HAIL, CAESAR! A '50s Hollywood comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen

here it is, with ScarJo goofing on Esther Williams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMqeoW3XRa0

Trailer I've seen looks great, so help me

Gets its UK premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival next month, looks like a gd choice for the opening movie

feb 5 us release apparently

Where are you getting that date from JC? According to this story, it only gets its world premiere on the 11th Feb at the Berlin Film Festival:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/coen-brothers-new-film-hail-caesar-will-receive-uk-premiere-at-glasgow-film-festival-a6798941.html

google/wiki

it surprised me def

Gonna say, based on the number of commercials I've seen lately, I'd be very surprised if it weren't opening within the next month.

No Clooney? I can deal w that

oh my bad

haha

it looks like Stupid Clooney, which is usu a good thing

yeah Stupid Clooney was one of my favorite things about Burn After Reading

his slightly-too-slow reactions are the funniest bits in the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMUUKtF_BF0

I assume there's some subtle jest in regifting Clooney his '90s haircut.

when he was the Augustus of Hollywood

guarantee it will not be as terrible as Barton Fink

guarantee it will not be as terrible as Barton Fink

barton fink was not terrible; this looks to be so

barton fink had a lot of great scenes and characters but the story arc imposed a rather weak ending

btw Clooney is going to be directing a Coens script shortly

https://www.thewrap.com/george-clooney-reveals-plot-details-for-his-matt-damon-julianne-moore-movie-suburbicon/

Coens been giving away a lot of scripts lately.

Gonna watch this crap tomorrow.

no one's farcing you are they?

Why all so negative? Looks funny enough to me, at least as far as trailers go.

Got free promo tix for tomorrow. Let's see how it does.

am minorly worried w how much theyve amped up the adverts

to match the performances, it looks like

looks great to me, but I'm a stan

I'm pretty sure it won't be another Ladykillers. Middling Coens is still moderately entertaining.

This was pleasant but pointless. If the preview audience is any hint, this will bomb. You have to spot the Esther Williams, Gene Autry, Dalton Trumbo, and Josh Brolin-as-Thalberg references. A couple of polished, expert turns, notably by Ralph Fiennes. One terrific scene: Channing Tatum as a Gene Kelly pastiche doing an "Anchors Aweigh" routine (first offhand fictional reference to his homosexuality too).

ScarJo and Jonah Hill get cameos thank god

? Gene Kelly was gay? That seems like a stretch.

No, no, I meant Tatum finally plays a character with a gay past (no spoilers)

There are plenty gay refs in Mad Mike no?

Magic, rather.

You might be right; I haven't seen it in a while.

he really seems like a splendid fellow.

He did a hilarious soft shoe

Magic Mike: Banana Hammock Avenue

You have to spot the Esther Williams, Gene Autry, Dalton Trumbo, and Josh Brolin-as-Thalberg references. A couple of polished, expert turns, notably by Ralph Fiennes. One terrific scene: Channing Tatum as a Gene Kelly pastiche doing an "Anchors Aweigh" routine (first offhand fictional reference to his homosexuality too).

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 2, 2016 10:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so coen bros fan will love this then

looking forward to seeing channing dance

looks great. also I totally forgot ladykillers existed.

^ the coens thank you for your faulty memory

This was fun. I don't know how well it holds together as a movie, but the scene by scene bits are great.

Very much a pastiche of Classic Hollywood, and they look like they really enjoyed making it.

Still, Clancy Brown! Robert Picardo as a rabbi! Frances McDormand! Tilda Swinton! Mid-Atlantic accents! Sound effects reels from seven decades ago! Jews & Christians making a movie about Jews & Christians making a movie about Jews & Christians! Carter Burwell! Roger Deakins!

Also, it didn't hit me til later that like every other Coen Brothers movie is a period piece and every third movie involves a bungled kidnapping.

Our preview screening had two horrible trailers for loud comedies that were tuned for audiences very different than one for a Coen Bros movie. They looked like fake movies that get inserted when a film wants to comment on or parody current Hollywood trends.

carter burwell + deakins is a big sell for me, no question

i think the only contemporaneous Coen films are Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, Raising Arizona, and Blood Simple, maybe. even Fargo takes place in the late '80s.

Intolerable Cruelty I kind of split in half, as it seems they're trying to do a 50s screwball romantic comedy only in contemporary times

uh, '30s screwball.

Most of the Coens' audience knows nothing about old movies.

I've been catching up on all the Coen Bros films that I haven't seen and watched this last night. It's like a rose-scented fart, pleasant enough but ephemeral and pointless. Maybe (probably) I'm missing something but it just seems like a lot of effort for very little on the screen. Best things were the Communist writers congratulating themselves for deftly inserting propaganda into their scripts (historical LOL) and everything L'il Han Solo did.

But I also watched Miller's Crossing, which I somehow had never seen before, and want to watch it like 15 more times.

well you are otm about millers crossing for sure anyway

i dunno i love that coens arent above a random, messy, showpiece of love like hail caesar. not all of it worked but most of it was done with plenty of mischief and style and panache and if it was only brolin, sailors dancing and fiennes/solo its a seven out of ten just on that

I would've liked that version a lot better!

I'll be watching The Hudsucker Proxy tonight btw

can't remember if thats underrated or not but imo its perfect

Totally underrated. Took a critical beating at the time, along with an all around feeling of a flop; I think the studio (Warner?) was hoping it'd be the Coens mainstream breakthrough, but then Ace Ventura came out like a month before and, well, that was where American comedy was at now.

I always have room for silly Tim Robbins, so I'm looking forward to it. Maybe I should just re-watch all of them, since I've only seen most of them once. I've seen Fargo, Raising Arizona and No Country twice each.

Hudsucker is great. only wrong step is the "magical negro" bit imo

lol this was buried in the Inside Llewyn Davis thread

https://kottke.org/13/12/coen-brothers-next-film-set-in-ancient-rome

Right now, the brothers are plainly excited about what they’re writing, which they proudly explain, is set in ancient Rome. It’s the allure of the unexpected, all over again.

“It’s like: Would you ever do a sandal movie?” laughs Joel. “It’s big,” says Ethan, grinning. “We’re interested in the big questions. And we don’t (expletive) around with subtext. This one especially.”

Though their movies usually revel in the absurdity of life’s predicaments, Ethan promises this film has answers: “It’s not like our piddly ‘A Serious Man.’” Chimes Joel: “That was a cop-out. We just totally chickened out on that one.”

loool

This movie is awesome.

It really is. I don’t know why people don’t like it

it's a series of set pieces with no character development and very little plot, so you either enjoy the comic bits and the callbacks to old movies or you find the whole apparatus too weak to be very satisfying.

i fear that i fall into the latter, i didnt really get it

Good pastiches but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Which would be fine too! But the parts lose their charm right quick. Except whenever Channing Tatum dances.

it's a series of set pieces with no character development and very little plot

these are firstly subjective statements and secondly subjectively relevant to if a movie is good

i liked this movie and completely forgot it existed until now

huh?

xpost

You're saying he should've added "imo"?

Imos pizza sux IMO

nah mlud alf the imo is as always implicit

im saying that even iyo declaring that there are such tests that a movie must oerleap else fail is adding elements to appraisal that dont always (and need never) apply

I really like this one and think theres a lot going on in it, its current rep as a a piece of lightweight pastiche hugely underrates it imo. I think about it a lot as a companion piece to A Serious Man

yeah

and elements that are def of a piece with hudsucker, barton fink, inside lleywn davies, etc etc

the pastiche pieces are happening around a vv compelling central character/performance in brolin

tbh i think the level the coens are working on now, I dont think they could do a "just" pastiche movie at this point even if they tried

and elements that are def of a piece with hudsucker, barton fink, inside lleywn davies, etc etc

these are all lesser coens to me, especially the latter

brolin is good but there's not really a journey for the character

not every story is the odyssey

some are the iliad.

lol

heh

I'd find it interesting to read what in particular you find compelling about Brolin's character and the rest of the movie, deems. I could write more of my own opinions for you to hoot at, but that seems like a hollow exercise unless you are willing to expose yourself a bit further. I will take it as all in good fun, regardless. The Coens have to fine a body of work to be smirched by a few quibbles about this film or that.

I'm fine with a hollow exercise when every scene is uniquely memorable & enjoyable.

i think hes an excellent brooder, aimless

good brooding

portentous

adds a lot that mightn't even be there

#casting

anyways i wasnt hooting at all but i think a criticism of something for what it isnt should have to work hard enough to demonstrate that it had to be that thing, tbh

a certain finn was terrible for doing this, iirc

The fantasy version of Mannix is the most sharp and capable character in the film, who has no particular expertise but still outthinks or outmanouevres every other figure in their own area of interest. The headhunters can see this, and know that he's not being valued with direct appreciation, money or a work-life balance.

Eddie knows this too. The tragedy of the film's character is that despite operating outside of, and manipulating, Hollywood glamour at every step, he is just as seduced by it as everyone else. He probably thinks Catholicism is bullshit and an exploitative front, but he carries on in "belief" of it. He knows that Hollywood is fake - he's the main agent of the fakery off-screen - and yet he can't give up his faith, though it does not and will not reward his belief. He chooses to believe, and chooses to believe that he will be happy by choosing this.

Nearly every character is shown as a massive doofus both to contrast with Mannix' capability, and to provide entertaining, funny setpieces to the audience. Every other character that is capable in some way is also choosing to believe in something false, but they're not conflicted by it. Mannix is given opportunity after opportunity throughout the film to behave as rationally as he is shown to think, and a viewer may invest in his tension and conflict, or disregard it (whether because they expect he will stick with the studio, find the character repugnant, are in it for the gags, are put out of it by the gags, w/e). It's the emotional spine of the movie for those who want one, though.

He goes on a journey, it just ends up back at home in his hobbit-hole. The journey doesn't change him - this is the point of faith - but it brings him to accept things about himself.

(The real-life Mannix probably would have turned down a better-compensated job in aeroplane manufacturing because of the lesser opportunities to control & abuse women, or to have people murdered for convenience or spite.)

I agree about the quality brooding by Brolin.

criticism of something for what it isnt should have to work hard enough to demonstrate that it had to be that thing

Ah! I merely said that, given what it was not, what was left would either suffice for the viewer to extract enjoyment or it would not, with the clear implication that for me it did not. It struck me as a series of pleasant trifles, which is not a bad thing in itself. Scene by scene, most of the film was amusing and engaging. Not the commies, though; they were a mustard stain on the film's floral cravat.

Where it most failed for me was its insistence on imposing a plot and a resolution on the story, while employing such a weak plot and incoherent resolution that they detracted from the whole and made it, as Jim In Vancouver put it, a whole that was less than the sum of its parts. Also, for my tastes, Clooney's and Johansson's characters were rather simplistic cartoons that fell well below the high standards set by Warner Bros.

otoh, Brolin and Swinton were very fine and held the movie together as best they could.

sic otm. its a story about how people keep faith vs a serious man being about how people lose faith.

i agree about the commies, certainly, that needed deepening or dropping

mannix's faith in the system is held up by the idea that everyone has an important role to play to serve the system, and in return the system provides them all with a sense of meaning. His faith gives him self-worth because he plays his part to help keep the system running, as we all should. The setpieces give us a cross section of the system and show us what mannix finds beautiful about it, the way each person fits and how their role is important, from the execs to the craftspeople to the crooked notary public. The film shows him literally travelling around tending his flock, and when one of them has doubts he tells them that faith must be a choice, a conscious act of will, and if you interrogate it with rationality too much it can all disappear in a puff of smoke.

Great post, sic

xp - that deeper thematic underpinning might have been better served if it had been depicted as happening to human beings instead of to crayon drawings of human beings

well yeah, its a broad allegory, done with self-conscious silliness. Not sure if it would have worked better if it was more realistic, but i get why the movie as it is doesnt do it for everybody. And while its still not the deepest fare theres at least slightly more there to chew on than "they wanted to re-create old movies" imo

mannix has learned to be happy with the idea of faith being its own reward. gopnik in a serious man is unhappy because he expects rewards for his faith. (or at least tornado protection, at the bare minimum)

gopnik struggles with faith and doesn't do anything

mannix commits to faith-as-tactic and acts

that deeper thematic underpinning might have been better served if it had been depicted as happening to human beings instead of to crayon drawings of human beings

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, May 16, 2020 7:09 AM (twenty-four minutes ago)

https://i.imgur.com/nlenMLq.jpg

I watched this over the pandemic and fell into the easy trap of tritely dismissing it as a minor Coen brothers. It didn't really stay with me and I hadn't reconsidered it until I noticed that their last three movies (if indeed the Coens stay out): Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail, Caesar!, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs form an ersatz trilogy of dark music(al) movies about identity, Americanism, and the culture industry. Maybe not a perfect match-up, but I think it's interesting to take all three of these movies together.

Wasn't excited for this at all, very wary of the pastiche/tribute element but I really loved it. I think the old man trying to fight the moon is supposed to be comedy for dumbasses but it's still hilarious.

Trying to think of similar films to what Fiennes was directing or similar directors but coming up totally blank. Maybe that kind of film is mostly left in the past? Same for the cowboy film?

saw The Man Who Wasn't there the other night and that was more amazing