Film

Friends, Romans, countrymen

Hail, Caesar!

A film that has virtually no plot, but gives Joel and Ethan Coen a chance to pay tribute to just about every kind of movie Hollywood was making in the ’40s and ’50s by adapting the styles of those films into their weirdo universe? Hell, yeah. Sign me up. The Coen brothers bring a blast of creativity to early 2016 with a movie that, frankly, had a lot of their fans, including myself, a little worried. It was moved out of the 2015 awards season and dumped into February, usually a cinematic graveyard. It wasn’t screened for critics until a couple of days before its release, a tactic reserved for the likes of Deuce Bigalow and Transformers movies, not the Coens. In truth, this movie probably scores highest with diehard Coen fans, those who react with glee to the notion that it takes place at a studio called Capitol Pictures. That’s the same fictional place where Coen creation Barton Fink suffered the most classic of writer’s block all the way back in 1991. While there is the obvious nod to Barton Fink, the film that Hail, Caesar! feels most like from the Coen collection is The Hudsucker Proxy, another period piece that featured fast-talking caricatures, unabashed silliness and astonishing period detail. Like Hudsucker, Hail, Caesar! is a bunch of great performers playing with great writerdirectors in a movie that looks great. It follows a day in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a studio enforcer at Capitol Pictures tasked with keeping stars out of trouble and assuring moving pictures stay on schedule. In the middle of filming a biblical epic, huge star Baird Whitlock (George

Clooney) is kidnapped by Hollywood communists, who demand one hundred grand in ransom money. Mannix must figure out how to get his star back while dodging two gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton in increasingly hilarious wardrobe), navigating the latest scandal of studio star, DeeAnna by Bob Grimm Moran (Scarlett Johansson) and comforting hot director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph bgrimm@ Fiennes), who has had a marble-mouthed newsreview.com stunt actor named Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) forced into his romantic comedy. 4 The plot is paper thin, but it does give the Coens a chance to do their quick interpretations of old timey movie Westerns, screwball comedies, Esther Williams pool epics, overblown Bible movies, Gene Kelly musicals, and more. The film is comprised of short homages to all of these cinema genres, and each one of them is a total blast to behold. On top of that, the movie features communist writers in a manner far less serious than the recent Trumbo. The Coens have a way with making small moments so grandiose. While Hobie Doyle waits for a date, he opts to play with his lasso in a way that reminded me of the kid in Hudsucker sampling a hulahoop. Fiennes and Ehrenreich have an exchange over a simple movie line that is one of the funniest things the Coens have ever put to screen. Right there with it is a moment involving a scarf and Coen staple Frances McDormand. And if you don’t laugh when Clooney’s Whitlock beholds the Christ, well, there’s just something wrong with you. For sheer show-stopping homage, Channing Tatum does career best work in an On the Town-like bar sequence that has him dancing and singing up a storm. It’s a sequence that is at once gloriously perfect and seriously demented, the kind of thing only the Coens could pull off. I wish the Coens had a lot more time on their hands, because it would be a delight to see the further adventures of Mannix, Hobie Doyle and DeeAnna Moran. They each deserve their own movie. Hail, Caesar! gives total silliness a seriously grand treatment, and reminds us that nobody does silly better than the Coens. Ω

"Ugh. I shouldn't have  eaten that lion."

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excellent 1The 5th Wave This is based upon the young adult novel by Rick Yancey, the first in a trilogy. God willing, this movie will be the only one to receive a movie adaptation. Further cinematic installments will cause me to punch myself in the face and hurt my standing at the workplace, in social gatherings, etc. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Cassie Sullivan, a normal teenage girl who drinks beer at parties, drools over high school football guy Ben Parish (Nick Robinson) and calls the guy from Office Space (Ron Livingston) dad. Things go from routine to wacky for Cassie when a big metal spaceship thing parks over Ohio and starts messing with the human race in “waves.” The first wave involves an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all power and renders PlayStation 4 useless, while the second wave brings earthquakes and tsunamis. The third wave involves plague, while the fourth includes survivors battling with aliens in human hosts. The fifth wave … well, that’s a mystery. A mystery you will solve really quick if you put forth even the slightest effort.

4The Big Short Director Adam McKay, the master behind such broad comedy gems as Anchorman and Step Brothers, flexes his slightly more serious muscles for this one, a take on the housing bubble that nearly destroyed the global economy. An ensemble cast featuring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt make this a funny-yet-scary look at how big banks nearly sent us back to the stone ages. Carell is especially good as Mark Baum, a banker with a conscience who realizes a little too late that things are going bad, and his wealth is going to come at the expense of a many U.S. homeowners. Bale is typically good as Michael Burry, the man who saw the storm coming and made a boatload of money betting against the biggest monsters of modern finance. Pitt has fun as a financial guru who has taken to the hills in anticipation of the oncoming financial apocalypse, while Gosling gives the whole thing a nice Martin Scorsese vibe as a fasttalking banker/narrator. It’s a drama, but it’s often funny. (Margot Robbie in a bubble bath … brilliant!) McKay shows that his chops go well beyond directing Will Ferrell with a fireman’s mustache.

3The Finest Hours In 1952, an oil tanker called the Pendleton split in two during a blizzard off the coast of Cape Cod. All eight crewmembers who were in the stern at the time the boat broke perished. Thirty-three men initially survived in the bobbing bow section of the ship, mere hours away from certain death. Upon hearing news of the situation, a four-man crew boarded the smallish CG-36500 boat and set out to sea, a violently choppy sea, in search of the Pendleton and its crew. Director Craig Gillespie has crafted an exciting seafaring movie. That is, an exciting seafaring movie when it is actually out at sea. Some of the stuff that happens back on shore bogs the movie down in schmaltziness. Chris Pine plays Bernie Webber, who captains the tiny ship tasked with saving over 30 men. Yes, this provides the opportunity for the guy who plays Captain Kirk to be called Captain a lot during the course of this film. It’s a slight distraction, but a good one nonetheless. Bernie rides into the belly of the beast with three crewmembers played by Ben Foster, John Magaro and Kyle Gallner. All four are terrific at looking scared shitless while being drenched and bounced about like a 5-year-old in a bounce house with a bunch of energetic and older fat people. Casey Affleck is terrific as a member of the Pendleton crew trying to keep everybody alive. The film rocks when there’s lots of water involved, but it falters when the story turns to Bernie’s new love affair. Holliday Grainger is given a tough role to pull off as the love interest. Most of her scenes simply distract from the good stuff.

3Kung Fu Panda 3 Jack Black returns as the voice of Po in this decent second sequel in the saga of the Panda warrior and his warrior cronies. This time out, Po encounters his long lost dad, Li (the warm growl of Bryan Cranston), who takes him to the land of the pandas so that he can learn the powers of his chi. Such an advancement in his warrior techniques is absolutely essential for the lands are being threatened by a spirit realm warrior named Kai (J.K. Simmons voicing what I think is some sort of super muscular yak-type thing). The stuff with Po and Li is cute, with the added element of Po’s adopted dad (James Hong) being a little jealous. There’s a cool psychedelic look at times, and the animated series continues to impress on artistic levels. The story feels a bit like a repeat of the previous two. That’s OK, but doesn’t necessarily place this chapter high on the originality scale.

1Pride and Prejudice and Zombies The zombie movie craze hits what I hope to be its low point with this crap attempt at horror comedy featuring a fairly faithful take on the Jane Austen classic mixed with the undead. Lily James, so delightful in Cinderella, plays Elizabeth Bennet, one of the esteemed Bennet sisters and zombie hunter. She sets her sight on Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley), who thinks she’s pretty and all that but must refrain from serious courtship in order to behead some ghouls. For starters, director Burr Steers shoots for a PG-13 rating, which results in much of the action taking place off screen, via incomprehensible editing, or in the dark so as to reduce the bloodletting. The movie features so much carnage that it feels incomplete for soft-shoeing the yucky stuff. As for the balance of period romance and comedic bloodletting, Steers never finds a comfortable place. The movie feels uneven and sloppy, with lousy special effects and players that look lost. Like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter before it, a perhaps clever idea gets lost in messy direction and lousy scripting. It’s a shame, because Riley and James are much better than this.

5The Revenant For the second year in a row, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has delivered the year’s best film. The best movie of 2015 is The Revenant, an eye-popping Western thriller that gives Leonardo DiCaprio, the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Actor, the role that should finally score him that first Oscar. The innovative Inarritu was also responsible for last year’s Birdman. DiCaprio gives it everything he’s got as Hugh Glass, a scout working with fur traders on the American frontier in the early nineteenth century. Glass, while doing his job, gets a little too close to a couple of bear cubs, and Mama Grizzly is not all too happy about such an occurrence. What follows is a lengthy and vicious bear attack where Glass tangles with the nasty mother not once, but twice. Inarritu, DiCaprio and some amazing visual technicians put you in the middle of that bear attack, minus the searing pain of actually having a bear’s claws and teeth rip through your flesh. Trust me when I tell you, it’s an unforgettably visceral moment when that bear steps on DiCaprio’s head. DiCaprio is incredible here, as are Tom Hardy as a villainous fur trapper who wants to leave Glass behind, Domhnall Gleeson as the commander forced to make horrible decisions, and Will Poulter as the compassionate man who makes a big mistake. It’s a revenge tale amazingly told.

5Star Wars: The Force Awakens With this seventh chapter in the Star Wars saga, J.J. Abrams and crew have done exactly what they did with Star Trek, and created a fun movie that not only respects the blessed canon of a beloved franchise, but stands on its own as a piece of supreme entertainment. It’s 2015’s most entertaining film, for sure, and a movie that stands up proudly in the realm of Star Wars movies. In many ways, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the best movie in the franchise. I won’t say it’s my personal, sentimental favorite. (I think The Empire Strikes Back still holds that post, but a little more time will tell.) The Force Awakens has solid storytelling, its special effects are first rate, and the performances are, undoubtedly, the best the franchise has ever seen. That’s due in part to Daisy Ridley, an incredible talent who becomes an instant star for the foreseeable future as Rey, a scrappy scavenger on a Tatooine-like desert planet. I don’t think I’m overdoing it by saying she delivers the alltime, all-around best dramatic performance in the Star Wars universe in this role. The film will leave you craving for more, and a good Star Wars craving is a nice thing to have.