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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Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

All things considered, I’m not sure what to make of the movie.  The movie starts with a man entering a hotel room and hiding a duffle bag beneath the floorboards.  (Even this one act is difficult, as he has to rearrange the furniture and move it all back when he’s done.)  We don’t know what’s in the bag yet, but it must be important.  After he finishes it all, he answers a knock at the door and is promptly shot.

Ten years later, several guests arrive at that same hotel.  Father Daniel Flynn and Darlene Sweet are the first two we meet.  Laramie Seymour Sullivan is next.  Them, Emily Summerspring.  Then there’s the clerk, Miles Miller.  He does this little routine about the hotel being on the California-Nevada border.  (For some reason, the California side costs a dollar more.)

Each of the characters has a past and most aren’t what they seem to be.  If you’ve seen the coming attractions, you know that the priest isn’t really a priest.  Even if they’re honest, they all have something to hide.  Even Miles has a past he’d like to forget.

The movie seems to be a study in contrast.  You have the hotel on the border of shady Nevada and sunny California.  Each character has a face they present and a past that they hide.  Even using Darlene Sweet and Daniel Flynn as the first two characters seems to be a choice in that he has the most to hide whereas she’s the only registered guest that never tries to hide her name.

The movie is enjoyable, but not perfect.  While watching the movie, I wasn’t really distracted by anything.  However, it was one of those movies that I started wondering about after I left the theater.  It’s not that any one aspect was lacking.  It was more that the movie never really seemed to come together.  None of the characters really seem to progress throughout the movie.

There aren’t any characters that I really hated or liked, and I find that I usually need someone to like or hate.  I can see that each character has at least one redeeming quality and at least one regret, but the movie doesn’t quite seem to make it work.  It seems like everything about the movie has to be a dichotomies.  (Some are more obvious than others.)

This is a movie you could be forgiven for not seeing in the theaters.  If you’re going to watch it, I’d recommend waiting for it to come out on DVD. 

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Tag (2018)

When I saw the coming attractions for Tag, I knew it would go one of two ways.  It might very well be a buddy comedy where the main characters bond and learn about themselves, all while having a good time.  If not, it would probably be a series of lame jokes held together by a weak plot.  Unfortunately, it tended towards the second one.

The movie starts with Hogan 'Hoagie' Malloy applying to be a janitor, despite being a veterinarian.  It seems strange, but the company really needs the position filled.  Thus, Hogan gets the job.  He only does this to get close to his friend, Bob Callahan, so that Hogan might tag Bob.  You see, it’s May and every May, the five friends get together for the eponymous game of tag.

Hogan wants Bob to leave immediately, despite being in the middle of an interview with a Wall Street Journal reporter, Rebecca Crosby.  Bob finally relents.  Rather than reschedule the interview, Rebecca decides to come along.  Next to be brought into the game is Randy 'Chilli' Cilliano, who is a bit of a stoner.  After that comes Kevin Sable, who’s right in the middle of a therapy session.  They all head back to where they grew up.  The last member of the group lives there.

Jerry has never been tagged.  Never.  Even if you corner him, he finds some impossible way out.  Hogan has told Bob, Randy and Kevin that Jerry will be retiring from the game at the end of the month.  This is their last chance to make him It.  The game is on.

The only complication is that Jerry is getting married to Susan.  The guys are a little hurt that they weren’t invited, but Susan had to have a May wedding and didn’t want the game interfering with that.  There’s also the added pressure of her being pregnant.  The guys agree not to interfere with anything wedding related, which only serves as a plot point.

During the rehearsal dinner, Hogan, Bob, Kevin and Randy make plants to block the exits to the building.  That goes awry when Bob is distracted by a former crush.  This leads to an elaborate chase in the woods that leaves the other three in varying degrees of pain.

There is a message of friendship in the movie, but it gets buried beneath the physical humor.  It isn’t until the latter part of the movie that they have any serious discussion about drifting apart over the years.  Many of the scenes show just how far the group will go for the game and how nothing is sacred.  For instance, Jerry is in AA.  The other four friends think nothing of infiltrating the meeting to tag Jerry.  Jerry eventually locks himself in a room, where he waits for Susan to come and bail him out.  In this scene, she seems to have a miscarriage.  She and Jerry leave, both angry at the others.

That one scene tells me a lot about the movie.  I’m not saying that a movie should shy way from AA or miscarriages.  Instead, either topic should be handled with a certain level of respect.  Both are going to be sensitive topics for those affected by it.  The movie uses both as a way to show how serious the characters are about game.  I felt it was the one scene where the movie stumbled.

I think this is going to be a hit-or-miss movie for a lot of people.  The good thing is that the trailer is representative of the movie.  There were a few things I didn’t expect, but I have to say that I wasn‘t really surprised by anything.  If not for MoviePass, I would not have seen this movie in the theaters.  I probably wouldn’t have even rented it on DVD.  I think I would have waited for it to become available streaming if I saw it at all.

IMDb page