St. Vincent

McCarthy plays it pleasantly straight while Watts fulfills her earlier Promises, but both take the backseat in this drunkenly driven Murray vehicle.  Cute premise and fascinating central character suffer from utterly unresolved obstacles.  Though endearing the finale is far from final and though amusing the film isn’t worth the Bill.

Movie 43

Outstanding cast of A-listers assemble to breathe life into SNL rejected short scripts… and fail. Stolen jokes, weak performances, and senseless frame story further ensure disaster.  Like ‘Funny or Die’ but mostly the latter as each segment manages a moment of humor, then milks it to painful and poisonous death. 

Lee Daniels' The Butler

Interesting civil rights history lesson lacks drive as it meanders through a string of oddly cast presidential cameos.  Whitaker winds his through a compelling family drama with a winning Winfrey and outstanding Oyelowo but Gumps his way into the wrong Forrest and gets lost in a dense thicket of history.

Prisoners

Gyllenhaal rechecks his zodiac and flinches at the result while Jackman and his co-stars deliver soulful, vulnerable performances as they navigate this mystic labyrinthine river of mystery (with s whistle of predictability).  Painted shades of gray by the moral ambiguity of characters and brilliant (or anti-brilliant) eye of DP Deakins.

Crash (2004)

Candy coated look at the intersecting lives of several hundred people in Los Angeles. Melodramatic and carefully constructed to remind to the viewer that racism is terrible. Lives intersect repeatedly, and so on occasion to brilliant editing, performance, and music to form several powerful tear-jerk moments. Better title: Hate Actually.

The Princess and the Frog

Disney returns to hand-drawn animation roots with their best story in recent years. Songs are relatively forgettable, but the character’s, comedy, and title-defeating un-princess-like moral message are not. Waxes a bit too terrifying at points, and maybe a tad stereotypical towards New Orleans, but Song of the South it isn’t.

Iron Man

Elf director Favreau pits RDJ against Bald Lebowski in original and entertaining comic adaptation. First superhero film of the decade to employ comic book camp and action gravitas in perfect harmony. Suffers from Batman Begins syndrome where second half villain fight doesn’t quite live up to first half creation story.