Why is he mowing your dirty patch?

St. Vincent

(2014)

(SPOILERS) Apart from the accent, which he finds a wee bit tricky, Bill Murray could phone in this kind of role during his sleep. The grumpy but likeable curmudgeon. He even attempts to atone for passing on Bad Santa by making friends with a loveable little squirt. The familiarity dripping from every pore of St. Vincent isn’t really its biggest problem, it’s that it’s so shameless in scraping together something heart-warming and life-affirming from the signatures of other better movies that it leaves little room for feeling anything genuine at all.

See also: As Good As it Gets, About a Boy. Murray’s going for – I assume – a Brooklyn accent. I tend to be fairly lazy about calling out dodgy accents. Ones that bug the hell out of people get a free pass, but even I could hear he was having problems. I suspect it interfered with his naturally laidback cadence, as familiar tones kept seeping back in. He’s the title character, for whom sainthood is a key and saccharine component of the final act. Vincent’s a ‘Nam vet so Murray’s back in familiar Stripes territory, only less anarchically so.

Theodore Melfi’s feature debut follows the kind of indie-lite trajectory found in many a recent picture featuring young/old casts and cockle-warming sentimentality. Most of these also star Steve Carrell, because there’s nothing like a bit of indie slumming (see Little Miss Sunshine and The Way Way Back) to add prestige value to a Hollywood thespian. Particularly one known for comedy who wants to convince others of his chops. Which there’s nothing at all wrong with this per se, this type of movie has become a very definite type by this point. Edge-free, with a sprinkling of rites of passage and a bridging of the generation gap. That might be why St. Vincent wasn’t quite the slam-dunk The Weinsteins no doubt hoped it would be (as in, it didn’t turn into the next Little Master Sunshine).

Also on-board the celebrity credibility train is Naomi Watts as pregnant lady of the night shag-buddy Daka. Watts doesn’t need to confirm her credibility. Well, she didn’t’ before this and Diana. She’s off the scale for alarmingly accented Eastern Europeans, and at least helps Murray by distracting from his variable vocal performance.

It doesn’t stop there. Everyone seemed to think this was dramedy gold dust, including Chris O’Dowd as Brother Geraghty. O’Dowd has already far exceeded any remaining goodwill he garnered early in his career through his determined efforts to whore himself about into any movie anywhere that will take him. Terrence Howard has little more than a cameo as loan shark Zucko. Ann Dowd who really is cameoing, which is a shame.

Most of all, there’s Melissa McCarthy as Vincent’s new neighbour Maggie. She’s the mother of Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher, putting in a decent showing and wisely not trying an accent, he’s saddled with the most unlikely precocious dialogue conceivable), who is stuck being babysat by Vincent (for 12 dollars an hour) while she works shifts as a CAT scanner (yes, that will prove to be a vital plot point). McCarthy’s fine but it’s not a great part. I don’t think she farts or belches though, so it’s progress of a sort.

Just like Thurman Merman in Bad Santa, Oliver is being bullied at school, and just like in Bad Santa the aging mentor initiates payback. Less directly, so it isn’t nearly as much fun or as reprehensible. In fact, Melfi makes a point of having Vincent punch Ocinski (Dario Barosso) in a soundtracked moment of triumph and jubilation and then backtracks when Daka Finds out (“Violence is for assholes”). Too late: it’s clearly commendable to teach kids to solve their problems through aggression. What’s more, it’s doubly all right because they’ll make friends with the guy who bullied them. So much so, Ocinski will even be sitting at the dinner table with the makeshift family come the last scene.

Vincent is mired in bad neighbourness, but not irredeemably so, ways, of course. He’s a drunk, a gambler (the picture opts not to picks resolve how he steals Oliver’s winnings/savings, presumably because that would be too much of a downer) and inveterate grouch. But he also has a wife with Alzheimer’s whom he keeps quiet about, he supports Daka through her pregnancy, and he saved buddies lying face down in the mud in ‘Nam. Even got a medal for it.

The picture is much better when it is reticent. Unfortunately it has to go and open the floodgates. Vincent’s wife dies, he has a stroke (again, best not to dwell on this; Bill acting like he can’t speak properly gets in the way of what he does best, speaking properly) and, in the ultimate contrived conflation, Oliver’s class are asked by Brother Geraghty to deliver presentations on who they think qualifies as “Saints Among Us”.

Melfi directs casually and unobtrusively, so he should fit in comfortably with bigger budget middling romps. Next up is Going in Style, an aging heist movie with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin. You’d want to see it just for the stars, unless you’ve already seen Stand Up Guys and Last Vegas. And, since Zach Braff is co-directing, one really shouldn’t expect much.

St. Vincent isn’t wholly objectionable or anything, and Murray could read the phone book and be watchable, but it’s relentlessly and offputtingly manipulative. It comes equipped with incessant uplifting montage music, even when there aren’t any montages. Wiki put it best in the synopsis; “the film ends with all of them at the dinner table happily eating together”. I might have lost my lunch at that point, if the sainthood presentation hadn’t already compelled me to stick my fist in my face.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

Do you know that the leading cause of death for beavers is falling trees?

The Interpreter (2005) Sydney Pollack’s final film returns to the conspiracy genre that served him well in both the 1970s ( Three Days of the Condor ) and the 1990s ( The Firm ). It also marks a return to Africa, but in a decidedly less romantic fashion than his 1985 Oscar winner. Unfortunately the result is a tepid, clichéd affair in which only the technical flourishes of its director have any merit. The film’s main claim to fame is that Universal received permission to film inside the United Nations headquarters. Accordingly, Pollack is predictably unquestioning in its admiration and respect for the organisation. It is no doubt also the reason that liberal crusader Sean Penn attached himself to what is otherwise a highly generic and non-Penn type of role. When it comes down to it, the argument rehearsed here of diplomacy over violent resolution is as banal as they come. That the UN is infallible moral arbiter of this process is never in any doubt. The cynicism

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