In "Father Mother Sister Brother," veteran filmmaker Jim Jarmusch delivers a warm story of family and all its inescapable quirks, and the emotional holes our family members leave behind when they're no longer with us.

He tells three separate stories, connected only by the theme of family and the uniform unpredictability of those relationships.

In the first, Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) play siblings visiting their idiosyncratic father, played by Tom Waits. Waits' character lives alone and it's clear he has minimal contact with his children, and the siblings are similarly disconnected, both to themselves and to their father.

Their communication is polite but strained during their brief visit, Emily wondering how her father even gets by, Jeff more sympathetic to his father's cause. He brings him a bag of groceries and slips him some cash on his way out the door, earning disapproving sighs from Emily. The scene is quiet but sharply observed, ending on a closing note that's full of Jarmusch's rich, deadpan humor. Waits, as always, is a delight.

In the second chapter, Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps) are sisters visiting their mother (Charlotte Rampling) for tea. Mother is prim and proper, Lilith is a wild child, and Tim is somewhere in the middle.

A delicate dance of push-pull emerges, with the two sisters sharing asides, snickering at their mother's preferred romance novels and their mother not-so-quietly casting aspersions on Lilith's lifestyle choices. The bond between the sisters is clear, if only because of the shared experience of living under their mother's ever-judgmental eye.

The final chapter is the most emotionally fertile, with a pair of twins — Luka Sabbat is Billy, Indya Moore is Skye — visiting the Paris apartment of their recently deceased parents. The sibs are emotionally and physically linked, practically completing each other's thoughts, as they experience their shared grief and learn new things about the lives of their parents.

Theirs is a different kind of bond than the others in the movie, as Jarmusch shows the deepness of their connection. Familial ties come in all varieties, and Jarmusch observes and examines those relationships with a mixture of humor, wit and emotional resonance. It's a movie for the whole family.

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'FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER'

Grade: B

MPA rating: R (for language)

Running time: 1:51

How to watch: Now in theaters

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