John Wick
After we finished John Wick, my son asked if it had won any Oscars. He was pretty incredulous when I said “No,” and I can’t really blame him. The first John Wick movie takes a really silly-on-paper premise — a former assassin comes out of retirement to avenge the dog that his dead wife gave him — and invests it with all possible seriousness. And style. And guns. Lots of guns. The Viggo Tarasov character is particularly interesting. He knows his son messed up and that nothing can be done to save him, but he sets out to stop Wick, anyway, because he’s a father as well as a mob boss. There’s a sense of melancholy and tragic inevitability about John Wick that elevates it more than you’d think. And of course, Keanu Reeves looks cooler than cool when he’s dispatching nameless goons in a well-tailored suit.