated and authentic, playing a woman of simple background who finds herself enthralled and scared by new possibilities.

The Robert character is regretfully underwritten; we get the sense between his meetings with Agnes that he’s done nothing but wait around for their next scene together.

The best interactions are actually between Agnes and Ziggy. They’re both misfits who want to fit in, but also want to explore their quirky longings. Weiler brings an anxious charm to the kid’s struggles.

I liked a lot of things about “Puzzle,” but the final picture never really came into focus for me. It’s an intimate portrait of life: messy, sprawling and craving organization into a more coherent story.