El Camino Christmas (2017)

A Christmas movie with a fairly impressive cast of well-known names that attempts to do something different. Sounds good, right? But let's not beat around the bush here. It isn't.

Luke Grimes stars as a young man, named Eric Roth, who wanders into the town of El Camino, looking for his estranged father. A series of unfortunate coincidences lead to him being put in the cells for a night, then being freed by one officer before being aggressively pursued by another, and this leads to him ending up in a liquor store that is surrounded by police, who all believe him to be a dangerous criminal holding others hostage.

Here's the cast involved in El Camino Christmas - Grimes, Tim Allen, Kurtwood Smith, Dax Shepard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Michelle Mylett, and Kimberly Quinn. There are some other people onscreen, but that covers the core names I wanted to mention. Because that isn't a bad cast list at all, particularly when it comes to a non-theatrical Christmas movie. It's also worth saying at this point, lest I forget, that none of the cast actually do a bad job. Seriously. They're all good in the roles that they're given.

Which makes it obvious that the problems stem from the talent behind the camera. Director David E. Talbert also wrote and directed the poor Almost Christmas so I already know that he's not my go to guy for festive fare. But blaming him alone wouldn't be fair. In fact, blaming him for being unable to elevate the horribly hackneyed script isn't fair at all, despite my disappointment with his previous Christmas movie.

Writers Theodore Melfi and Christopher Wehner should share the blame. The latter has nothing else to his credit at the moment, but Melfi started this cinematic year so well with his work on Hidden Figures. Which means I have to make this unusual statement. If I was a teacher, viewing a final project that Melfi and Wehner had worked on together, I would be forced to give that project a low mark and then keep the pair separated for the rest of the year, allowing me to see how much better each one can do without the influence of the other. Someone obviously thought this was a cool idea, a Christmas movie that has all of the characters and a dash of the spirit of the season with the minimal of festive trimmings. They were wrong.

There's no rule saying that a Christmas movie has to have all of the familiar elements in place to succeed. It just takes more work to make that happen. More than just a script that seems to be winking at viewers and assuring them that something is coming along in time for the finale that will make everything preceding it worthwhile. Which would be okay IF something did come along to make it all worthwhile.

Technical competence and that solid cast explain my fairly generous rating. Not one to make a high priority, even throughout December.

4/10

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St. Vincent (2014)

Bill Murray is on top form here as Vincent, an old curmudgeonly type, in this heartwarming tale. You could say that it's a film you've seen many, many times before, and it is. But the main difference here is that the main character doesn't change. The moral of the message isn't about changing for the better, it's about our perception of people changing as we get to know more about them, from their backgrounds to the deeds they may not talk about.

Vincent likes to drink, gamble, spend time with a pregnant hooker (Naomi Watts), and generally get up to things that are no good for him, either health-wise or financially. Which makes him far from an ideal babysitter. Yet that's what he becomes when his new neighbour (Melissa McCarthy) is stuck at work and has nobody else to look after her son (Jaeden Lieberher). And, yes, it's not long until Vincent seems to change as he and the boy begin to develop a friendship. Or so it would seem. As mentioned above, it's perception that changes more than any of the characters here, but that doesn't change the overall outcome of the film.

Writer-director Theodore Melfi, who seems to have honed his skills on a number of shorts after making a decent impression with his feature debut, Winding Roads (1999), puts this all together with great care and skill. Yes, it's a pretty simple premise to work with, but he makes the most of it, thanks largely to the great cast and the ever-so-slight twists given to overly familiar moments.

Murray is an actor I have happily watched in any movie for the past two decades. He rarely lets me down, and this performance sits up there with the best of his dramatic work. There are moments, especially in the earlier scenes, in which it feels a bit too affected, but that soon wears away as Murray seems to become more and more comfortable in the role. Lieberher is great as Oliver, the young man who sees Vincent in a different way from so many other people around him. McCarthy needs to mix more films like this into her filmography. She's just brilliant in a role that doesn't ever use any of her comedic talent, allowing her a chance to show just how good she can be without shouting, swearing or acting like a slob. Watts has fun, Chris O'Dowd does well as a Catholic Priest/schoolteacher, and Terrence Howard is just fine for the few minutes he has onscreen.

There's a pretty good soundtrack here, with one or two songs standing out, camerawork that feels nice and relaxed without ever dragging, a number of great lines scattered throughout, and a third act that is as moving as it is fairly predictable.

If you're a sucker for this kind of movie then it's one of the better examples to give your time to. I'll admit that I had a lump in my throat on a couple of occasions. Mind you, I'm a sucker for such emotional manipulation.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/St-Vincent-BD-UV-Blu-ray/dp/B00P1WGIT4/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1417888295&sr=1-2&keywords=st.+vincent