MovieMonday: TAG

"TAG," you may have read, is a movie about five middle-aged men who keep their group friendship alive by playing tag, the kids' game, for one month every year.

The idea for the film came from a newspaper story about a similar situation.  The article describes men going to some lengths to waylay and tag their fellows.  They are particularly anxious not to be "it" at the the end of the month of play and for the next 11 months until the game resumes.

In order to provide dramatic tension, the film has a central story question -- will Jerry Pierce (Jeremy Renner), the single group member who never has been tagged, become "it" before the end of the month?  

The other four members are sketched in roughly:  Executive Bob Callahan (played by, duh, "Mad Men" star John Hamm), wastrel doofus "Chilli" Cilliano (Jake Johnson), thoughtful eccentric Kevin Sable (Hannibal Buress) and obsessive "Hoagie" Malloy (Ed Helms).  

"TAG" includes the usual hijinks, a remarkable amount of property damage and a shoehorned-in moment of pathos -- or is it? -- toward the end.  Its dialogue also is full "fucks" and dick jokes, which guarantee an R-rating, now standard for adult comedies. These elements fight for attention with the theoretical heart of the story -- men in their 40s who remain devoted to school classmates.  

It is likely the added elements are not consistent with the source material.  Of the 10 men in the original article, one is a Catholic priest and two others teach and coach at their alma mater, a Jesuit school.  I'm guessing the real tag players' conversations are less colorful than what's offered here.

In short, the movie is fun, but juvenile.  When I saw it, the audience was young and included a number of viewers appeared to be under the age of 17, officially too young to see it without their parents.  I doubt they were traumatized by the experience.




Notes

Over the last 20 years, an R-rating has become the standard for funny movies aimed at adults -- everything from Judd Apatow's output to the Hangover movies to the Deadpool franchise.  

Today, virtually all PG-rated comedies are children's movies, and even they often have mild epithets like "damn" and "bitch" and twerking animals wearing mankinis. 

-----

Meanwhile, perhaps the most enduring comedy of the last 25 years is "Groundhog Day."  Here is a nice Variety piece assessing its significance and an interview with its screenwriter.  

"Groundhog Day," a PG film whose plot was unlike any seen before, was a difficult sell with producers in 1993.  If it were made today, it certainly would require the addition of multiple fucks, tits and dicks to satisfy expectations of current audiences. 

MovieMonday: Gotti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRBCj4eSdh4

Maybe Hollywood is better served when it makes movies about fictional gangsters instead of actual ones.

This movie sets out to be a character study of John Gotti, who worked (whacked?) his way to the top of the Gambino crime family before he was convicted of five murders and racketeering and sent to prison in 1992.  

In his defense, we learn that Gotti was fiercely devoted to his family, that he lived by the rules of his chosen profession and that he was generous to people in his Queens neighborhood.

The movie is punctuated by actual news footage of the Dapper Don, and it takes its story from a book by his son, John Gotti, Jr., who seems to have written it to settle scores against snitches and other associates who maligned his father.   

John Travolta gives his impression of a guy who says his first break, initiation into the Gambino family, came after he killed a man.  There followed two short prison terms, which taught him never to trust someone who hadn't done time.

Travolta's real-life wife, Kelly Preston, does a nice job as the mercurial Victoria Gotti.  Spencer Lofranco is overmatched as John, Jr., possibly because he looks 17 years old when he's playing a 17-year-old and also when he visits his father in prison 20 years later. 

One flaw in the film may be that it went through too many rewrites, too many producers and too many casting changes.  But I don't think that's it.

My guess is that the people who made the movie were so sympathetic to Gotti that they figured a recitation of his achievements -- often without context -- would convince viewers that he was basically a decent person.  The result is a fast-moving narrative that simply doesn't hang together.

The most heartfelt scenes come after Gotti's son Frank is killed in a car accident; we see the parents' grief and, a few minutes later, Gotti arranging to take the family to Florida so as to be out of town while the driver of the car is killed.  

But that's it.  The rest is shootings and grousing over drinks about other mobsters, interspersed with moments of father-son bonding.  

John Gotti was a real person who trafficked in crime and extortion.  His silk ties and big black cars were not paid for by Gambino membership dues. The families of people whose deaths he arranged were just as distraught as his family was when his own son died.  

It's not easy to turn someone like John Gotti into a sympathetic character. This movie doesn't make the sale.  

America's film fascination with gangsters goes back a long way.  There were Warner Bros.' James Cagney movies of the 30s, noir films of the '40s and "On the Waterfront" with Marlon ("I coulda been a contender") Brando in the 1950s.  "The Godfather" in 1972 kicked off movies and television series that show the professional-personal aspects of hoodlum life to this day.

Some of those movies and television series may have been inspired by actual characters, but I can't think of another biopic about a real-life modern-day mobster.  Maybe this one be the last. 

MovieMonday: Hereditary

Here we have a horror movie about a family afflicted by some some kind of curse.

We meet the group -- two parents, two teenaged children, nice house, Volvo wagon -- after the death of the mother's mother.  

At the funeral, the mother, Annie Graham (well played by Toni Collette), delivers a frankly hostile eulogy.  At home, Annie is working on an art project that consists of intricate miniature designs of the family home and also of her late mother's hospital room.

Daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) is an expressionless child who draws disturbing pictures, including one of her grandmother in her open coffin.  Older brother Peter (Alex Wolff) seems less strange but is bewildered and seeks comfort in his bong.

The father, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), is a traditional family guy whose calm concern contrasts with the increasingly odd behavior of the others as events unfold.

And do they ever.  Odd things happen, and then are followed by even odder things.  Annie sometimes reacts as a mother might be expected to do, and then sometimes does not.  The recurring horror elements include headless bodies and insect invasions.

The title suggests that the dead grandmother bequeathed some strangeness to Annie and Charlie, and possibly to Peter.  It's not for me to tell the story here, but even when it has ended it remains something of a puzzle.

I generally don't care for horror movies, but this one held my interest because the family interactions made it more interesting than the traditional strangers-gathered-to fight-a-menace tale of older such films.  The pacing and cinematography are very good, and the theme is supported by a fine musical score.

Ari Aster wrote and directed the film, his first feature-length movie, but professionals and Vimeo fans have enjoyed "Munchausen", his much shorter family horror movie that stars Bonnie Bedelia.  If you're on the fence about seeing "Hereditary," you might watch that 2014 piece first.

Turned Into Absurdity

A couple years ago, I read this unintentionally amusing sentence in a newspaper.

The 25-year-old turned himself into the Hudson County Regional Fatal Collision Unit 

at about 3:45 p.m. on Monday, Suarez said.

Wow, I thought to myself.  That would be something to see.

The problem was the word into.

We do know that people are capable of changing themselves. 

With plastic surgery and flexible ethics, a woman can turn herself into a big-bosomed porn actress.  

With talent and hard work, high school drop-outs can turn themselves into famous overachievers like Quentin Tarantino and Aretha Franklin.

But, as for turning oneself into a Fatal Collision Unit?  Never heard of it.


Into and In To

It is not difficult to see how the confusion arose.

In and to are both prepositions, and each requires a noun or pronoun as its object.  And the word into is also a preposition.

But in is flexible.  Sometimes it is a descriptive word, an adverb.

Some examples:

Harvey dropped his test into his teacher's in-box. (Preposition)

Harvey turned his test in to his teacher.  (Descriptor and preposition)

Harvey turned his test into his teacher.   (Ha ha ha)

You can see where I'm going here.
    
Harvey Weinstein

Just over two weeks ago, the recently notorious film executive began his legal journey as a criminal defendant.  Some of the headlines:  
     

Harvey Weinstein charged with rape after turning himself into police

Harvey Weinstein turns himself into police

LIVE: Harvey Weinstein turns himself into police

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has turned himself into police. 

Harvey Weinstein turns himself into New York police

JUST IN: Weinstein turns himself into police

And here is the lede from a news story published by an outfit  that I know for a fact employs trained journalists.

Embattled film mogul Harvey Weinstein was seen carrying two books 
with him when he turned himself into police on Friday morning 
in New York City on charges of rape and sexual assault.

I could go on -- and on and on -- but I believe I have made my point.  

We all have seen television dramas in which an officer of the law describes herself or himself as "a police."  But when Weinstein appeared in the courtroom for his arraignment, he wasn't a police; he was just the same old Harvey.

Conor McGregor

The into malaprop also figured prominently in April reports after UFC fighter Conor McGregor got his Irish up outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.  The first seconds of the cellphone video below show McGregor lobbing a hand truck at an innocent bus.

McGregor probably regards such behavior as necessary to maintain his credibility in the mixed martial arts community.  But officials took a different view.  And so, afterward, we got the following headline, among others:  

Conor McGregor turns himself into police after attack on bus at UFC 223 Media Day 

And language from two mainstream publications:

UFC star Conor McGregor has turned himself into police in the wake 

of a backstage melee he instigated that has forced the removal of 

three fights off UFC's biggest card of the year. 

Conor McGregor turned himself into the New York City Police Department 

after he was wanted for questioning after he attacked 

a UFC bus containing fighters on Thursday and injuring one person. 

(This sentence is a textbook-ready example of bad newswriting, BTW.)

The into misuse appeared also on various MMA websites, but it didn't originate there.  It seems that either the Associated Press or CBSSports, or possibly both, led with the into construction and that the smaller outfits picked up the error and neglected to correct it.

My considered opinion is that if McGregor wanted to change after that unfortunate incident, he should have turned himself into a bus, instead.

Note

What is it with New York and prominent criminal prosecutions?  Harvey Weinstein spent the majority of his career in Los Angeles, where most of the ingenues and starlets are, but the NYPD was first out of the chute investigating and charging him.  

       Now there seems to be a battle afoot between the Manhattan district attorney's office and the state attorney general over which gets to lead the very prurient and very newsworthy court case.  Even the governor has voiced a point of view.

D-Day Speeches

A reprint of an Idiosyncratist post on June 6, 2014

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the day Allied forces stormed five beaches in Normandy, setting the stage for the longer sustained effort to free Europe from German occupation and end the Second World War.

The bloodiest battle was on Omaha Beach.  Starting with Ronald Reagan in 1984, American presidents have joined the declining numbers of D-Day veterans there to commemorate each 10th-year anniversary with a speech about the significance of D-Day.

The speeches are aimed at the surviving veterans, but they matter to all of us.  They speak of the qualities our warriors displayed on D-Day -- bravery, persistence and honor in the defense of deeply held values -- and that we hope that we would bring if faced with such enormous challenges.

From each of the speeches:



Ronald Reagan, 1984:

The (2nd and 5th Army) Ranger battalions looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades.  And the American Rangers began to climb.  They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up.  When one Ranger fell, another would take his place.  When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again.  They climbed, shot back and held their footing.  Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe.  Two hundred and twenty-five came here.  After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.



Bill Clinton, 1994:

During those first hours on bloody Omaha, nothing seemed to go right.  Landing craft were ripped apart by mines and shells.  Tanks sent to protect them had sunk, drowning their crews.  Enemy fire raked the invaders as they stepped into chest-high water and waded past the floating bodies of their comrades.  And as the stunned survivors of the first wave huddled behind a seawall, it seemed the invasion might fail.

Hitler and his armies had bet on it.  They were sure the Allied soldiers were soft, weakened by liberty and leisure, by the mingling of races and religion.  They were sure their totalitarian youth had more discipline and zeal.

But then something happened.  Although many of the American troops found themselves without officers on unfamiliar ground, next to soldiers they didn't know, one by one they got up and they inched forward, and together, in groups of threes and fives and tens, the sons of democracy improvised and mounted their own attacks.  At that exact moment, on these beaches, the forces of freedom turned the tide of the 20th century.



George W. Bush, 2004:

On this day in 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the American people, not with a speech, but with a prayer.  He prayed that God would bless America's sons and lead them straight and true.  He continued, "They will need thy blessings.  They will be sore tired by night and by day without rest, until victory is won.  The darkness will be rent by noise and flame.  Men's souls will be shaken by the violences of war."

As Americans prayed along, more than 12,000 Allied aircraft and about 5,000 naval vessels were carrying out General Eisenhower's order of the day.  In this massive undertaking, there was a plan for everything -- except for defeat.  Eisenhower said, "This operation is planned as a victory, and that's the way it is going to be."



Barack Obama, 2014:

By daybreak, blood soaked the water and bombs broke the sky.  Thousands of rounds bit into flesh and sand.  Entire companies' worth of men fell in minutes.  "Hell's Beach" had earned its name.

By 8:30 a.m. General Omar Bradley expected our troops to be a mile inland.  "Six hours after the landings," he wrote, "we held only ten yards of beach."  In our age of instant commentary, the invasion would have been swiftly and roundly declared, as it was by one officer, "a debacle."

But a race to judgment does not take into account the courage of free men. "Success may not come with rushing speed," President Roosevelt would say that night, "but we shall return again and again."

Twelve Americans won the Medal of Honor for heroism on D-Day.  Nine of the medals were awarded posthumously.

On the cliff above Omaha beach are the graves of more than 9,300 American warriors killed in Normandy, but in fact more died there.  The United States was the only country that allowed families to choose whether they wanted their dead service members returned home for burial.

MovieMonday: Show Dogs

I learned after I saw it that this movie had got in trouble with the Committee to Protect Children from Nonconsensual Touching, a group whose name I just made up.

Anyway.  The complaint -- sorta, almost corrected about a week ago -- was that a dog in a beauty contest (not an official AKC event, duh) was instructed to calm down and let some contest judges inspect his private organs.

There was a line that may or may have not been deleted.  But in the final cut, the dog's balls still are groped.  It presumably is funny because the touching is not sexual and the relevant animal is an alpha dog.  Does this happen at the Miss America Pageant?  Beats me.  Still, that is part of the movie.

It is not difficult to see how this idiot script came to be.

First, someone thought, let's make a fun kid-oriented show about doggies in a beauty contest based in Las Vegas, America's capital of narcissism and misbehavior.  Facials, hair curling, etc.  

Then came the idea to force a male police dog to go undercover and act against type as one of the beauty contestants.

Then the script writers wondered, why would a tough-as-nails Rottweiler enter a dog beauty contest?

The obvious answer: to rescue a cute baby panda that is being held by an international animal theft cartel at the dog show.

Pretty thin gruel. 

I don't care about beauty contests, human or canine. But I do care about movies for children.

This one lost me when the NYPD cop dog endured a bikini waxing.   If you think that sounds funny, go ahead and take your eight-year-old to see it.  Then try to explain the joke.

"Show Dogs" mashes a pop-humor canine glam fest with a lame buddy theme that pairs a serious police dog with a nebbishy human who happens to be an FBI agent. 

It seems likely that this movie's studio (which not surprisingly blew out of underperforming Warner Bros. and will not be named here by me) has employed execs who aren't smart enough to ask what target audiences their films hope to engage. 


Note

Like the acute rhinitis-inducing weather, this week's movie offerings in the surburban Northeast were dismal.  OTOH, what were people supposed to do?  Go see "Solo?"