At the movies with Redford and Myers

While there’s a solid chance Robert Redford will return to the big screen again, the low-key heist film “The Old Man & the Gun” has been touted as the actor’s swan song.

The movie itself amplifies this idea — writer/director David Lowery photographs his star with a loving glow, and that quintessential “Redford charm” is essential to the character of Forrest Tucker, a real life-inspired bank robber who successfully escaped from prison more than a dozen times.

“The Old Man & the Gun” is the cinematic definition of easy-lifting. The stress, and danger, of being an elderly bank robber is purposefully deflated from the story. There’s a point where a robbery goes wrong and one of Tucker’s crew gets shot, and it all happens offscreen.

Even the detective on Tucker’s trail, played by Casey Affleck, isn’t too stressed about catching his mark. He chats strategy with his young children and has a couple casual run-ins with Tucker in person. It’s not exactly Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in “Heat.”

But Lowery is the kind of writer/director to purposefully buck convention in favor of sustaining a certain tone. His remake of “Pete’s Dragon” from a couple years ago (which also featured Redford) avoided the typical Disney-remake cliches, and last year he made “A Ghost Story” (with Affleck) into something that is opposite of what you’d expect from a ghost story.

“The Old Man & the Gun” is a pleasant hangout movie wrapped around a few bank heists. An equally charming supporting cast, which includes Sissy Spacek and Danny Glover, radiate alongside the main attraction. It’s a movie that provides the version of Redford we want to remember on the big screen, all wrapped into a neat, 90-minute ribbon.

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The new “Halloween” disregards every previous installment of the Michael Myers horror franchise except for the 1978 original film (They call the new one “Halloween” because… branding… and… box office).

Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, who in the four decades since her first tango with the “The Shape” has become a paranoid recluse and absentee mother and grandmother. She is not the sister of Michael Myers in this movie because that happened in the original “Halloween II,” and it’s a plot development that doesn’t track as well for this movie’s exploration of how random trauma can ruin generations of lives.

Directed by David Gordon Green with a script by Green, Jeff Fradley and comic actor Danny McBride, the new “Halloween” offers a solid collection of the things people who like slashers seem to like. Curtis is reliably good, and the film throws in some surprising humor (thanks Danny!). Original “Halloween” director John Carpenter also serves up a terrific updated musical score alongside collaborators Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

The 1978 film is incredibly well made and a landmark for the genre. The new one is competent. That sounds like a backhanded compliment, and it is, but “competent” goes a long way in the slasher world.

New “Halloween” had a monster-sized opening weekend, so I guess that means we’re going to get more of the same over and over again until the end of time. Yay.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com