Author Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman

Guilty Pleasure No. 31: Hail, Caesar! (dir by the Coen Brothers)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometimes, I wonder if I was the only filmgoer who actually enjoyed Hail, Caesar! when it was released in February.

Oh, don’t met wrong.  I know that I’m being a bit overdramatic when I say that.  It got some good reviews from the critics, though the praise was rather muted when compared to the reviews that traditionally greet the latest film from the Coen Brothers.  I know more than a few people who have agreed with me that Hail, Caesar! was an entertaining lark of a film.

But I know a lot more people who absolutely hated Hail, Caesar!  Of course, no film is going to please everyone and the Coen Brothers have always had a tendency to attempt to deliberately alienate their audience.  But what has always struck me is the fact that the people who disliked Hail, Caesar seem to really, really dislike it.  Talk to them and you get the feeling that they view Hail, Caesar as almost being some sort of a crime against both humanity and cinema.

Taking place in a stylized Hollywood in 1951, Hail, Caesar! tells the story of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin).  Eddie is a shadowy figure.  As head of production at Capitol Pictures, Eddie’s job is to keep the “bad” behavior of the stars from getting out into the press.  (The press is represented by Tilda Swinton who, in a typical Coen Brothers twist, plays twin sisters who are rival gossip columnists.  If the thought of that makes you smile, you are potentially a part of the right audience for Hail Caesar.  If it makes you roll your eyes, you should probably avoid the film.)  Eddie is the most powerful man in Hollywood and he will do anything to protect the image of the American film industry.  He will lie.  He will cheat.  He will threaten.  He is so ruthless and so good at his job that even Lockheed Martin is trying to hire him away from Capitol.  And yet, at the same time, Eddie is also a family man and a Catholic who is so devout that he goes to confession on a nearly hourly basis.

(For all you non-Catholics out there, Pope Francis only goes to confession twice a month.)

Hail, Caesar! follows Eddie as he deals with a series of potential problems.  Temperamental director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is upset because he’s been forced to cast Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich, giving the film’s best performance), a good-natured but inarticulate cowboy star, in his sophisticated comedy.  Synchronized swimmer DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansoon) is not only pregnant but unmarried as well!  (It’s the 50s, remember.)

However, the biggest crisis is that Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) has vanished from the set of his latest film. A mysterious group known as The Future has taken credit for kidnapping him.  It’s not really much of a spoiler to reveal that The Future is a cell of communist scriptwriters and they are determined to convert the rather dumb Baird to the struggle.  As opposed to most films about Hollywood in the 50s, the communist screenwriters are portrayed as being a bunch of self-righteous and rather cowardly nags, the majority of whom spend more time debating minutiae than actually trying to the overthrow capitalism.  In many ways, Hail, Caesar is the anti-Trumbo.

As you might guess from the plot description, there’s a lot going on in Hail, Caesar but none of it really adds up too much.  Nor is it supposed to.  We’re encouraged to laugh at these frantic characters, as opposed to sympathize with them.  Eddie Mannix and Hobie Doyle both emerge as heroes because they’re the only characters who remain calm and confident, regardless of what strangeness is happening onscreen.  Eddie may be ruthless, the film tells us, but at least he gets results.  Hobie may not be the smartest or most talented guy in Hollywood, we are told, but at least he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than who he is.

Hail, Caesar! is a bit of a lark, a celebration of style over substance.  As far as Coen Brother films go, Hail, Caesar has more in common with Burn After Reading than No Country For Old Men.  The film is largely an inside joke aimed at people who know the history of Hollywood, which is perhaps why some viewers reacted so negatively.  Inside jokes are fun when you’re in on the joke.  When you’re not in on it, though, they’re just annoying.

As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed Hail, Caesar!  It may not be the Coens at their best but it’s a lot of fun and it appealed me as both a history nerd and a lover of old movies.  The best parts of Hail, Caesar! are the scenes that parody the largely forgotten, big-budget studio productions of the 1950s.  This is the rare film that acknowledges that not every film made before the 1960s was a masterpiece.  The Coens love movies but that doesn’t keep them from getting a little bit snarky.  For example, check out this production number featuring Channing Tatum:

Is Hail, Caesar self-indulgent?

Yes.

Is it largely an inside joke?

Yes.

Did I absolutely adore it?

You better believe I did.

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Previous Guilty Pleasures

  1. Half-Baked
  2. Save The Last Dance
  3. Every Rose Has Its Thorns
  4. The Jeremy Kyle Show
  5. Invasion USA
  6. The Golden Child
  7. Final Destination 2
  8. Paparazzi
  9. The Principal
  10. The Substitute
  11. Terror In The Family
  12. Pandorum
  13. Lambada
  14. Fear
  15. Cocktail
  16. Keep Off The Grass
  17. Girls, Girls, Girls
  18. Class
  19. Tart
  20. King Kong vs. Godzilla
  21. Hawk the Slayer
  22. Battle Beyond the Stars
  23. Meridian
  24. Walk of Shame
  25. From Justin To Kelly
  26. Project Greenlight
  27. Sex Decoy: Love Stings
  28. Swimfan
  29. On the Line
  30. Wolfen

Film Review: The Secret Life of Pets (dir by Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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If you own a pet, then you know the experience of wondering what they do all day while your away from the house.  My sister Erin and I own a black cat named Doc.  When I leave the house in the morning, he’s usually sleeping on the couch.  When I come back home 8 hours later, he’s usually still there.

“Doc,” I’ll say, “didn’t you do anything while I was gone!?”

“Meh,” Doc will reply, before getting up, stretching, and then hopping off the couch.  He’ll then lead me into the kitchen and demand that I feed him.  Once he’s been fed, he’ll hop back up on the couch, curl up, and wait for Erin to come home.

Now, personally, I think that’s all an act.  There’s no way that any living creature could spend 8 hours doing nothing.  My theory is that Doc spends the day patrolling the house, taunting the dogs next door, and watching old movies on TCM.  But, until I learn to speak his language (because he has shown next to no interest in learning how to speak English), I will never be able to talk about classic Hollywood filmmaking with him.  And that’s a tragedy.

The new animated film, The Secret Life of Pets, shows us what pets do when their owners aren’t around.  (Or, at the very least, it shows what a small group of animals in Manhattan do.)  Some pets party.  Some hunt. A lost guinea pig named Norman (voiced by the film’s director,Chris Renaud) wanders through the heating ducts and tries to find his way home.  Chloe (voiced by Lake Bell), a Tabby cat, lays about her apartment and talks about how apathetic she is.

Meanwhile, a terrier named Max (Louis C.K.) spends all of his time eagerly waiting for his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper), to come home.  Max is very proud of the fact that he and Katie are best friends.  His life revolves around her, so you can imagine his surprise when Katie comes home with a new dog.  Duke (Eric Stonestreet) is a gigantic and shaggy mongrel.  Even though Katie says that Duke is now a part of the family, Max takes an immediate dislike to him.  When Duke’s attempts to be friendly are ignored, he responds by turning into a bully.

(In Duke’s defense, he has just gotten out of the pound.  Before he was captured, he was owned by a kindly old man but, one day, Duke got out of the house and got lost.  When you consider what Duke has suffered, you can’t help but feel that he has the right to be a little bit grouchy.)

After Max and Duke both get lost while being taken for a walk, Max decides to help Duke get back to his old home.  Meanwhile, under the leadership of Gidget (Jenny Slate), a Pomeranian who has a crush on Max, all of the other pets try to track down their friend and help him return home before he’s captured by animal control.

And, then there’s the revolutionaries.  Living in the sewers, a group of former pets are plotting to overthrow their former owners.  They are being led by a bunny named Snowball, who is not only a sociopath but also sounds exactly like Kevin Hart.

Anyway, The Secret Life of Pets is a cute film.  It never quite escapes the shadow of Toy Story 3 (which it frequently resembles) but it’s genuinely sweet and Louis C.K. does such a good job voicing Max that even a cat person like me couldn’t help but fall in love with that neurotic little dog.  There are a few jokes that don’t quite work (To cite just one example, the film introduces a hawk voiced by Albert Brooks and then fails to really do anything with the character) but you really can’t go wrong with talking animals.  The Secret Life of Pets is a cute little crowd pleaser.  It might not make you think in the way that a great Pixar film can make you think but it will definitely make you laugh and leave you feeling good.

It might make you cry, too!  There’s a montage of various owners coming home and being greeted by their pets and it caused my mismatched eyes to tear up because it was just so sweet!

I think I’m going to go give Doc a hug now…

Let’s Talk About Dam Sharks!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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Last night, SyFy’s Shark Week continued with the premiere of Dam Sharks!

I watched it with my friends, the Snarkalecs, and we had a damn good time.  Seriously, Dam Sharks is damn fun, damn entertaining, damn good, damn funny, damn gory, and pretty damn enjoyable.  I’m damn glad we watched it, dammit!

I’m sure that we’ve all wondered what would happen if a bunch of sharks suddenly showed up in a river.  Well, Dam Sharks provides us with an answer!  Apparently, they would not only eat every human being that they came across but they would also use the left-over body parts to construct dams.

(Needless to say, by building their own dams, the sharks would also end up putting a lot of beavers out of work.  If you’re wondering what happens when a beaver has nothing to constructive to devote itself to, I suggest checking out a film called Zombeavers.)

Now, if you’re asking yourself why a bunch of sharks would show up in a river and start building a dam out of human body parts … well, that means you’re not approaching this film correctly.  Why it’s happening really isn’t that important.  Blame it on global warming, if you must.  Blame it on the military.  Blame it on Big Evil Corporation.  Blame it on whoever you want.  The why is not important.  What important is that, in this film, it’s happening.  Sharks are in the river and they’re making dams.  As my favorite character, Carl the anti-government survivalist (played by Robert Craighead), put it whenever anyone spent too much time wondering why the sharks were in the river, “It’s a long story.”

In fact, it’s such a long story that the film doesn’t have time to dwell on it.  Especially not when so many people are hanging out around that shark-infested river…

Like many SyFy films, Dam Sharks borrows its structure from the disaster film genre.  We meet various groups of people, we watch as they’re forced to deal with a sudden crisis (in this case, dam-building sharks), and we try to guess who will die and who will survive.

Now, of course, some of the people are obviously doomed.  The guy in the boat who fishes with a gigantic hook that’s at the end of a chain?  Oh, he’s so obviously dead.  The hipsters trying to zipline over the river?  No way they’re going to make it.  The girl who strips down to her underwear so that she can dive off a rock?  She’s not even going to reach the water before a shark gets her.  That’s just the way it goes.

But others, we’re not so sure about.  Much like Atomic Shark, Dam Sharks deserves a lot of credit for keeping the audience off-balance.  There are a few characters who you assume will never die because they’re either too likeable or too funny.  But, as we quickly learn, sharks don’t care if you’re funny or likable.  They just want to eat you and add your leg to the dam.

As I mentioned earlier, my favorite character was Carl.  He disliked almost everyone and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it.  However, Carl was also the only character who I personally would want to help me if I found myself being attacked by river sharks.  He knew what he was doing.  Carl spends most of the movie with Kate (Jessica Blackmore) and, working together, they are a shark’s worst nightmare.  Good for them.

Of course, Carl and Kate aren’t the only ones on the river.  Tanner (Jason London) is a callous CEO, the type of boss who thinks that he’s the next Steve Jobs and simply can’t understand why nobody likes him.  Tanner has ordered several of his employees to spend the weekend at the river.  Over the course of the day, they will play paintball, they will practice archery, and they will take a raft out onto the river.  Since you really can’t blame sharks for acting like sharks, Tanner is the closest thing that Dam Sharks has to an actual villain.  Jason London, who was so good in Zombie Shark, is properly loathsome as the buffoonish Tanner.

As for Tanner’s employees, they’re a mixed bunch of characters.  Some of them will survive the weekend.  Quite a few of them most definitely will not.  From the start, it’s obvious that Pullman (Matt Mercer) and Stella (Neka Zang) are the two that we’re supposed to care about the most.  Both Mercer and Zang are well-selected for their roles.  When they sit on a rock and hide out from the paintball game, their conversation briefly makes Dam Sharks about something deeper than just damn sharks.  Mercer is especially effective when he talks about how little personal fulfillment he gets out of his job.  You truly feel bad for him.

But really, the entire film is well-cast.  From the stars to the most minor of characters, everyone gets a chance to make an impression.  I have to give special mention to Eric Paul Erickson, who turned the buffoonish Kenny into a rather sweet and likable character.  Among the actors playing the rest of Tanner’s employees, Kabby Borders, Saxon James, and Francis Gonzalez are especially well-cast and likable.  Though the film itself encourages you not to take any of it too seriously, you still find yourself hoping that they all manage to survive.

If you’re a fan of SyFy movies, you’ll love Dam Sharks!  And if you don’t like SyFy movies — well, that’s just a damn shame.

Dona and Carl searching for dam sharks.

Kate and Carl searching for dam sharks.

(In an earlier version of this post, I accidentally misidentified both the character of Kate and the actress who played her.  I apologize for the error! — LMB)

Dance Scenes That I Love: Carla Gugino and Oscar Isaac in Sucker Punch!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, let’s be honest.

Times are dark.

People are angry.

The future, we are told, is bleak.

It’s easy to get down and feel sad and defeated.

But fear not!  I’m here to cheer you up, every night this week!  From today until next Sunday, I will be sharing some of my favorite dance scenes!

Let’s start things off with this deleted scene from the 2011 film, Sucker Punch!

A Blast From The Past: Capitalism

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’re a long time reader of the site, you may know that I occasionally enjoy tracking down old educational films.  If nothing else, they’re good time capsules and you know how much I love history.  And, since we’re in the middle of an election year and people are tossing around all sorts of labels and claims about history, I figured why not share something from the past?

Capitalism is from 1948 and it features a group of teenagers (who apparently have their own radio talk show) sitting around and debating whether or not capitalism is a good thing or a bad thing.  After spending a long amount of time debating whether or not local storekeeper Mr. Brown is a businessmen or a parasite, the teenagers (who all appear to be in their mid-20s) start their show and immediately start to visualize various adults giving their opinion on capitalism.  The teenagers also remind us that “this is your forum.  What is capitalism?”

Since the film is from 1948, you can probably guess that the message of this film should not be mistaken for the message of Michael Moore’s documentary of the same name.

As I watched Capitalism, I couldn’t help but wonder where those teenagers were now.  I imagine that some of them are probably dead but undoubtedly, there’s a few who are still alive and they’re probably still freaking out over their grandchildren voting for Bernie Sanders.

“Why, I remember when I used to host a radio forum and me and my high school peers very politely discussed this very subject!”

“Whatever, grandpa.  Have you seen my Che Guevara shirt?”

Who knows?

I just hope that Mr. Brown eventually made enough money to retire some place nice.  Yes, he may have charged too much but he had the right to make a living, dammit!