Here (12A)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
★★★ 

 
SET in the living room of a house with a camera pointing in the same direction throughout, Here captures different moments in time and life passing by. 
 
Based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, co-writer/director Robert Zemeckis (Forest Gump, Back to the Future) brings it visually to life as you see the different families who have lived in the house through the ages. It even shows you life there during prehistoric times.   
 
The film reunites Tom Hanks and Zemeckis for the fifth time, and it is the first time in 30 years that Hanks and Robin Wright have teamed up since Forest Gump. They play childhood sweethearts from teenaged to elderly, opposite Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly as Hanks’ parents. 
 
They have all been digitally de-aged and it is bizarre to watch Bettany telling off a 19-year-old Hanks who is in fact 15 years older than him. At one point you see a 20-something Bettany as former soldier Al moving into the house with his new bride Rose. 

But the problem is that you are only given a snapshot of what is happening in these people’s lives as the action moves back and forth over the decades and centuries. 
 
It reminded me of H G Wells’s The Time Machine. The constant change in images is very distracting and a visual overload on the senses. It is a bold attempt by Zemeckis to push the cinematic envelope, but you just feel like a voyeur. 

In cinemas January 17

Vermiglio (15)
Directed by Maura Delpero
★★★