Mr. Holmes

The 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen), retired on the Sussex Downs, contends with a failing memory while trying to record the facts of his final case from 30 years earlier. Director Bill Condon and writer Jeffrey Hatcher (adapting Mitch Cullin's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind) provide an elegiac portrait of the aging sleuth, juggling four separate stories adroitly interwoven by editor Virginia Katz. The movie's strongest scenes involve Holmes and the young son (Milo Parker) of his Sussex housekeeper (Laura Linney), but the whole movie is of one smooth, elegant piece, with Patrick Kennedy and Hattie Morahan as the principals in that 30-year-old case and Hiroyuki Sanada as Holmes' Japanese admirer. Towering over all, predictably enough, is McKellen's textured, quietly stunning performance. J.L.