How narcissistic to believe you’re living in the end times. The thought might cross your mind — I’m guilty of it, sure — but it can be chased off by imagining how it felt to witness the Dust Bowl or the French Revolution or the fall of Tenochtitlan. “The Life of Chuck,” a sentimental jigsaw puzzle by Mike Flanagan ( “Doctor Sleep” ) from a 50-page 2020 novella by Stephen King , argues the opposite. Here, in this backward-structured triptych of short tales, the death of an ordinary accountant, Chuck Krantz ( Tom Hiddleston ), is the end times, at least for the characters in his head.

Marty ( Chiwetel Ejiofor ), his ex-wife Felicia ( Karen Gillan ) and their friends and co-workers don’t know their catastrophic existence is merely a dying man’s reverie. Their reality is that th

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