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

Posted on July 26, 2016 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.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Warcraft Official Trailer (For The Film…Not The Game…I Know, Right!)

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Arleigh

Warcraft was a game on the PC that I played for hours on end. It was the closest thing gamers had to a video game version of the Warhammer Fantasy property. the title had two popular sequels and gave birth to the biggest, most popular and most addictive MMORPG in history. I mean, World of Warcraft, led to couples getting divorces, players getting into real fights outside the game and even getting together in holy matrimony for reals.

So, Hollywood seeing a cash cow when it sees one had been trying to get a live-action film based on the Warcraft property for years. So many different directors had been attached to make it (from Uwe Boll right up to Sam Raimi) but in the end Duncan Jones got the job to bring Azeroth (and Draenor) to life on the big-screen.

With the film still months away, Universal and Legendary Pictures look to start the hype train going by releasing the first official trailer for Warcraft with much fanfare.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #69: Bad Boys (dir by Rick Rosenthal)

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First off, I am not about to review the Michael Bay film where Will Smith and Martin Lawrence shoot people and blow things up. Instead, this Bad Boys is a film from 1983 where Sean Penn doesn’t shoot anyone but that’s mostly because he can’t get his hands on a gun. And, at one point, a radio does blow up. So, perhaps this Bad Boys has more in common with the Michael Bay Bad Boys than I originally realized.

Anyway, Bad Boys is about Mick O’Brien (Sean Penn), who is a 16 year-old criminal from Chicago. One night, when one of his crimes goes wrong, Mick’s best friend (Alan Ruck) is killed and Mick accidentally runs over the brother of rival gang leader, Paco (Esai Morales). Mick is sent to juvenile detention where he and his sociopathic cellmate, Horowitz (Eric Gurry), team up to overthrow the two “leaders” of their block, Viking (Clancy Brown, with scary blonde hair) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush). Meanwhile, Paco is arrested for raping Mick’s girlfriend, JC (Ally Sheedy), and soon finds himself living on the same cell block as Mick.

And it all leads to … violence!

(In the movies, everything leads to violence.)

Bad Boys is one of those films that seems to show up on cable at the most random of times. I’ve never quite understood why because it’s not like Bad Boys is a particularly great film. It’s hard to see anything about this film that would lead a programmer to say, “Let’s schedule 100 airings of Bad Boys!” If anything, it’s the epitome of a good but not that good film. On the one hand, you have to appreciate a film that attempts to take a serious look at both juvenile crime and the true life consequences of tossing every “lawbreaker” into a cell and locking the door. People fetishize the idea of punishing criminals but they rarely consider whether those punishments actually accomplish anything beyond satisfying society’s obsessive need for revenge. (And it’s interesting to note that the problems of 1983 are not that much different from the problems of 2015.) On the other hand, Bad Boys is way too long, heavy-handed, and repetitive. This was one of Sean Penn’s first roles and, much like the film itself, he’s good without being that good. Watching his performance, you get the feeling that James Dean would say, “Nice try.”

However, the film is saved by two actor. First off, there’s Clancy Brown as the stupid but intimidating Viking. With his bad skin, blonde hair, and a permanent snarl on his face, Brown makes Viking into a character who is both ludicrous and scary. And then there’s Eric Gurry as the small and demonic Horowitz. According to his imdb page, Gurry long ago retired from acting but anybody who sees Bad Boys will never forget him.

Embracing the Melodrama #59: At Any Price (dir by Ramin Bahrani)

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With Embracing the Melodrama coming to a close (only two more reviews to go, including this one!), I want to take this opportunity to tell you about a good film from last year that didn’t get quite as much attention as it may have deserved. The Iowa-set At Any Price is a look at greed, family secrets, and even murder in rural America. It’s not a perfect film but it features a perfect lead performance from Dennis Quaid and it’s worth taking a chance on.

Dennis Quaid plays Henry Whipple, an Iowa farmer who also works as a sales representative for the Liberty Seed Company. Henry sells genetically modified seeds and one thing that this film gets absolutely right is just how cut-throat the seed business truly is in the heartland. Henry is very proud to be the top seed salesman in the county, with only Jim Johnson (Clancy Brown) coming close to matching him. The film’s best scenes are the ones that follow Henry as he travels along his route, selling seeds, giving away candy bars, and always flashing his wide grin. It’s only as the film progresses that we start to notice how desperate that grin really is. Henry, we soon realize, is motivated mainly by greed and fear. He’s the type of farmer who will go to a stranger’s funeral just to try to buy the deceased’s land. Henry is also the type of guy who is willing to cut ethical corners to sell seeds as well. As far as Henry is concerned, he’s only doing what he has to do to make sure that he has a successful business to pass on to his family.

Henry is all about his family and, while that may be his redemption, it’s also his family’s curse because Henry is something of a control freak. Henry’s loyal wife (Kim Dickens) turns a blind eye to Henry’s mistress (Heather Graham). Meanwhile, his oldest son has fled Iowa and moved down to South America. Henry’s remaining son, Dean (Zac Efron), is more interested in pursuing a career in NASCAR than on the family farm. Eventually, as the result of a shocking and almost random act of violence, Dean is forced to pick his future.

With both Neighbors and That Awkward Moment, Zac Efron has been reinventing himself as a skilled comedic actor. Before that, however, he appeared in a series of movies that were meant to show his dramatic range, films like The Paperboy, Parkland, and this one. These films ranged in quality from terrible to good but, in all of them, Zac Efron felt miscast. Efron is the weak link in At Any Price. Dean is supposed to be a character driven by both anger and a need to win (at any price — we have a title!) but when we look at Efron’s pretty blue eyes, we’re left with the impression that there’s not much going on behind them.

Far more effective is Dennis Quaid. Quaid is so likable in the role that it takes a while to realize that Henry is essentially a monster. And yet, you never totally lose your sympathy for him. He has his own demons, demons that he’s passing down to his son. The power of Quaid’s performance is that you can tell he knows he’s wrong but he just can’t stop himself.

At Any Price is a good farmland melodrama, full of beautiful landscapes and carefully observed details. It’s not a perfect film but it is one worth watching for anyone who is wondering whatever happened to the American dream.

Trailer: Homefront (Official)

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Arleigh

Lisa Marie posted earlier that 2013 was the Year of Franco. She may just be right since there’s another film coming out this year that has him starring.

Homefront has James Franco going mano y mano with another name who seems to be in at least a couple films every year for the past ten years. It’s Statham vs. Franco and while this awkward yet awesome match-up looks like it should be something that went Direct-to-Video there’s a weird vibe around the trailer that looks like it’s the better remake of Peckinpan’s Straw Dogs. We even have Kate Bosworth all up in this film though she’s definitely looking like she may have went a tad bit too method in portraying a meth-head mother.

The cast alone tells me that I must see this when it comes out: Statham, Franco, Bosworth, Winona Ryder, Clancy Brown, Vince D’Onofrio, Frank Grillo and Mischa Barton. One could almost see “guilty pleasure” waving in the background.

So, if there’s nothing else to say about Homefront other than Statham going all Transporter on a meth-dealing biker gang from the bayou it’s the fact that this film will be Hollywood’s birthday gift to me when it comes out on November 27, 2013. Just in time for my birthday.

Franco may have just met his match in Statham.

Review: The Shawshank Redemption (dir. by Frank Darabont)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Arleigh

“Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” — Andy Dufresne

1994 was the year that men finally got their version of Fried Green Tomatoes and Beaches. We men we’re always perplexed why so many women liked those two films. Even when it was explained to us that the film was about the bond of sisterhood between female friends and how the march of time could never break it we were still scratching out heads. In comes Frank Darabont’s film adaptation of the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

Using a script written by Darabont himself, the film just takes the latter half of the novella’s title and focuses most of the film’s story on the relationship between the lead character of Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) who gets sent to Shawshank Penitentiary for the crime of killing his wife and her lover and that of another inmate played by Morgan Freeman. The film doesn’t try to prove that Andy is innocent even though we hear him tell it to the convicts he ends up hanging around that he is. The relationship between Andy and Red becomes a great example of the very same bond of sisterhood, but this time a brotherhood who are stuck in a situation where their freedom has been taken away and hope itself becomes a rare and dangerous commodity.

Darabont has always been a filmmaker known for his love of Stephen King stories and has adapted several more since The Shawshank Redemption, but it would be this film which has become his signature work. It’s a film that’s almost elegiac in its pacing yet with hints of hope threaded in-between scenes of men clinging to sanity and normalcy in a place that looks to break them down and make them less human. It’s nothing new to see prison guards abusive towards inmates in films set in prisons, but in this film these scenes of abuse have a banality to them that shows how even the hardened criminal lives and breathes upon the mercy and generosity provided by the very people who were suppose to rehabilitate them.

While the film’s pacing could be called slow by some it does allow for the characters in the film, from the leads played by Robbins and Freeman to the large supporting cast to become fully formed characters. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Clancy Brown playing the sadistic Capt. Byron Hadley to James Whitmore as Brooks Hatlen the inmate who has spent most of his life in Shawshank and whose sudden parole begins one of the most heartbreaking sequences in the film. The whole cast did a great job in whatever role they had been chosen to play. Freeman and Robbins as Red and Andy have a chemistry together on-screen that makes their fraternal love for each other very believable that the final scenes in the film doesn’t feel too melodramatic or overly sentimental.

The Shawshank Redemption was a film that lost out to Forrest Gump for Best Picture, but was a film that would’ve been very deserving if it had won the top prize at the Academy Awards. It was a film that spoke of hope even at the most degrading setting and how it’s the very concept of hope and brotherhood that allows for those not free to have a sense of freedom and camaraderie. Darabont’s first feature-length film remains his best work to date and one of the best Stephen King adaptations which is a rarity considering how many of his stories have been adapted. So, while the fairer sex may have their Fried Green Tomatoes, Beaches and the like, we men will have ours in the fine film we call The Shawshank Redemption.

Cowboys & Aliens: Trailer 2

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Arleigh

Last night saw the release of the latest (most likely the final) trailer for Jon Favreau’s sci-fi and western mash-up called Cowboys & Aliens.

There’s some new scenes shown in this latest trailer some of which were first shown earlier this month at WonderCon 2011. There’s less of the comedic aspect shown in the past trailers. The usage of Audioslave’s “Show Me How To Live” was a nice touch.

There’s not much else to say other than the film sold me fully at WonderCon 2011 so this latest trailer is just icing on the cake. With three more months to go before it finally sees it’s release there’s going to be a lot of hype surrounding this film and it better live up to it.

Cowboys & Aliens is still set for a July 29, 2011 release.

ThunderCats: WonderCon Trailer

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Arleigh

Lo, there do I see my youth.

Lo, there do I see my past.

And the joys and happiness of childhood.

Lo, there do I see the line of cartoons

Back to the beginning.

Lo, do they call to me.

They bid me to tune into Cartoon Network

this month of July…

Where the new ThunderCats will live once again.

That’s right. You heard me. Anyone who grew up in the 80’s know the power of the word: ThunderCats.

We know the of the Sword of Omens. The doomed planet of Thundera and, of course, the refuge that will be Third Earth. We know of Mumm-Ra the Everliving. We know of the Mutants, the Lunataks and Hammerhand and his Berserkers who harry our feline heroes.

We know of the Ro-Bear Berbils (and what kid didn’t want their very own Ro-Bear Berbil). We know of Hachiman, the Warrior Maidens, the Wollos, the Bolkens and the Tabbuts. We know of other Third Earth allies such as The League of Third Earth, Mumm-Rana, Mandora the Evil-Chaser, Sondora and Hook Mountains’ Snowman.

So, this coming July on Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers Animation in conjunction with Japanese animation house, Studio 4.C, will reboot and bring back one of the gloriest of glories of my youth. This new ThunderCats animated series looks to bring in the nostalgic older fans who remember the original series with differing levels of fondness. It also looks to introduce the kids of these parents to a piece of their parent’s childhood, but with new millenium sheen.

The trailer released during WonderCon 2011 says it all. This series looks to have epic battles between the ThunderCats and the Mutants. A mash-up of technology and magic. It also has Cheetarah, now with a new, more modern hairstyle instead of the 80’s big-hair style she had in the original series. I must wonder if the boys today will wonder with awe when they see Cheetarah in action for the first time the way their fathers did 20 or more years ago. We shall find out in three months.

Thunder!

ThunderCats! HO!

Cowboys & Aliens (Super Bowl TV Spot)

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Arleigh

Super Bowl XLV hasn’t even started and the very first summer blockbuster tv spot has already been released by its producers. While it still hasn’t premiered on tv it has already aired on the internet as Jon Favreau and crew continues to build up the hype the film got from its panel at 2010’s San Diego Comic-Con.

The tv spot that will air during the game is only half a minute long, but during that small time frame we see a lot more action with clear glimpses of the alien machines/spacecrafts that will be doing some abducting and probing in the Old West.

If this film end ups being as fun as the original Men In Black then I’m there. But part of me fears that it could turn out to be something like Wild, Wild West which would definitely make it a major fail. Here’s to hoping it’s more like the former and not the latter when it comes out on July 29, 2011.

Cowboys & Aliens Teaser Trailer

Posted on November 20, 2010 by Arleigh

Who would’ve thought that a comic book named Cowboys & Aliens will end up being one of the most anticipated tentpole films for the Summer of 2011. It’s a fun little book from Platinum Studios created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley with the artwork done by one Luciano Lima. The premise of the comic book is literally about cowboys and aliens. With the latter attempting to enslave humanity during the 1870’s and starting with the Wild West. In their plans for world conquest are a band of cowboys and Indians who band together despite their many conflicts and issues to combat a shared and greater threat.

The film was announced prior to the release of Favreau’s Iron Man 2 and was a surprising one. Many insiders thought he was a shoo-in to helm the planned Avengers film for Marvel, but instead he chose this project instead.

To say that Cowboys & Aliens steamrolled into production with so many heavyweights behind it would be an understatement. Favreau was already in the director’s chair and producing the project behind the scenes were giants of the industry like Steven Spielberg, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. The cast roped in for the film was also quite impressive with Daniel Craig taking on the lead role with Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Clancy Brown, Keith Carridine, Walton Goggins and Paul Dano supporting Craig.

The very first teaser trailer has been released and could be seen above. While the trailer only shows only a little bit it does confirm that it will have cowboys and, from the brief glancing images, aliens. Cowboys & Aliens has a tentative release date of July 29, 2011 and joins other comic book-based films for that summer like Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern.

It will be interesting to see if Favreau keeps the bulk of the books storyline in the film or will he just loosely base the story on the books. One thing for sure, he and his crew have a tall order to try and tell this story and do it well enough that it stands out amongst the many comic book blockbusters and sequels set to appear in the same season. This film could be a real fun, action-adventure or it could easily turn into the second coming of Wild, Wild West. Here’s to hoping it’s the former and not the latter.