My Halloween

Here's a confession.  I avoid Halloween.  I'm never in the Halloween spirit (no pun intended.)  So after work I went to the movies, then did my food shopping before heading home after the sun had set and the Trick-or-Treaters were all gone.  It is not that I'm too cheap to buy candy (I had a large bag ready just in case) - but I hate the idea of answering the door bell every five minutes all evening long.  Bah Humbug! (or whatever is its Halloween equivalent).

I went to see "St. Vincent" starring Bill Murray.  Murray played a bitter, nasty old curmudgeon - probably only because Jack Nicholson, who is usually cast in this type of role, was not available.  It is the type of role the late, great Art Carney could do in his sleep.  The title character, Vincent, is a lying, foul mouthed, drunken, chain-smoking, cheating gambler, with no apparent redeeming features, down on his luck and owing money to the bank, to the nursing home that cares for his wife, and to some nasty loan sharks.  He drinks too much and frequents hookers.  He doesn't like anybody and nobody likes him.  An opportunity falls into his lap to make a few bucks off the desperate single mother who lives next door, by babysitting her young son, Oliver, after school hours.  He takes Oliver to the tracks to gamble, to the local bars and introduces him to his prostitute girlfriend.  Quite the babysitter!  Oliver is brilliantly played by young actor Jaeden Lieberher.  Naomi Watts (hardly recognizable as a Russian American prostitute), Melissa McCarthy as a desperate mother and Chris O'Dowd as a Catholic priest/schoolteacher are the excellent supporting cast.  But the movie focuses on the relationship between the young boy and his unscrupulous old neighbor and how Oliver learns that Vincent's unlikeable exterior hides the soul of a modern day saint.  The ending is a little bit sappy.  But this is certainly no Disney film given the raw language throughout.  I give it a thumbs up.