Film Previews

“A Man Called Otto”

Director: Marc Forster
Starring: Tom Hanks, Rachel Keller, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo

Based on the No. 1 New York Times bestseller “A Man Called Ove,” “A Man Called Otto” tells the story of Otto Anderson (Tom Hanks), a grump who no longer sees purpose in his life following the loss of his wife. Otto is ready to end it all, but his plans are interrupted when a lively young family moves in next door, and he meets his match in quick-witted Marisol. She challenges him to see life differently, leading to an unlikely friendship that turns his world around. A heartwarming and funny story about love, loss and life, “A Man Called Otto” shows that family can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places.

“The Pale Blue Eye”

Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Fred Hechinger

“The Pale Blue Eye” stars Christian Bale as a retired constable in 1830 who joins forces with a young Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling) to solve a series of grisly slayings. The movie, based on a novel by Louis Bayard, is not based on true events, but it uses fiction to explore a truth familiar to anyone who has turned Poe’s pages: Real horrors seldom have easy explanations. Bale’s 19th-century detective, Augustus Landor, has devoted his life to using modern forensics to expose wrongdoers and bring them to justice. He’s since ended his career and retired to the woods of upstate New York, but when men from the nearby military academy of West Point are found hanged — with their hearts cut from their bodies — he is recruited to solve the case.

“White Noise”

R | 136 minutes
Director/Writer: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle

The film, being an adaptation, is based on Don DeLillo’s famous postmodern novel “White Noise,” a subtly satirical story about a professor of “Hitler studies” (Adam Driver’s character) at a liberal arts college in middle America and his fourth wife. The couple must face their crippling fear of death when an “airborne toxic event” from a chemical spill creates potentially lethal clouds. This leads the cynically ruminative academic to gather his four precocious children and sarcastic wife and head through endless traffic to some kind of barely possible safety. At once hilarious and horrifying, “White Noise” dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempt to deal with the mundane conflicts of day-to-day life while grappling with the larger philosophical issues of love, death and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world. n