Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
Here (2024) adapts Richard McGuire's landmark graphic novel using a genuinely audacious formal conceit — a fixed camera frame showing the same patch of space across centuries simultaneously, with panels within panels fragmenting time. This makes it distinctively novel in its structural ambition, earning a high Novelty score. The performances from Tom Hanks and Robin Wright are earnest but somewhat constrained by the film's formal rigidity, landing as competent but unremarkable. The cinematography, while technically serving the concept, feels visually flat and stage-bound rather than cinematically rich — the static single-frame approach is conceptually interesting but visually monotonous over feature length. The plot, tracing generational love and loss through a fixed location, is emotionally resonant in places but the episodic nature leaves many threads feeling underdeveloped. The ending offers gentle melancholy and a sense of cyclical continuity consistent with the film's themes, though it doesn't fully land emotionally.