Director George Clooney hit a grand slam his first time at bat (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), then set the blandness bar high with Good Night, and Good Luck, and has gone down swinging ever since (The Monuments Men, The Ides of March). This steeped-in-sentimentality adaptation of newspaperman, novelist J.R. Moehringer’s quest for a daddy figure never really allows us to get to know the sagacious surrogate father’s that populate his uncle Charlie’s (Ben Affleck) corner tavern. Screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) alternates time frames between Young JR (Daniel Ranieri) and Jr. (Tye Sheridan) his postgraduate self on a commuter train to the future, next stop: an interview at Yale. When asked, his first name stands for “Junior,” a sobriquet he adopted to spite a father (Max Martin) who barely qualified as a guest in his life. Affleck’s Charlie is every young man’s favorite uncle: not only will he let you lick the foam off his boilermaker, you’ll leave his bar instilled with a proper respect for women. For once, the romantic subplot, this one between Jr. and Sidney (Briana Middleton), the daughter of haughty magazine publishers, is an oasis amidst familiarity. (2021) — Scott Marks