Tag Cert: 15 / 100 mins / Dir. Jeff Tomsic / Trailer
So, I see Hollywood's quest to recreate the lightning in a bottle which was The Hangover continues apace, with an ensemble comedy featuring the crap one out of Hangover, the crap one out of Avengers, the crap one out of Jurassic World, the crap one out of Baywatch and the crap one out of Baby Driver.
Three guesses what's happened.
Initially telling the story of a 30 year game of tag through the device of a reporter keen to write about the gang, the cast roster quickly expands to a number of players it can't realistically juggle. We're treated instead to a series of clockwork-timed set-pieces which have the air of something that was originally written for some movie anyway, but pulled off the shelf and dusted down for this.
Playing the living fuck out of its tenuous True Story™ card, the film has, admittedly, more laughs than it deserves. Although these come from choreographed slapstick rather than the half-baked script which feels like it's been written by a committee. A committee who decided that waterboarding and miscarriage were fine to use as punchlines*1. At least we now know that playing tag with this writing team would be so thuddingly predictable that it'd be a piece of piss to stretch the game out to 30 years...
We get a montage of camcorder footage before the mortifyingly self-indulgent end credits, showing the real life participants' tags over the years. This has more wit and sincerity than anything in the hour and a half before it.
Not enough ideas to actually justify its own existence, Tag is essentially 100 minutes of middle-aged men making dick jokes. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
Level 2: Jeremy Renner's in this, and he's been in those Avengers films with (among others) Sam 'Windu' Jackson
*1 No word in the film's final moments on whether the waterboarding, miscarriage or cancer sub-plots were based on factual events or the screenwriters' idea of upping the comic/dramatic ante.
The cancer thing in particular feels horribly ill-judged. Did this happen? If it did and the guy died, then it might be an idea to put up a card dedicating the film to his memory. If it did and he survived, it might be an idea to put up a card letting the audience know. If it didn't happen at all, it might be an idea to drop it from the fucking screenplay after what's come earlier with the fake-miscarriage debacle. Not going to lie, I didn't stay 'til the very end of the rolling-names, but then I didn't think I should have to. "By the way, Terry died" is hardly a post-credits stinger, is it? [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Director Stefano Sollima was always going to have his work cut out for him, helming a follow-up to a modern classic like Sicario. Crucially, writer Taylor Sheridan returns, with Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin in tow reprising their characters from the first film, but the world of drug trafficking across the Mexican border has taken a sidestep into the black-market currency of current times: people.
Without Denis Villeneuve holding the reins, Soldado lacks much of the brooding visual poetry that interspersed the conflict last time. However, Sollima brings cinematographer Daruisz Wolski with him, and they succeed in capably continuing the tone, at least. Early questions about the ethics of border-control threaten to wink right at the camera, but these quickly sink into the background when we're reminded that these characters have no ethics. Lines of conduct and loyalty which were previously blurred are now almost invisible.
Because what's really ramped up here is the body-count. And while it's always narratively justified, never throwaway and never glamourised, not a scene of this movie goes by without the execution, the threat or the discussion of violence. If Sicario was a cinematic embodiment of threat, Soldado represents unrelenting punishment.
Del Toro and Brolin are now thoroughly and seamlessly embedded in their roles, but the star of the show here is Isabela Moner, displaying an attitude not seen this acutely since Hailee Steinfeld grimaced and sneered her way through True Grit.
What Soldado lacks as an intricate conspiracy thriller, it more than makes up for by putting its characters right through the ringer. Fantastic, if grim, stuff...
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Gary Ross's female-led heist spin-off is a movie saved wholly by the likeability of its players. An entertaining if unadventurous adventure, Sandra Bullock's plot to liberate an obscene quantity of karats from the Met Gala isn't let down so much by its overall predictability, but lack of any real third act, cliff-edge danger.
Plenty smooth but with absolutely no weight, this screenplay corners like it's on rails. Not as witty, zippy or smart as a cast the fantastic deserves (the writing and the editing, basically), the gang nonetheless give it their all and just about win the audience's trust in return. And fair play to the physical acting chops of Bullock and Cate Blanchett, each wearing so much foundation that I'm amazed we were able to see their faces move.
Thoroughly undemanding and 12A-safe, check your disbelief in at the foyer and you'll have a much easier ride…
The previous Ocean's movies, I shouldn't wonder.
I haven't actually seen any of them. No agenda behind that, they just haven't crossed my path. And with the best will in the world, that isn't something I feel I now have to rectify.
Well the distributor of this movie has lined up a selection of pre-film adverts and trailers suggesting they believe that every woman in the land will flock to the cinema to see Ocean's 8 instead of watching The Football™. Not a completely unfair assumption, but a pretty patronising one. And given that tonight's sizeable audience was around one-third guys, it's not entirely accurate either.
Stream it, or wait to buy until it comes down in price.
Doubtful, although I'm sure we'll have an interesting conversation about Cate Blanchett and Helena Bonham Carter's accents apparently being stuck in Shop Demonstration Mode™.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Y'see, this is why I don't like being late to the party. Between Hereditary's UK release and me finally catching it, I'd heard multiple - unconnected - reports of mid/late-stage walkouts, audience laughter when nothing was being presented as a joke, and a third-act which completely undermines the craft and skill of the first two.
And tonight I saw all of those in action.
Ari Aster's debut feature begins as a claustrophobic treatise on abuse, secrecy, regret, and crippling guilt, all with an ambiguous supernatural edge. We, the audience, slowly pan across the pieces of a jigsaw which have been slowly put into place for decades before we arrived, watching as more are added to reveal the horrifying emerging picture. Toni Collette is positively haunting as a mother trying to hold her family together whilst knowing that she's the very one threatening to tear it apart. Gabriel Byrne is cautious weariness personified as her husband, and Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro effortlessly wear the psychological battle scars of the pair's children.
Then at the chalkboard scene, it all goes downhill. Rapidly.
It appears that Ari called in sick, just as M. Night Shyamalan came home pissed*1 and decided to re-write Being John Malkovich so the studio decided to use that instead. All of the existential dread (and a fair portion of the actual technique) in the film's intricately drafted setup is thrown in the bin as a cheap, batshit-crazy possession-horror hurriedly assembles its own backstory in a vain bid to be taken seriously. Even Gabriel Byrne stops trying to do his own accent when he realises the wheels have fallen off, presumably in the hopes of being mistaken for another actor.
The other thing I'd heard about Hereditary is that as silly as it becomes, the film's strengths just about make up for its weaknesses. No they don't. That's like someone pissing in your pint and telling you it's okay because you enjoyed the first half.
There's a great film in here somewhere. It's a shame Ari Aster stopped trying to make it.
I'm still trying to work that out myself.
Some of it is.
Only if there's a commentary track explaining what the fuck happened.
Credit where it's due, Toni Collette is is awards-worthy here, even when things turn silly.
That's entirely possible.
There isn't.
Level 2: Toni Collette's in this, and she was in that last xXx abomination, along with Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Donnie 'Îmwe' Yen.
*1 As in 'drunk', for the non-UK readers among you. Steamingly, embarrasingly, 'don't-remind-me-what-I-did'-level drunk. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
