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

Huh, crazy, I also enjoy watching people have sex.... Anyone else?

only if i'm one of em

the "reveal" of what happened off the set of on wings as eagles was such a predictable letdown! i guess that seems typical of the slight half-assedness of this film. just nothing terribly surprising.

the big lebowski takes place in 1991

damn

I liked this, but found it a bit too busy. More than any other recent film, it reminded me of Inherent Vice, in that it gives us almost too much good stuff, to the point where the whole ends up feeling less impressive than the pieces. I wish it had found a way to mostly stick with Brolin's perspective throughout--where the chaos of the film would at least have been consistent with the character's experience--rather than to keep finding ways of shoehorning movie parodies and new characters into the narrative. I get why some were saying that it felt rushed and unfinished--a consequence, I think, of the Coens trying to fill it with so many different set pieces and cameos.

Not up to speed on the thread, but here's a thing:

Religion often fills the frame in the Coen Brothers' latest, Hail, Caesar!. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), the film's long-suffering and almost comically decent Catholic protagonist, spends quite a bit of time haunting the confessional, desperately seeking penance for the cigarettes he's snuck. And fatuously awful as it might appear, the production of the titular Biblical epic can't help but foreground the difference between true faith and its shallow performance.

So, is this a Christian tale? Is goody-good Mannix meant to represent Jesus (as a few have suggested) or at least to stand in for his virtuous followers?

Probably not. Robert Picardo's Rabbi is one of the best and most morally authentic characters onscreen. More crucially, of the influential religious leaders attending a Capitol Pictures focus group meeting in a key early scene, he's the only not completely full of sh!t.

That said, we're obviously meant to see the actors employed by the fictional Capitol Studios as haplessly wayward sheep. Their foolish, selfish lives would tend inevitably toward ruin were not Brolin's fixer keeping constant watch over them, working invisibly to nudge them toward "the right thing". Mannix shields his dimbulb charges from exploitative pornographers & ideologues, steers their slutty mermaid asses toward traditional marriage & childbirth, and ensures that evil yet distressingly handsome dance-gays return to the Godless lands from whence they came.

Tilda Swinton's "two faced" twin gossip columnists, meanwhile, stand in for the media's self-righteous naivete. They're not necessarily evil, but only Mannix's paternal manipulation can ensure that they print constructive untruths. The Lockheed Martin headhunter who insidiously courts Eddie with smokes and craters, meanwhile, is clearly the military-industrial devil.

Even so, it's hard to ignore the staggeringly conservative message that emerges from the whole, especially given the Cold War setting and correspondingly dated sexual politics. If the film's Hollywood is a microcosm of midcentury America, then Eddie Mannix represents not Jesus but Herbert friggin' Hoover, sleepless watchman of the liberty we're apparently too damn stupid to deserve.

Picardo's character not full of shit, but he's cynical (his reaction to the film-within-a-film: "meh.") Basically, he's the Coen Brothers.

J. EDGAR HOOVER for chrissake

gah

wth, brain?

i never bothered with the new true grit cuz i like the old one so much i really need to see it?

I enjoyed Picardo and liked the entire scene for multiple reason, not the least of which was the Greek Orthodox, when asked about religious suitably, just starts giving notes about the plausibility of the chariot bit.

Greek Orthodox leader, that is

I like the original but the new one's better.

frankly the coen bros films are the last things we should be searching for hidden or submerged meanings in (a really dull pasttime to begin with)

The interesting thing about looking for hidden or submerged meanings is that, if you want to find them badly enough, they will appear. Although no one else may see them as you do.

Tilda Swinton was my favorite part of this very weird movie

wasn't sure how i felt about this immediately after seeing it but then on the bus ride home i ran into a former friend who i haven't seen in forever and who described his new life pursuit as 'community building through puppetry and object theatre' and his review of the movie as 'red-baiting neoliberal propaganda', which on the whole made me like it more i think.

i don't know about any hidden or submerged meanings but they seemed to be building up a nice meditation on idealism, hypocrisy, naiveté, power and corruption that felt underserved by the apotheosis of josh brolin slapping clooney in the face (however great that scene was)

i thought the film would be better but it was still really good? 'would that it were so simple', brolin consulting the religious leaders, the channing tatum tapdance and everything with the communists it were the best scenes

a really dull pasttime to begin with

beg to defer! it is the best.

guh the channing dance sequence was a chore. like if someone remade singin' in the rain starring half a cow.

it was fantastic

would watch an 100-minute cut of the dance sequence.

guh

my faorite part was the love triangle btwn singin' ropin' hobie, miss carlotta valdez and sir laurence laurentz. want a sequel w/ just them.

^v

mirthless chuckle

the channing dance sequence had some really leaden editing--looked more like "dancer in the dark" than "american in paris"! but the dancing/choreography itself was fine!

hobie was very sweet -- wish he had more screen time.

Dance sequence was the best part of the film.

(Tatum dance sequence also the best part of 22 Jump St, and that only went for 1.5 seconds)

movie begins and ends with mannix slapping someone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOFwpLIBM8c

some impressive set-pieces but this really feels inconsequential.

Feel like Brolin was the weak link in this, he just wasn't a strong enough presence to hold it all together, and as a result it ended up being a string of fun setpieces for their favourite actors to have a bit of fun with. Clooney/Tatum/Johannson/Fiennes all terrific but it would have been nice to see them onscreen together at some point, or get a sense that any of their storylines really mattered in relation to the others.

This article (from Buzzfeed of all places) has an interesting take on the film

http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/how-the-coens-tricked-you#.iqMjkwvAv5

i liked this a lot. it seems to already be slightly underrated. also wrongly marketed as a comedy, when its not really packed with laughs. nor is it just a gentle affectionate tribute to hollywood. seems more of a kind of existential character study, which i think was done really well, but just not really explored with enough depth, or given enough time to really take shape. i enjoyed all the sub plots, and 'fixing', but they didnt go back to mannix enough, or spend enough time on him. i dont really know their political beliefs, but the radio 4 programme on this made it seem like they were mocking communists, and i think they do a bit, with the tiny sandwiches, etc, but theyre not really dismissed like antonia quirke seemed to think. id say the coens gave the communists a fair shot, esp the end speech here clooney goes into what he learned, and also kind of challenging the whole premise of mass entertainment, and the workforce heirarchy (and also just cos the studio is called capitol). if they had done more with this, this might have been brilliant, it only really skimmed over mannix's doubts about hollywood as a career/worthwhile job/existence. a little too much time spent on the actor playing the cowboy, but i would LOVE to see a whole film based around what he can do :) i def want to see this a second time. wondering why brolin didnt get any oscar love.

also, i raised an eyebrow when clooney did his somewhat derisive speech about palestine being nothing but desert or whatever. that was... interesting.

i def want to see this a second time. wondering why brolin didnt get any oscar love.

The movie wasn't released during award season.

strange that it wasnt though. youd think it would be a shoo in for the academy.

not remotely

Yeah, would that it were so simple

Playfully skewering Hollywood? how does that stack up against targeting pedophile priests, or taking shelter inside your horse?

if grand budapest hotel could get nominated in 2015....

Channing Tatum can't dance. He should stick to Magic Mike movies where that isn't a problem.

Wasn't he a dancer before he was an actor? I've not seen this yet, but I've never noticed him dancing badly before.

This article (from Buzzfeed of all places) has an interesting take on the film
http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/how-the-coens-tricked-you#.iqMjkwvAv5
― i;m thinking about thos Beans (Michael B), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 7:19 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

anne helen petersen is a very smart media/film scholar who decamped for online journalism when she didn’t get tenure. her stuff for buzzfeed is pretty consistently decent, which i can’t say about… anything else on buzzfeed, basically.

Tatum learned to do tap *to do* the Hail Caesar routine

You learn tap in 3 months & do better

the shade, ffs

lol @ channing tatum can't dance

he was in step up!!

he and his wife are both excellent dancers

yeah his wife is awesome

i thought the sailors scene was perfectly fine.

this slate piece talks about queers/communists/both.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/02/15/hail_caesar_shows_hollywood_s_queer_communist_hidden_history.html

i think the film does deserve some criticism for doing what anne helen peterson says ("You could argue that, in sublimating their critique so deeply in the inner workings of genre, they’ve negated it") but it does enough to warrant a better appraisal than it seems to have gotten. its def more than just a gentle we-love-you-hollywood! pastiche. i was going to say its funny that so many critics have focused purely on it as a tribute, but then, a lot of film critics love to talk about film itself, more than what films are ever about, so thats prob not such a surprise. prob doesnt help that the coens are kind of aloof about the meaning of anything they do and are willing to humour interviewers on pretty much anything thats posited.

i actually think this film is really about the meaning of work, and employment. that last scene between clooney and brolin in the office, where those themes suddenly become really explicitly debated, is like the film in precis. seriously brilliant.