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All hail HAIL, CAESAR!

05 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

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Alden Ehrenreich, Barton Fink, Channing Tatum, Coen Bros., Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Hail Caesar!, Josh Brolin, Ralph Fiennes, Roger Deakins, Scarlet Johansson

Hail, Caesar!

The last time Joel and Ethan Coen visited vintage Hollywood, it was the 1940s and John Turturro was the Clifford Odets-like Barton Fink (1991), who finds his talent, sanity, and very life threatened by a diabolical, soulless town and industry. The siblings’ strike a more buoyant tone with their return to Tinseltown’s Golden Age, Hail, Caesar!, set in the 1950s during the fading days of the studio era. Cheeky, exuberant, and salacious, this is a behind-the-scenes comic fable that allows the Coen Bros. to experiment with numerous styles while spinning several stories seemingly inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon or maybe a tattered, yellowing cache of Confidential magazines.

Josh Brolin stars as Eddie Mannix, guilt-ridden Catholic, head of production at Capitol Pictures, and designated company fixer when scandal rears its head. Putting out fires is what he does best and with the studio about to be consumed by flames, he is in for a busy 24 hours: Production on the titular Bible story (subtitled “A Tale of the Christ” a la Ben-Hur) screeches to a halt when leading man Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) disappears from set. Musical stars DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) and Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) have potentially career-killing skeletons rattling around in their closets. Effete director Laurence Lorenz (Ralph Fiennes) is none too happy that congenial, but dimwitted singing cowboy star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) has been thrust upon his sophisticated, English drawing-room romance despite the boy’s disastrous accent and inability to use his words. If that weren’t enough, a cadre of Communist writers (played by a group of ace character actors including Fisher Stevens, Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz, and Fred Melamed) are putting the squeeze on the studio and twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton) are circling like sharks sensing chum in the water.

The Coens and their cast are clearly having a blast as the brothers pay homage to a Hollywood that hasn’t existed in well over half a century, capturing the feel of a big studio’s back lot when the place was still a company town. The riffs on various genres—Biblical epic, oater, and Esther Williams-style swim spectacular, among them—are spectacular. The highlight is Tatum’s big dance number, taking the lead as one of a gang of sailors in a production number that wouldn’t be out of place in a Gene Kelly musical—well, except for the homoerotic spin on it. The Coens clearly know their classics and what makes them tick.

The acting is superb, particularly from Brolin as long-suffering master juggler Mannix; Johansson as brassy screen siren DeeAnna; Ehrenreich as sweet, thick, and sincere Hobie; and in a delicious cameo, Frances McDormand as the studio’s no-nonsense editor CC Calhoun. Production design and costuming are superb, reflecting the glamor of that bygone era. The Coens’ longtime collaborator, cinematographer Roger Deakins, is back in the fold after a nearly 10-year absence and his compositions and gorgeous lensing add yet another layer of gloss to the film.

Hail, Caesar! Is a glorious piece of work. The Coens are firing on all cylinders in their recreation of Hollywood as it never quite was. How this will play to a wide, general audience is a question—is it a little too inside baseball for its own good? But for anyone who loves classic Hollywood and those willing to follow the siblings down whatever twisted path they forge, the movie is pure delight, comic gold to brighten up a dreary winter.—Pam Grady

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GANGSTER SQUAD: Style and Spatter

11 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

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Anthony Mackie, Emma Stone, Gangster Squad, Giovanni Ribisi, Josh Brolin, Michael Pena, Nick Nolte, Robert Patrick, Ruben Fleischer, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn

GANGSTER SQUADGangster Squad gets points for style. It looks great in its depiction of postwar Los Angeles as a sleek, glamorous snake pit of crime and sin, never more so than when the camera lingers on Ryan Gosling’s Jerry Wooters, a cheerfully cynical, impeccably tailored lounge lizard of a police detective, a man who spends his off hours soaking up nightclub ambiance. Too bad that more thought went into costume design, art direction and recreating landmarks of the era than into Will Beall’s shallow and often ludicrous adaptation of Paul Lieberman’s “Tales from the Gangster Squad,” a 2008 Los Angeles Times true-crime series.

At least Gangster Squad gets the players’ names right, but very little else, as it reduces an irresistible saga of crime and punishment to blood-spattered fantasy. By this film’s reckoning, World War II combat veterans have returned so damaged by their experience that – whether cop or criminal – they are good for little else than killing people (it is Josh Brolin as Gangster Squad head Sgt. John O’Mara who puts forth that absurd theory), corruption in Los Angeles is but a brief 1940s phenomenon (oh really?), and gangster Mickey Cohen – the mob kingpin Sean Penn plays with such rage that he often appears to be close to stroking out – is so out of control that he is as apt to kill his own people as his enemies. It is also a movie that rewrites history purely to amp up the level of brutality.

Working with a property set in a time period during which film noir flowered, an era that novelist James Ellroy has claimed as his own, director Ruben Fleischer has a strong grasp of the period. Again, this is a movie that looks good. Perhaps he hoped that with enough outsized violence and a stellar enough cast – that in addition to Gosling, Brolin and Penn, includes Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Michael Pena, Robert Patrick, Giovanni Ribisi, and Anthony Mackie – he could muscle through the deficiencies in the script. No dice. Like so many of the movie’s characters and nameless extras, Gangster Squad is dead on arrival, the victim of ludicrous plotting, rice-paper-thin characters and often pointless bloodshed.

If you must get your Mickey Cohen fix – and why not? The real guy was a fascinating character – skip Gangster Squad. Instead, watch L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson’s seductive 1997 Ellroy adaptation that casts Paul Guilfoyle as the notorious mobster or Barry Levinson’s stylish, James Toback-penned 1991 crime drama Bugsy in which Harvey Keitel steps into Cohen’s shoes in a bravura, Oscar-nominated performance. Or rent The Racket, a 1951 noir starring Robert Mitchum as a kind of one-man gangster squad, one of the few honest cops on a corrupt force, who squares off against mob boss Robert Ryan, a psychopath in the same mold as Penn’s Cohen (albeit one who appears to have a better handle on his blood pressure). Skipping Gangster Squad does mean missing Gosling swanning about in his exquisite threads (he does wear clothes well), but it also means missing an empty exercise in cutthroat style. – Pam Grady

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