HEARTS in ATLANTIS

The number of successful Stephen King adaptations can be counted on the fingers of one mangled hand, but Australian director Scott Hicks probably thought this property would be a snap after the poor reception of his masterful rendition of Snow Falling on Cedars. With its subtle insight into the layered nature of memory and time, Hearts remains a definitive Hicks outing, but the worst of King seeps through in the film’s occasional bathos and misogyny. Bobby (David Morse), a middle-aged photographer, gets a posthumous gift from a childhood pal that draws him into a prolonged flashback to 1960, when drifter Ted (Anthony Hopkins) took lodging with the widowed mother (Hope Davis) of 11-year-old Bobby (Anton Yelchin). Played by Hopkins with aching grace, Ted proves a benevolent enigma, demonstrating powers of precognition, tolerance, and good taste in literature, not to mention a paranoid fear of men in black suits who look like extras in The Matrix. Is he a time traveler? An escapee from an FBI paranormal program? A nut? David’s mom, unfortunately, is no mystery: a whining shrew and scapegoat who comes close to breaking Hearts.

— Peter Keough