THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS

PG, 104 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic, Westbrook. Starts tonight at Stonington, Waterford, Lisbon. Witches are so 2017. Make way for warlocks, aka “boy witches,” as defined by the intrepid young Lewis (Owen Vaccaro), the boy hero of “The House with a Clock in Its Walls.” The adaptation of John Bellairs’ 1973 young adult fantasy novel, directed by Eli Roth and written by Eric Kripke, makes a play to move in on the young warlock turf vacated by Harry Potter, but the film just can’t quite keep time as a proper young adult fantasy adventure. The story, which takes place in 1955, follows Lewis as he travels to New Zebedee, Mich., to live with his uncle, Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black), after the tragic death of his parents. The film has a vintage steampunk aesthetic, with Lewis outfitted in tweeds and a ubiquitous pair of goggles. He fits right in to his uncle’s creaking, groaning, ticking house of wonders, where there are no rules, plentiful chocolate chip cookies and lots of mysterious goings-on, courtesy of Jonathan and his neighbor, Mrs. Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett). It’s not so easy to fit in with the kids at school, though Lewis does make one friend in the cool-kid greaser Tarby (Sunny Suljic). But if Lewis is going to learn anything from his impressively bearded and kooky uncle, it’s to embrace the weird — it’s the only way to be a warlock. Lewis is soon receiving lessons in magic from his uncle and Mrs. Zimmerman, a combination of oldschool vaudeville magician tricks, and real, mystical conjuring of the ethereal fantastic.Despite all the rich elements — the fantastic cast, the wonderfully detailed production and costume design, an oddball family story of black sheep finding each other — there’s something missing from “The House with a Clock in Its Walls.” It’s weightless, hop-skipping over necessary story-building, glossing over Lewis’ warlock training as well as the personal histories of his guardians. It’s all style, no heft, and there’s little personal connection to the characters. Piles of exposition pour out of characters’ mouths via speeches and monologues, rather than organically throughout the script. There’s a layer of artifice that never quite evaporates, never allows us to fall headlong into this world. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

LIFE ITSELF

H1/2 R, 125 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic, Westbrook. Starts tonight at Stonington, Waterford, Lisbon. It’s difficult to discuss what “Life Itself” is exactly about, because the film, written and directed by “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman, is such a twisty, tangled narrative that to describe any aspect of it is to risk spoilers. Besides, it’s best to experience the twists and turns for yourself — going in cold really enhances the baffling experience of watching this emotionally sadistic film. The worst thing about “Life Itself” is not that it is emotionally sadistic. It’s just how much it wants to be emotionally sadistic, while simultaneously missing the mark by a mile. Maybe over the course of a series, one could build the kind of attachment to characters in which the morbid and frankly, gory scenarios might wring an emotional reaction, but contained within a feature-length running time — and with so much effort showing — it’s a grand failure. Watching “Life Itself” itself feels like being constantly pranked. It is an exercise in pulling the rug out from under the viewer, because the larger theme of the film is the “unreliable narrator,” which is spelled out for us in kindergarten blocks when Abby (Olivia Wilde), in a flashback, declares her college English thesis is going to be on said literary device. She describes her epiphany to her boyfriend Will (Oscar Isaac) in a tumble of words: The most reliable narrator is … life itself. Or maybe life itself is the most unreliable narrator. Who knows? It’s one or the other, but truly, the film drains all meaning from the phrase. The cheapest thing about Fogelman’s unreliable narrator device is he uses it like a party trick, not to enhance the story in any way, like unreliable narrators used to great effect in film noir. The entirety of “Life Itself” is a cheap trick, starting with the trailer. You thought this was a movie about Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde in love? Think again. Will and Abby do serve as our entry point into the sprawling story. Drunk, crazy Will has recently been released from an institution, participating in mandated sessions with a therapist (Annette Bening). Abby’s no longer in his life, and his therapy involves describing the horrors of her rough childhood and writing screenplays like he and Abby used to dream about. We see snippets of their relationship — declarations of love at frat parties, arguing about Bob Dylan in bed, happy lunches with Will’s parents (Mandy Patinkin and Jean Smart). Suddenly, we’re in Spain, on a bucolic olive farm owned by a philosophical Mr. Saccione (Antonio Banderas). Somehow the family in New York and the family in Spain are going to come together, simply because Fogelman wants to prove he can, manipulating the characters like a bunch of very depressing Sims. By the time the whole sodden, death-obsessed thing wraps up, all we’re left with is “that’s it?” — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service