St. Vincent
My theory is this: first time feature filmmaker Theodore Melfi is a wizard. It seems improbable, sure, but I can think of no other explanation for St. Vincent.
A newly single mom hires her curmudgeonly neighbor to babysit for her precocious son. As obvious as it sounds – and is – somehow Melfi creates surprises in the territory he treads and the performances he draws. Had Charles Bukowski starred in About a Boy, this is the film it would have become.
Melfi’s genius with dialog and his light touch when directing together create an atmosphere that allows actors to breathe. Even the cast members with the least screen time – Terrence Howard and Chris O’Dowd, in particular – have the opportunity to fill out their characters, and they do.
Imagine what Bill Murray can do with this kind of creative atmosphere. Murray reveals layer after believable layer in his performance as Vincent. There’s not a moment of schmaltz in this performance, and there are moments of real genius.
And what about young Jaeden Lieberher as Vincent’s charge Oliver? Melfi obviously created him from some sort of spell. There really is no other explanation. This kid is great – deadpan when he needs to be, and otherwise the natural mixture of wisdom and naiveté that suits Oliver’s peculiar circumstances. The performance is dead on perfect.
Melissa McCarthy gets a couple of good lines in, but her performance is more restrained and internal than what we’re used to from her. It’s a nice change of pace.
Naomi Watts struggles more with the almost cartoonish character she lands, and not all the youngest actors are very strong, but acting is rarely St. Vincent’s weak point. The plotting, on the other hand, needs some work.
Scene after scene is utterly contrived. Many plot points are conveniently forgotten, the climax is obvious and the happy family ending is simplistic given the circumstances of the film on the whole. And yet, somehow the whole is thoroughly enjoyable.
It has to be the fullness of the characters, and the interaction between talented performers. That or the moments of genuine surprise peppered throughout a well worn storyline. Or maybe it’s some kind of sorcery.
What else could explain how well this film works? Because it has no business working at all, yet somehow it’s one of the more memorable and moving dramedies you’ll see this year.
John Wick
Who’s ready for an ultra-violent tale of a highly trained killer brought out of hibernation to extract bloody revenge from Russian mobsters?
It’s been a good four or five weeks since The Equalizer, so strap in for John Wick, the story of a highly trained…well, you know.
Mr. Wick (Keanu Reeves) just wants to be left alone, but when a crime lord’s son wrongs him in a big way, Wick returns to the way of the gun, and the knife, and whatever else it takes to even the score.
A film like this relies of two things: the charisma of the lead actor and the presentation of the action. While The Equalizer scored high in both areas, John Wick only manages modest success with the latter.
Denzel Washington gave The Equalizer effective layers of humanity to offset the mayhem, and while it may not be fair to expect Denzel charm from Reeves, he should bring more to the party than just the ability to navigate the fight choreography. He doesn’t, and any attempt to peek into his anti-hero’s psyche is DOA.
Directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski are veteran stuntmen behind the camera for the first time, and they do their best to bring new flash to the action genre, with a few visual sequences that are truly hypnotic. More often, though, the fights scenes follow a similar progression, and are backed by a brooding (but good) Marilyn Manson track to create the unmistakable aura of video game inspiration.
Including an actual scene of video game shoot-em-up doesn’t help.
The film isn’t awful, and in fact a spinoff focusing on the hotel that caters to Wick and his assassin compatriots might be a fine idea. But most everything else in John Wick gets tedious pretty quickly, and can never fully recover.
Dear White People
In case you’re not up on current events, we elected a black President (twice!), so that means racism in American is over.
That ridiculous notion lies at the heart of Dear White People, a 20 megaton smartbomb dropped by writer/director/producer Justin Simien. In a supremely confident feature debut, he takes on tough issues with a rapid fire mix of sarcasm, satire, outage, hilarity and disgust.
Taking his cue from the insanely racist parties thrown on several actual campuses the last few years, Simien presents Winchester University, a fictional Ivy League school, during a time of social unrest.
Mixed-race student Sam (a terrific Tessa Thompson) dishes “dear white people” advice on her college radio show (“you now need two black friends to not appear racist, and your weed dealer doesn’t count”) and enters student politics with a pledge to bring more black culture to the school.
Meanwhile, the gay, introverted Lionel (Tyler James Williams from Everybody Hates Chris – also stellar) takes note of the waves Sam is generating, using the situation as his ticket to writing for the school’s major newspaper.
There’s much, much more going on at Winchester, culminating with this year’s theme for the annual Halloween bash: “liberate your inner Negro!”
At times, the criss-crossing storylines take some overly convenient turns, the directing is light on style, and yes, the students are in class about as often as General Hospital doctors treat patients, but the film is always rescued by Simian’s whip-smart script.
He dissects countless black/white stereotypes, always staying one step ahead of the standard rebuttal. Even better, he sometimes throws purpose pitches, such as intentional contradictions that provoke the inevitably weak counterpoints he’s ready for, or a self-aware mention of being self-congratulatory.
It’s a glorious brand of honest, in-the-moment writing that is so elusive, you’re taken aback at how giddy you are at hearing it.
Dear White People is an entertaining, stimulating film that we need, badly.
Dear everyone: go see it.
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Photo credit: AP Photo/The Weinstein Company, Atsushi Nishijima