St. Vincent Ain't All Bad

I was not excited to go see St. Vincent. Don't get me wrong, I love Bill Murray. But the trailer absolutely killed all interest I may have had in the film. Regardless, I went to see it yesterday.

If you don't already know, St. Vincent is about a mom and her young son moving into a new neighborhood only to discover their next door neighbor is a dirty, raucous, mean, old man named Vincent (Bill Murray). But through a series of ridiculous situations, Vincent and the boy form a bond... It's one of those cheesy "perhaps there's more to this old guy than meets the eye" kind of flicks. It's corny, formulaic, and pretty sappy. But if you like that kind of thing, it isn't the worst I've seen from that degraded, musty, old genre.

Bill Murray gives a solid performance, which is probably the only reason anyone's still talking about this movie. But Oliver, the kid, played by Jaeden Lieberher, is actually pretty great. I wouldn't give a child actor more credit than he/she's due, believe me. But this kid actually sells it. He really knocks one out of the park. I like Melissa McCarthy here, but she surprisingly has next to nothing to do. And Naomi Watts turns in a good enough performance in a role I really don't know why she was cast in... Chris O'Dowd also does a good job here. Though his career of late has been an absolute enigma to me.

Anyway, St. Vincent is exactly what's advertised, nothing more. This all-star comedy cast is not here to make you laugh. They want you to get all sentimental and shit. If that's your cup of tea, then by all means, go ahead and drink it. But I won't be putting these guys on any awards lists. Not right now anyway.

Cuban Fury Didn't Exactly Set The World On Fire

One day, Nick Frost had a weird idea to make a salsa movie. And this is what came out of that.

A pretty corny little film with a few very notable names who probably just showed up on set to shoot the shit with some people they'd always wanted to work with. It's mediocre, but gives just enough to maybe keep you vaguely interested.

Essentially, Nick Frost plays Bruce, a guy down on his luck... and down on his life, who used to be really into salsa dancing but through bullying decided not to pursue that path any longer. One day, Rashida Jones shows up as his new boss Julia and lets slip that she's into salsa. Bruce's old passion is suddenly reignited for better or for worse.

The cast is honestly the only thing that kept me around till the end. I like Nick Frost, though it's strange to see him as the leading man. While I never like to pigeonhole anyone, he's just never proven himself capable of carrying a film. Rashida Jones does her usual thing, sort of but not really that witty girl you can get along with. And Ian McShane shows up and clearly just wants to have fun. He's been such a strange actor to me, because he's exceptionally talented, but rarely seems to do films that showcase his abilities. I like that he goes to set to enjoy himself, but I guess I still want to see more out of him. Then there's Chris O'Dowd... who's been making some very odd choices. Since his success with Bridesmaids, it seems he's decided to go out and just play despicable character after despicable character. And I bet he's having a blast doing it. Perhaps I'm just looking at what he's done in 2014, but between this and Calvary I'm not exactly sure what (if anything) he's trying to say.

I know I'm sort of blasting this cast a little, but it mostly comes from a knowledge that they have a lot of talent and seem to just be materializing into second-rate productions like this one. Cuban Fury doesn't do or say anything new. Its message is well-meaning enough. But at the end of the day, it's not  gonna change your life and it may not even be able to hold your interest through a pretty short 98 minute run-time. So take that for what it's worth.

Calvary Is Self-referential BS

I'm really most impressed with my ability to sit through the entire hour and forty minute runtime of Calvary, cause that flick was naggingly annoying.

The setting was beautiful and Brendan Gleeson's performance was of great quality... but the positives pretty much end there. Essentially, Gleeson plays a priest (Father James) in a small town of sinners. Yet the members of his congregation seem to each be the worst of a specific kind of thing. Almost to the point that I felt like I was watching a walkthrough on how to create basic character archetypes. Anyway, One Sunday in confessional, a member of said congregation states that he is going to kill Father James within a week... Okay. That's weird. So the priest goes about his business... sort of trying to tie up loose ends, because he's decided it's beyond him to go to the authorities with this threat. I don't know... I guess you could call it a murder mystery without the initial murder.

There are a few other performances of note though. Chris O'Dowd gives his best attempt at making sense of an utterly confusing character, but ultimately fails to make much of an impression. Kelly Reilly is rather one-note, but that's all that is asked of her so I'll give her a pass on this one. But then Aidan Gillen shows up and in one fell swoop proves that he cannot play anything outside the box Game of Thrones has already given him. Maybe he's better than this, but his performance was bizarrely cheeky and unconvincing. So he'll get no positive grades here from me.

I don't know John Michael McDonagh's previous work. But having seen this, I'm instantly given a negative impression of his talents... or perhaps he'd better serve as director without writing the scripts himself. But that's just conjecture probably worth ignoring for now. In reference to potential Oscar noms, I do think it'd be pretty cool to see Gleeson get a nod... but that would most likely only yield results if the Academy cheated (as they did with Casey Affleck so many years ago) and dropped him into the Supporting Actor category. That seems pretty unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

Calvary... ENTER THEATRE AT OWN RISK.