Hail Caeser

Hail Caesar

This is probably the most disappointing Coen film I have seen. The movie has a gaggle of A listed stars which fractionalizes the movie since each one has to have their little star turn. The main stars are George Clooney and Josh Brolin. Clooney is the hapless lead in a Roman epic and Brolin is an overwrought studio executive who fixes problems. Clooney resurrects his character in the Coen movie “O Brother Where Art Thou”, who was also dimwitted. His humor here is more physical than verbal. Brolin is also funny running from crisis to crisis. The setting is post war Hollywood with the studio system still pervasive.

The comedy is mostly physical and stretches with slow drama. Some scenes go on too long. One set up has Channing Tatum dancing with a bunch of sailors (very well I may add). They did the entire Busby Berkley dance routine instead of doing a shortened version. There is a tread of a plot weaving the stars together. But it unravels with Tatum boarding a Soviet submarine off the coast of California. This refers to the Red Scare during the period.

Scarlet Johnson is an Ester Williams type with a staccato low class New Jersey accent. She has a separate plot line dealing with an illegitimate child. Her interaction with Jonah Hill lasts about three minutes.

The Coen brothers are paying homage to a by gone Hollywood that millennials, and others, will have difficulty relating to. The movie is self-indulgent, with the Coens resurrecting long dead actor types. An inside joke has a cabal of misguided scene writers exhorting money from the studio; the Coen brothers are writers too.

This is a slight film wasting copious talent. The film’s attempt at farce is lacking. Instead of the theater a better value would be “On Demand”.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill for

Sin City: A Dame to Kill for

Sin City 2 crash and burned at the box office.  A Frank Miller film (author/director) is a male testosterone affair offered as film noir. Sin City 1 and 2 combined animation and live action. The animation tones down the brutal violence. Instead of a spray of blood gushing from the neck on screen it is rendered like white out. Sex is the other main ingredient of this film which always mixes well with violence. Sin City 2 had more nudity than the prior movie; female thank goodness.

Both movies had these elements, so what happened to Sin City 2? I think Sin City 1 was better written, it followed the original graphic novel. For its time it was also unique. The movies are made up of sub stories with their own dedicated caste. I think these sub stories were richer and more intriguing in the first film.  In Sin City 2 there two main sub stories, one with Joseph Gordon –Levitt and the other with Eva Green. Gordon-Levitt’s story was unsophisticated and disappointing. Eva Green’s story went on a bit too long, but it did have some interesting twists and turns but no real wow moments. For most of her story Green was nude with a well-placed shadow on her privates.

There was more brutal violence in Sin City 2, some just random. Sex was graphic and voyeuristic. Without plot context violence and sex become pornographic.

There were more notable actors in Sin City 2. The anchor stars were: Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Powers Boothe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jessica Alba. Other big name stars had cameo roles: Lady Gaga, Christopher Lloyd and Jeremy Piven, etc. Here adding a copious number of stars was more bloating than effective film craft.   The acting was so stylized it was a cliché.

Sequels are tricky. Sin City 3 is doubtful