Sunday, October 13, 2019

A good Catholic movie

We watched the 2014 Bill Murray movie St Vincent on Netflix last night.

I hadn't paid much attention to the reviews when it came out, except that I had the feeling most were only lukewarm. 

But I really enjoyed it.  

Agreed, there's nothing groundbreaking about it, and it does carry the strong whiff of early Wes Anderson (not a bad thing, mind you); but it's pretty rare to get this type of good natured film that is funny, sometimes touching, and carries a pleasing moral message about understanding other people.   Now that I think of it, it also has the feel of some John Hughes movies too, and nearly everyone had a soft spot for them, no?

Most surprisingly, the message is very genuinely Catholic in a positive way.  So much so that I suspected that the screenplay may be quite old, and written well before the current period of terrible PR for the church.  But I've checked, and it was written by the director Theodore Melfi in 2011, so I'm wrong.   He went on to direct and co-write the very successful (and also "feelgood") Hidden Figures in 2016.  I should pay more attention to his work, perhaps.

Anyway, it was the most pleasing Netflix film I have seen for some time.  Yay.

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