Like many in my generation, I first met the late Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant, the gruff paleontologist hero of “Jurassic Park” (1993). In that film, the irascible Grant shepherds two children through the dinosaur-prowled park, rediscovering his own heart in the process. That performance cemented Neill in the popular imagination as a father figure: rough-edged and emotionally inarticulate on the su...