Hail, Caesar! anticipation thread (probable spoilers)

Cafe Society
21

I got absolutely zero enjoyment from this movie. The only bit i even smiled about was with the 4 religious leaders - and none of that was really new. Boring.

Wife said she enjoyed some parts.

Don’t think this is a spoiler, but I’ll box this question:

Did Mannix supposedley change his watch at some time. At the beginning the repeatedly shower the hex/octoagon-shaped watch. Then in the middle - especially the scenes w/ the Lockhhed guy, his watch was rectangular. At the end was the many sided watch again.

Seriously, that was the most interesting thing in the movie for me.

22

My wife and I saw this last night. We both agree that it’ll probably take another viewing or two (once it’s on Netflix) to really click. But, outside of O Brother, that’s how most Coen Bros. films have been for me. Lebowski and Fargo came out when I was in high school, so they weren’t nearly as funny to me then as they are now.

23

I agree with those that didn’t quite know what to make of it. I don’t mean it wasn’t an enjoyable film overall, but it really had no cohesion and in terms of plot it was quite a mess. I definitely didn’t get any of the same messages that** RealityChuck **did. Not to say they aren’t there but they are lost on me.

Loved all the individual performances, especially Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton (I almost didn’t recognize her with eyebrows). I have no idea who Alden Ehrenreich is but he was really good. The aqua musical and dancing sailor scene were a delight (damn, that Channing Tatum is talented) and I would recommend this to anyone who likes the Coen Bros. stuff and / or is into old Hollywood. Not for your average bear, IMO.

24

The trailer definitely advertised a different movie.
Even I had an adjustment period of letting go of my expectations and I really do try my best to let a film take me on whatever path the filmmakers have laid out.

It’s really a Day In the Life movie about a Hollywood studio exectutive/fixer. It’s a look at the crazy things he has to deal with on a regular basis and how such absurd situations have become mundane for him (I just mean on the surface of the story, I’m not addressing theme or subtext).

The movie advertised was about the kidnapping of George Clooney’s pompous actor character and the madcap caper of trying to rescue him enlisting the help of the wackiest Hollywood personnel on the Capitol lot.
I enjoyed it. I’ll definitely see it again when it comes to my local second-run discount theater. Upon my second viewing, with my expectations reconfigured, I’ll definitely experience it differently.

I will say that, hands down, the “No Dames” scene was a highlight of the film!

25

The CinemaScore for this film is C-.:eek:

The audience reaction is about as bad as it can get. The generic horror-move-of-the-week can usually rate at least a B.

You just don’t see a C- score for any movie made by folks of this caliber.

I wonder how much of this has to do with the big gulf between audience expectations based on the trailers and what the movie is actually about?

It will be out of theaters very soon, if you want to watch it on the big screen, go now.

The February release, and against The Big Game, says the studio knew what they had.

26

Rotten Tomatoes has it at 79% from the critics, which is passable if unspectacular…

…but it’s down at 48% from audiences.

27

There’s an astonishing amount of screen time devoted to the pastiches – the Channing Tatum dance number, the Esther Williams swimming number, the cowboy song/comedy… I get the feeling the Coens were really more interested in paying tribute to Old Hollywood than putting together a coherent story. (Or they realized they didn’t have a story, and needed padding.)

But I like Old Hollywood and enjoyed what they were putting up there, mostly.

28

In my previous post, I noted how a lot of the “positive” reviews there are of the “It has some okay points but doesn’t really come together.” type. I don’t know why RT categorizes such reviews as positive.

29

The more I think about it and discuss it, the more I like it. Someone on Facebook pointed out that it’s all about God and the need for faith, and how we know the right thing to do. He pointed out that the movie showed that people, when faced with that moral choice, chose the more selfless course.

Saving the dog instead of the money, giving the money to the cause, and staying at the studio instead of making H-Bombs. You can add marrying the guy – a decent human being – instead of going through a legal fiction to hide the pregnancy.

And, again, in order to make sense of the movie, you have to understand that Eddie Mannix is the central character, someone who is having a crisis of faith, with a Satan figure tempting him. I wouldn’t call this the Coens’ best, but it seems better and better the more I think about it.

30

Slight hijack, but I saw a ‘positive’ Fantastic Four RT review, and, curious, clicked: “suffers from a sense the final act is thin and lacking in depth, stakes, action, and reason for existing. The lack of more significant action sequences is a pretty serious flaw … Sue gets repeatedly denied adequate characterization and involvement in the story … One other major flaw in the movie is a lack of adequate emotional connection between all of the characters … Judged as a summer superhero popcorn movie, the failure in terms of action is a big problem. Judged as a story that’s supposed to be about family and teamwork, the failure in terms of relationships is a big problem … it’s not so much a ‘good’ film as an ‘acceptable’ one whose serious flaws hold it back and will leave you dissatisfied”.

If he’d said “but won’t” instead of “and will” – okay, that’s a damn-with-faint-praise. Going the “and will” route? Look, if I ever recommend a restaurant while figuring its serious flaws hold it back and will leave you dissatisfied, I’d fully expect you to set me up on a blind date: introducing me by noting that serious flaws hold me back and will leave her dissatisfied. Really, it’s the least you can do.

31

I saw it last night and agree that the movie is very sly and has a certain reverence (almost) that is very counter to the cynical or brutal clarity of what we’re used to in the other Coens–though a good analog might be O BROTHER (also w/Clooney), which has its share of classic movie homages while also being a parable about faith.

But beyond the (overt, recurring) religious dimensions, I’d say CAESAR more simply evokes

[spoiler]a world where characters who are immersed in artifice–the movie business–are trying to find real connection and meaning in their lives. Mannix is having a crisis of conscience while still trying to be a good faith nurturer and problem-solver. Whitlock, notorious for his benders & carousing, finds a new sense of warmth and acceptance among The Future. DeeAnna is looking for a meaningful relationship with a stand-up guy. Hobie, humble & self-effacing, is doing his best to adapt to a new role that’s been thrust upon him by the studio.

Sure, there are players and back-biters, people looking to exploit or gain a political upper hand. But our central characters are immersed in a landscape where they have to act a part, while still looking for something larger in their real lives, too. Making a Jesus movie (or a silly musical) might be all in a day’s work, but their intention is to entertain. And since they can’t go to the movies for that kind of dream-factory escape or edification, they’re looking elsewhere themselves. [/spoiler]
I found the whole thing quite touching, actually. No, it’s certainly not among their greatest work (a high bar indeed), but it has a lot more going for it and probably suffers enormously by being sold as something (a zany screwball comedy) that it decidedly is not.

32

It was a let-down. The Coen brothers can and have done much better.

33

I saw it and I liked it quite a bit. I think it was a solid 8 of 10. Josh Brolin was excellent and Clooney did a good job in a role designed for Clooney. The cast of professional character actors in the small roles were excellent and some of the extended cameos were really awesome. Particularly Tilda Swinton & Frances McDormand.

34

About Tatum’s character…

…I think the ransom was the writers’ idea. He boarded the sub without the suitcase, and he looked surprised when they gave it to him. I did love that dance number, and it’s exactly the kind of innuendo that would fly over most people’s heads in the '50s.

35

Pepper Mill and I saw it this afternoon – our Valentine’s Day date. Comments:

1.) As stated above, this movie was sold by the trailers as a different movie altogether. As it turns out, the kidnapping is almost an inconsequential part of the film. Looking at its development, the film started out as a completely different idea than even that. We were completely taken by surprise. It wasn’t about the George Clooney character at all, but about Josh Brolin’s Eddie Mannix, who turns out to be a slightly fictionalized version of the real-life Eddie Mannix.

2.) The film seems to be deliberately “unstuck in time”, like A Christmas Story was. It’s nominally set in 1951, but the H-bomb test at Bikini didn’t take place until 1954. The Biblical film they’re filming is supposed to be like Quo Vadis or The Robe, both from the early 1950s, but its subtitle --“A Tale of the Christ” is the same as for Ben-Hur, which is from 1959. More important, the scene with Christ giving water to the slaves from a gourd dipper in “Hail Caesar” is clearly directly lifted from Wyler’s 1959 Ben-Hur.

Other things point to the 1940s or even the 1930s. Scarlett Joihansenn’s character is unmistakably inspired by Esther Williams and her many water ballet pictures, which extended through the 1940s into the early 1950s. Channing Tatum seems to be Gene Kelly, again mainly the 1940s. I’d swear that the bartender in the “No Girls” dance sequence is supposed to be gravel-voiced Eugene Pallette, who stopped making films in 1946, and was bigger in the later thirties and early forties. Who te heck is Ehrenreich’s Hobie Doyle supposed to be? As a singing cowboy he might be Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, but doing his own extensive stunts (and his being a real cowboy initially) suggests Tom Mix, or maybe Yakima Canutt. Those guys cover the 1920s through the 1960s.

When I first caught references to Schmoe and Mai Tai at the beginning of the film, I thought I had caught anachronisms. I thought the film was supposed to be set in the thirties, and both those words were probably from after 1945 (you can argue about this, but I can make a goiod case for the dates), but then I learned it was supposed to be set later.

3.) In any event, they seemed to be more interested in recreating the feel of the ERa of the Studio Movies, without caring too much about exactly when that was. It was interesting to watch (who the hell know Channing Tatum could sing? Or Dance?). Any plot seems to just get in the way of the visuals. Kinda like The Big Lebowski.

36

A few more thoughts:

4.) Some of the writers at the beachhouse “club” looked familiar. I’ve seen pictures of some of the writers from back then, and I suspect that they were deliberately trying to portray them, although I don’t know them well enough to call them out.

5.) Another bit of anachronism – the whole “writers in the Communist Party” thing is definitely more Thirties than Fifties, or even Forties. The Thirties is when a lot of intellectuals joined the Party, during the DEpression when it seemed a possible way out of the economic woes. You could dismiss Stalin’s show-trials as an aberration. By the Fifties, with HUAC and McCarthy, it’d be hard to be so supportive or so relatively open, or for a major actor to be so ignorant and naïve. It just doesn’t ring true for the Fifties

6.) What is it with directors having virtually the same first and last names? Hail Caesar has Ralph Fiennes as Laurence Lorentz, and *Who Framed Roger Rabbit gave us a much-disguised Joel Silver as Raoul J. Raoul. I have a feeling there’s an inside joke here that I’m not seeing. Is there some famous or infamous director with a double name? Or is it an industry joke/standby to use such a double name as a stand-in when you have to give a random director’s name? (As it is, as a physicist, I want to ask Laurence Laurentz how far apart the contractions are)

7.) I have a feeling there are a LOT of inside jokes I’m missing here. iMDB isn’t much help – they don’t list a lot of unfamiliar things on their “trivia” page for this movie.

8.) I didn’t realize that there was a prominent bouncer/fixer surnamed “Mannix” in the 40s and 50s. This certainly must have influenced Richsrd Levinson and William Link when they came up with the 1967-1975 TV series Mannix, about a private eye who got beat up on a regular basis. .

37

Off the top of my head, closest I’ve got is William Wellman: directed the first movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture back in the '20s, and after directing Jimmy Cagney in THE PUBLIC ENEMY and Johnny Weissmuller in TARZAN ESCAPES won an Oscar in the '30s for A STAR IS BORN. and kept earning Oscar nominations in the '40s and '50s in between directing everyone from Ginger Rogers to John Wayne: he’d do a western, he’d do a Navy picture, he’d do a screwball comedy, you name it.

38

Nuclear testing at Bikini began in 1946 with the Able & Baker blasts.

39

Another data point confirming my suspicion: FtGKid2 saw it and thought it was fairly interesting. He hadn’t seen any trailers for it.

I’ve seen the trailers and I don’t think they can be unseen. I’ll have to do some wetware reprogramming before I watch it.

40

But H-bomb was specifically mentioned and that was later. But I doubt the writers cared. The whole time period had an Edward Scissorhands or Pushing Daisies feel of no exact time.