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.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

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.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

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 think a monkey knows he’s sitting on top of a rocket that might explode?

The Right Stuff (1983) (SPOILERS) While it certainly more than fulfils the function of a NASA-propaganda picture – as in, it affirms the legitimacy of their activities – The Right Stuff escapes the designation of rote testament reserved for Ron Howard’s later Apollo 13 . Partly because it has such a distinctive personality and attitude. Partly too because of the way it has found its through line, which isn’t so much the “wow” of the Space Race and those picked to be a part of it as it is the personification of that titular quality in someone who wasn’t even in the Mercury programme: Chuck Yaeger (Sam Shephard). I was captivated by The Right Stuff when I first saw it, and even now, with the benefit of knowing-NASA-better – not that the movie is exactly extolling its virtues from the rooftops anyway – I consider it something of a masterpiece, an interrogation of legends that both builds them and tears them down. The latter aspect doubtless not NASA approved.

Drank the red. Good for you.

Morbius (2022) (SPOILERS) Generic isn’t necessarily a slur. Not if, by implication, it’s suggestive of the kind of movie made twenty years ago, when the alternative is the kind of super-woke content Disney currently prioritises. Unfortunately, after a reasonable first hour, Morbius descends so resignedly into such unmoderated formula that you’re left with a too-clear image of Sony’s Spider-Verse when it lacks a larger-than-life performer (Tom Hardy, for example) at the centre of any given vehicle.

He doesn’t want to lead you. He just wants you to follow.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) (SPOILERS) The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit , if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts , there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and each subsequent sequel to the first prequel has succeeded only in drawing attention to its prosaic function: keeping franchise flag flying, even at half-mast. Hence Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore , belatedly arriving after twice the envisaged gap between instalments and course-correcting none of the problems present in The Crimes of Grindelwald .

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

You’d be surprised how many intersectional planes of untethered consciousness exist.

Moon Knight (2022) (SPOILERS) Now, this is an interesting one. Not because it’s very good – Phase IV MCU? Hah! – but because it presents its angle on the “superhero” ethos in an almost entirely unexpurgated, unsoftened way. Here is a character explicitly formed through the procedures utilised by trauma-based mind control, who has developed alters – of which he has been, and some of which he remains, unaware – and undergone training/employment in the military and private mercenary sectors (common for MKUltra candidates, per Dave McGowan’s Programmed to Kill ). And then, he’s possessed by what he believes to be a god in order to carry out acts of extreme violence. So just the sort of thing that’s good, family, DisneyPlus+ viewing.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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