Reel Entropy

Some holidays, like Independence Day and Christmas, lend themselves to movies. It’s a good way to spend time with family and friends who you actually want to ignore. Other holidays, like the Super Bowl and Halloween, mean empty theaters for a significant portion of the weekend. This Halloween, that’s Friday night, probably the worst possible time. So, most major studios have bailed on the release date, leaving strange arthouse movie Nightcrawler as the only new widely released material this weekend.

Let’s get one thing straight — freelance journalists can’t afford cars like this no matter how dominant they are in their own market. Photo courtesy Open Road Films.

Nightcrawler’s release shows admirable opportunism in a couple of ways. It’s taking advantage of two gaps in the movie market — both the general lack of new material on Halloween weekend and the lack of Oscar-hyped movies in wide release in general. Fury, Gone Girl and Men, Women & Children are all old news, and this film gets in just under the wire set by Interstellar.

Sadly, in order to maximize profits, Open Road Films put together a hard-hitting, high-action trailer that covers the climax of pretty much every major scene. Any time trailers spoil a movie it’s a letdown, but Nightcrawler in particular didn’t have anything else to offer but suspense over decisions whose outcome viewers will already know going in.

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“That dog was a final gift from my dying wife, and I was still feeling queasy from that mall rotisserie chicken and I was also having a bad hair day.” Photos courtesy Summit Entertainment.

John Wick is a joke. In a good way, that is.

Early in the film, the title character (Keanu Reeves) is attacked in his home by Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), son of local mob boss Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). Iosef Tarasov kills Wick’s dog and steals his car, not realizing that Wick was a top assassin for his father a few short years ago, known across the city as “The Boogeyman.” Wick left the business to be with his wife (Bridget Moynahan), who had contracted a terminal illness but left him that dog before her death. As a matter of course, Wick goes on a rampage through the local Russian mafia.

Watching John Wick is like listening to a friend tell a long, untrue anecdote that everyone started out thinking was true and thought was a horrible story, but once they begin to understand is exaggeration becomes a hilarious piece of satire. Once you get it, you get it. The movie isn’t meant to be taken seriously even beyond its nature as an action movie, most of which are meant in jest. But it is also a triumph of the genre that pulls together both old, illogical action tropes and modern style and demand for continuity.

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The movie is supposed to be about how wonderful Vincent MacKenna (Bill Murray) is and how everyone loves him, and maybe that would work if he were Peter Venkman or Steve Zissou. Photos courtesy The Weinstein Company.

When Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy star in a movie, most people would think it would be both funny and strange. They’d be wrong.

St. Vincent follows title character Vincent MacKenna (Bill Murray), a stereotypical, cursing, drinking, gambling old Irishman. MacKenna has fallen on hard times and tries to take advantage of his new neighbor, Maggie Bronstein (Melissa McCarthy), when her movers knock into his tree. However, MacKenna and Bronstein’s son, Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) start to develop a relationship when MacKenna is forced to keep track of Oliver after school because his mother cares more about work than her son.

Oliver is assigned to argue for a modern-day person to receive sainthood and oh, crap, that’s a spoiler isn’t it. Given that information, anyone with half a brain can figure out how the movie is obviously going to play out. Don’t look at me, the assignment is delivered like 10 minutes into the movie. Meaning for the remaining 92 minutes, everyone with half a brain knows what’s going to happen, if they didn’t already.

MacKenna’s pregnant prostitute friend, Daka (a completely unrecognizable Naomi Watts), is also involved.

This movie is being marketed on the strength of lead actors Murray and McCarthy, even though Lieberher gets much more screen time than McCarthy does. The thing about actors is they play different characters in every movie, and that’s their job, and that’s OK. But the thing about stars is they have something recognizable and bankable that they do in most of their movies that people pay to see. Think George Clooney’s smoldering good looks or the one-liners Will Smith’s handlers write into every script he signs on for.

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