There’s no question that Chadwick Boseman‘s performance as James Brown is the best thing about Tate Taylor‘s Get On Up. The film has other pleasures but Boseman matters most. He was naturally obliged to play it solemn and reserved as Jackie Robinson in 42, but not as the late soul-funk legend, who was nothing if not irascible in a gifted sort of way. This is a snappy, raspy, rapscallion submission that never softpedals or seems to be the least bit concerned about whether whitebread types will “like” the character or not. Honestly? Boseman’s Brown is not 100% likable…and that, for me, is where the integrity comes in. Boseman has absolutely earned himself an armchair at the 2014 Best Actor table. By giving himself, monk-like, to Brown’s spirit, history and rambunctious energy, he’s gotten up offa that thing and lit some kind of fuse.

On top of HE’s 26 “hard” picks for the Toronto Film Festival (or 30 if you want to be liberal about it) I’ll probably be adding one more — Ted Melfi and Bill Murray‘s St. Vincent (formerly St. Vincent de Van Nuys), which the Weinstein Co,. is opening on 10.24. The idea is to give the New York-based attitude comedy, which costars Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd and Naomi Watts, a gala screening during the festival’s first weekend. Earlier today Deadline‘s Michael Fleming wrote that the Weinsteiners were having trouble getting Murray to commit to the Toronto thing, presumably because Harvey sees real potential in a Best Actor campaign for Murray, who was totally shat upon 15 and 1/2 years ago when the Academy didn’t even nominate him for his legendary performance in Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore. And then he lost his expected Lost in Translation Best Actor Oscar to Sean Penn in Mystic River.

Interstellar‘s trippy space-travel, visiting-Iceland footage is well and good, but, as previously noted, the cloying emotionalism in the scenes between Matthew McConaughey (whom I’ve suddenly tired of) and his teary-eyed kids as they discuss his pending voyage is really starting to grate. And I really don’t think it’s possible to roll with Michael Caine as someone else any more — he’s been imitated to death and every time he opens his mouth you can’t help but think about Rob Brydon. The key image in this brand-new trailer, which was shown for the first time three or four days ago at ComicCon, is what I’m presuming is some kind of visualization of a wormhole. It looks to me like an overhead shot of a looping Santa Monica Freeway off-ramp covered in glowing butterscotch sauce and transposed to space.

This time Ben Stiller gets to play a double role (amiable Larry Daley plus an animal-skin-wearing cro-magnon guy) and there’s a trip to London. All that’s going on here is that everyone has been well compensated…that’s it, that’s the whole deal. The original Night at the Museum (’06) pulled down $250 million domestic and $320 million foreign for a grand tally of $571 million and change. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (’09) earned $177.1 million domestic and $236 million foreign for a total of $411,755,284. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (12.19.14) will probably make…what, $300 million worldwide? The best thing in this whole trailer is teensy-sized Owen Wilson and some other guy getting splashed with monkey urine. “C’mon…that wasn’t necessary!”

Stiller really, really needs to do another dryly humorous, low-key, low-grossing film like Greenberg again. Please.