Good Omens (2019 miniseries)

I’ve never been a religious person.  I had seen Breakthrough out of curiosity, mostly to see if it was as religious as I thought it would be.  When I saw advertisements for Good Omens, I had similar concerns.  Was it meant for an audience that had a better understanding of Christianity?  I wasn’t sure I was willing to watch something like that so soon.

Then, I read that a group of Christians, calling themselves Return to Order, was petitioning Netflix to cancel the series.  There were several problems with the petition.  Most notable is the fact that the series is produced and distributed by Amazon.  It’s also a limited series, a.k.a. miniseries, so there were never any plans for a second season anyway.  So, if 20,000 Christians were that raving mad about it, I knew it was worth a try.

The show centers on Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon.  The two are friends, although they may not admit it.  It would probably be better to call them the ultimate odd couple.  They hang out together and occasionally cover for each other.

The story starts around 4004 B.C. in the Garden of Eden.  The miniseries hits on a lot of Biblical events, like Noah’s Ark.  Most of the story takes place in the present day, though.  Both Crowley and Aziraphale are told that the Antichrist is about to land.  Crowley was the one that had to deliver the baby to an American diplomat.  Through a misunderstanding, the bouncing baby boy goes home with another couple.

He grows up to be a normal kid named Adam Young.  He has friends and would like a dog for his eleventh birthday.  Funny thing is that his eleventh birthday is supposed to be the beginning of the end of the world.  (He even gets a small dog that’s actually a hellhound.)

Aziraphale and Crowley realize that they have to do something.  Aziraphale finds the thought of killing Adam distasteful, but might prove necessary.  Even if they did decide to do something, their respective bureaucracies are adamant about letting The Devine Plan unfold as it should.  Plus, it takes them a while to realize that they gave the baby to the wrong couple.  They have no idea who the actual couple is or where they live.

There is a satirical element to the miniseries.  We’re given an angel and a demon who have to face normal problems.  Both have bosses that don’t seem to do their due diligence.  (Crowley has admittedly been phoning it in for a few millennia.)  Both sides are intent on a war that could be easily averted because it’s part of an ineffable plan.  The Four Horsemen even get an updated look, riding motorcycles instead of horses.  There’s also a book of prophecies that happens to be true.  It acts as more of a McGuffin, but it has its moments.

It’s difficult for me to say if the Christian group has a point.  It’s easy for me as an outsider to think they have no sense of humor about this, but I do get that it’s a religion.  People tend to take that sort of stuff seriously.  I don’t think that it was anyone’s intent to poke fun at Armageddon.

Rather, it serves as a mirror of just how easily we are to do battle.  Look at how easily people argue over issues when we might find we agree.  No one wants to be shot.  Do we limit access to guns or do we arm more people?  No one wants to go hungry.  Do we give tax breaks to corporations?  Do we extend unemployment benefits?  It’s easy to see our differences when maybe we should be looking at our similarities.  If Aziraphale and Crowley can get along, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

There are certain aspects of a movie that may seem cliché, but often prove necessary.  For instance, you should probably have a protagonist and an antagonist, each clearly defined.  At least one of the characters should learn something.  There should also be three acts; basically, there should be a setup, a story, and a resolution.  Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri doesn’t seem to follow these rules.

We have a protagonist in Mildred, who rents the titular billboards near her home.  Mildred’s daughter, Anne, was raped and murdered and the case is still unsolved.  Mildred uses the billboards to call out the town’s police chief, Willoughby.  Willoughby visits Mildred and reminds her that the case is cold.  None of the DNA matched anything from any other case.  There were no witnesses.  Without a random confession, the case is stalled.

That’s not enough for Mildred, who wants justice, or at least answers.  She’s committed to keeping the billboards up for a full year, despite not knowing where she’s going to get the money.  (She has enough for the deposit, but it takes an anonymous donation to keep it going for the first month.)  As you might expect, the town turns against her.  She can’t even trust her dentist.

You might ask where this is going.  I’ve seen the entire movie and I’m still asking that question.  Without giving out details, the movie meanders.  There are all sorts of major twists and turns, each taking the movie in a new direction.  We quickly learn that there are no sympathetic characters.  Given enough time, almost everyone seems to prove unlikable.  (There are maybe two exceptions to this observation, and one had very little screen time.)

Part of this is that the characters don’t seem to learn anything.  Mildred has had seven months to process her daughter’s death.  Taking out the billboards seems like the kind of impulsive thing someone might do the first month.  We even have Officer Dixon, who gets fired and is still the same racist person back when he had a job.  There’s no enlightenment.  There’s no new information or big revelation.  The movie ends with nearly every character basically the same person they were when the movie started.

This is one of those movies that I had seen because I have Moviepass.  Had I not seen it, I don’t think I would have seen it.  I’m not even sure I could recommend going if someone else paid for it.  It’s going to take me a while to process it and it might make sense if someone explains it to me.  Absent that, it would take repeated viewings and that’s not going to happen.  It has a rating of 8.5 on IMDb right now, so someone liked the movie.  I’m just not sure I can understand the movie.

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Darkman (1990)

When a movie is released straight to video, that’s not a good sign.  What does it say, though, when a movie has a theatrical release, yet spawns sequels direct to video?  Another ominous sign is when main actors and/or  production staff don’t return for the sequels.  Take Darkman.  What little I remembered of it was good.  When I watched it again recently, it was still entertaining.  I’m not sure if I’m viewing it as Sam Raimi envisioned it.

The movie is about Peyton Westlake, a scientist trying to create artificial skin.  It would be great for burn victims to have their face again.  Or any face, for that matter.  Peyton can generate a synthetic version of any face, provided he has pictures of the entire face.  There’s one drawback  The faces last only 99 minutes.  One second longer, and they disintegrate.  He and his assistant come to realize that the synthetic skin is sensitive to light.  It has an indefinite shelf life, provided you keep it in a dark place.  Peyton keeps at it having to use a series of faces isn’t good enough.

Fortunately, his attorney girlfriend, Julie Hastings, is understanding.  She has problems of her own.  She’s found evidence that a developer hasn’t been playing fairly.  That evidence ends up at Peyton’s lab.  Somehow, the developer finds out where it is and burns Peyton’s lab to the ground, leaving Julie to assume that both her boyfriend and her evidence were lost in the fire.

All that was found of Peyton was an ear.  That’s because the rest of him washed up on shore.  With no ID and an inability to speak, he’s labeled John Doe and assumed to be indigent.   He has a brief stay in a hospital, at least in movie time, where we find out that he was experimented on.  The nerve allowing him to feel pain was cut, leading to greater strength.   The emotional toll is too great for any human to bear.  It drives him crazy, setting up the rest of the movie as a revenge story.

Peyton is able to reestablish his lab well enough that he can create a synthetic face for himself from old photos.  He’s also able to impersonate those that wronged him and their associates well enough that he can get back at them.  He visits Julie, but comes to realize that he may not be fit for polite society any more.  (All he wanted was a pink elephant for Julie.)  Will revenge be enough?

The story goes that Sam Raimi wanted a superhero movie, but couldn’t get the rights to an established character.  The solution was to create his own.  Darkman doesn’t have x-ray vision, but he does have increased strength and the ability to change faces 99 minutes at a time.  (I found that odd.  Why exactly 99 minutes?  Is anything in nature that exact?)

It also wasn’t clear how the document get to Peyton’s place.  Maybe I missed it.  I think it’s implied that Julie left it there accidentally.  If so, how was the developer (or his henchman) so certain that Peyton had it?  A lot of the story seems like it’s just there to move the story along.  The evidence is little more than a plot device meant to hurt Peyton.  The explosion and Peyton’s work feed in to the revenge story.

Many of the scenes were very dark.  In one scene, a man is thrown out of a window with the express wish that he enjoy his flight.  This is in addition to people being brutally tortured and killed.  You know how some movies get an R rating and you’re not sure why?  This isn’t one of those movies.  It deserved an R rating.

In that regard, I don’t know how many of the scenes were meant to be humorous.  I’m hesitant to say it’s dark humor because I don’t know if it was intended as such or if I’m just viewing it that way.  The movie was released decades ago, so the context has changed a bit.  I have to wonder what it would look like if it were made today.

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Fargo (1996)

Sometimes, you dig a hole so deep, your only choice is to keep digging.  Jerry Lundegaard has found himself in just such a hole.  He’s in deep enough that he’s decided to contract Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud to kidnap his wife.  They’re not the brightest, but they know enough to ask why Jerry wants half the ransom money back.  They also want to know why they aren’t getting cash up front.  You see, it’s Jerry’s father-in-law, Wade Gustafson, that has the money.  Jerry can provide the two with a car, as Jerry manages a car lot.  If they want the money, they have to get it from Wade with Jerry acting as the intermediary.

As you might expect, things don’t go according to plan.  Gaear shoots three people while transporting the wife, getting the police involved.  Wade also wants to deliver the money, which would cut Jerry out of his half, not that Carl would mind.  Carl wants to keep the whole thing for himself.  This could complicate things, as Jerry has upped the ransom to a million dollars.  Oh, and the police chief is investigating and she’s very good at her job.  (She has an uncanny ability to piece things together.)

Oh, and if that’s not enough, Jerry has GMAC on his back.  He somehow wrote up $320,000 in loans for cars that don’t exist.  It amazes me that he was even able to get away with this, considering we‘re talking 1987 dollars.  That would be close to $900,000 in modern money.  For that matter, I’m not sure why Jerry had such a lowball ransom amount.  Why not go for a million in the first place?  That would have been more than enough to pay back GMAC, unless the plan was to delay indefinitely or to skip town later.  (GMAC keeps demanding serial numbers, which Jerry is unable to provide.)

It seemed like it was a prefect crime.  All the kidnappers had to do was sit on the wife until the ransom came through.  This is, however, a movie about three screwups.  We don’t even learn why Jerry had to have that kind of money.  I’m assuming that he didn’t take it all at once, but still, where did it all go?  He also had to know someone would eventually ask about it.  You’d think the head salesman at a car dealership would either know better or be able to falsify the paperwork a little better.

As for the kidnappers, they tend to be an odd couple.  One is talkative while the other is quiet.  One tries bribery and quick talking while the other would seem to prefer a scorched-earth approach.  Neither one is that bright about it.  I know that Jerry probably can’t afford much on the $40,000 he’s paying, but you’d think he’d try for a little better.  There’s one scene where Carl is burying something in the snow.  He looks around and realizes that there’s no way to really identify the location later.  This scene for me typifies the movie.  No one really seems to think too far ahead.

I’m not a big fan of downward spirals, mostly because movies that use this theme tend to overdo it.  Here, it’s more subtle.  Jerry does come off as somewhat sympathetic in that any of us could find ourselves in a similar situation.  Maybe not that exact situation, but we can empathize with Jerry’s desperation.  We can see his frustration in thinking that he’s losing control that he never really had.

Some of the things were too subtle even for me.  As I said, I’m not sure what was going on in Jerry’s life that got him to that point.  (I’m sure someone will leave a comment with a good explanation.)  Jerry had proposed a land deal to Wade.  I’m not sure if was a real land deal or a way of getting money from his rich father-in-law.  I’m also not sure how Wade hadn’t found out about the GMAC scam.  You’d think someone would have contacted the owner of the dealership at some point.

It does present itself as a solid story, though.  None of the characters are so over the top that they were distracting or unbelievable.  There is violence, and it‘s not entirely subtle.  (One person was shot in the back at a distance.)  There is sex and nudity, but not a lot.  This isn’t a movie meant for small children.  It’s a dark comedy.  There are also things that I think would be too subtle for children, just as there are things about the movie that would be too much.

IMDb page