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Take your pick this weekend: A misanthropic softie, a dog-loving hitman, or a bunch of dumb teen-agers? Only one of those three is worth the ticket price.
That's "St. Vincent," which features Bill Murray in a fairly pedestrian role, as an inebriated grump who becomes reluctant babysitter to a lonely 10-year-old, Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), who has moved in next door with his just-divorced mom (Melissa McCarthy). Writer-director Theodore Melfi's script is pedestrian, but Murray plays with the details to turn this cliched character into something memorable.
The two movies likely to vie for the top of the box-office charts are both disappointing.
"John Wick" is a by-the-numbers mobster shoot-'em-up, starring Keanu Reeves as a retired hitman who gets back in the game to take revenge on the punk son (Alfie Allen) of a Russian mafia chief (Michael Nyqvist). The movie has style to burn, though, and there are some interesting things around the margins.
The horror-thriller "Ouija" is a snooze, with an uninteresting bunch of high-school students trying to conjure spirits (through the classic board game) and unearthing something nasty. The script is idiotic, and the scares are few and far between.
Playing at several theaters is "23 Blast," an honestly heartwarming drama about a teen football star (Matt Hapka) who goes blind, and must rely on his family and his Christian faith to get through. The movie is the directorial debut of actor Dylan Baker (who plays the teen's father), and it's moving in a low-key way.
The best movie of the week opens at the Broadway: "Dear White People," writer-director Justin Simien's razor-sharp satire of race tensions and college-campus politics. The story centers on the few minority students at a prestigious university, trying to make it through a sea of misunderstandings and casual racism from the white majority students. It's funny and smart, but also thoughtful with well-rounded characters.
Lastly, the Broadway is also showing the French erotic thriller "The Blue Room," in which a married man (Mathieu Amalric, who directed) who cheats on his wife (Léa Drucker) for an affair with a brooding old flame (Stéphanie Cléau, who co-wrote the adaptation of Georges Simenon's novella with Amalric). It's a claustrophobic mix of "Double Indemnity," "Strangers on a Train" and "Gone Girl," which ratchets up the tension well before a less-than-satisfying finale.