Hail, Caesar!

Here's the fist thoughts on a year of cinema. I've signed up for a year long pass at the Odeon which basically lets me go to the cinema as much as I want, so I figure I'll kept notes and thought on what I've seen during the year (will be fun for me to least to look back on)

So up first is the Coen brothers' "Hail, Ceaser!".

The film follows a fictionalised version of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) a notorious 'Head of Production' aka fixer for MGM whose job was to kept the contracted stars in line and out of the papers. Here we have trying to track down a kidnapped star amongst other things.

It's packed with a great cast including George Clooney as the kidnapped Kirk Douglas style star, Scarlett Johannsson a aquatic pictures star who's not as innocent as her reputation, Channing Tatum a musical performer, Johan Hill, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton and more, The problem is they all feel underused giving the impression that a lot of material must of have been left on the cutting room floor.

Johannsson's story in particular feel's truncated and like it was originally intended to be a bigger part of the film. Indeed one of Mannix's most notable (and nasty) stories concerned having a female star "adopt" her own baby to hide the shame of single motherhood, a story clearly the basis for this part of the film.

It's only really Brolin's Mannix that has much screen time out of the case and I'd say he's not given much interesting to do beyond the centre of swirling almost farce. The one aspect that gives a bit of insight into Mannix is brace of scenes of him considering a new job offer.

Overall the film is something which never quite gets going, for it's whole run time it feels like it's going to start picking up speed but never quite does. If it had the energy of the likes of "Raising Arizona" I think it would have worked much better. There are strange choices like the pause to show a song & dance number being filmed for of the fictional films in full with no clear indication why. It just slows things down.

It illustrates the issues here, some scenes really work. Fiennes' director struggling getting a rodeo star newly assigned to his film to get the lines right. The 'study group' of Communists. (The old school Hollywood studio as analogy for the evils of capitalism appealed to the sociologist and film nerd in me!) A visit to a professional legal stand-in.

But amongst these are scenes that drift like the fore mentioned song and dance, scenes the feel like they've been dropped in from a more manic film (those with Tilda Swinton's duel cameo) or Mannix speaking with Christopher Lambert's director which seems to fill no purpose.

Being the Coens there is meticulous attention paid to details such as the period setting, the difference aspect ratios used for each of the different faux films so they appear as they would have in their day.

Overall it's largely enjoyable but very much a lesser effort from the Coen brothers. The good news is last time they made a farce that didn't quite work with "Burn After Reading" the came back with "A Serious Man" and "True Grit"