Let’s Homage!
March 30, 2016
Hail, Caesar!
D/W: Ethan and Joel Coen. DP: Roger Deakins. Starring: George Clooney/Josh Brolin/Channing Tatum/Scarlett Johansson/Alden Ehrenreich/Jonah Hill/Tilda Swinton/Ralph Fiennes/Frances McDormand/Alison Pill.
The newest effort from the Coen brothers abandons the dark bleakness of 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis for the bright world of studio era film-making. Even more recently the pair wrote the script for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and continue to executive produce the FX series Fargo based on their original 1996 film. Here Hail, Caesar! is set in the bright Los Angeles sunshine with an undercurrent of communist meetings and production craziness, but lacks any true center. Much like the sprawling city itself.
The film, complete with a Michael Gambon voice-over, follows Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) who is a physical production head at the fictional studio in the 1950s as he deals with an on set crisis. The crisis is the abduction of Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) from his Roman epic set. His ransom is orchestrated by a communist group think that Clooney sits in with while the studio goes up in arms to find him. Within this story is a smaller one of Western success Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) being placed in a costume drama directed by a serious Ralph Fiennes as Lawrence Laurence. Along with various smaller storylines the film is an interweaving series of events housed within the same studio family.
Hail, Ceasar! is enjoyable as a homage to studio era films and the nods to those stars are such fun. Will the average movie goer get them? Probably not, but hearing Hobie ask Carmen Miranda based character Carlotta Valdez about “balancing bananers on her head” makes it worth it. Even Scarlett Johansson’s character of DeaAnna Moran as a rip of famous water ballet star Esther Williams is great though she reuses her Jersey accent from Don Jon. Channing Tatum’s knock on Gene Kelly might make you forget the plot for a minute and as a musical fan I wouldn’t mind seeing Tatum in a dancing film. Tilda Swinton is oddly placed as twin sister gossip columnists, but overall the female characters are limited to their historical archetypes from that era. The standout is clearly Ehrenreich as Hobie, his accent is as thick as butter and his comic timing well played. Clooney is a snooze.
Yet the major problem is that the film feels gimmicky. The story is built so Mannix has an excuse to visit different sets on this lot and nod to the stars of old. Thus the plot runs thin and does not have the scope of the films it pays respect to nor is as memorable character wise as other Coen ventures. The film was shot by veteran Roger Deakins who last year was responsible for Sicario yet with an entirely different tone here is able to give pop to an era Trumbo made silly. However, overall Hail, Casear! lacks cohesion and a center so if you miss the references you might as well miss the film.
Not Another Hitman
October 17, 2015
Sicario (2015).
D: Denis Villeneuve. DP: Roger Deakins. W: Taylor Sheridan. Starring: Emily Blunt/Josh Brolin/Benicio Del Toro/Victor Garber/Jon Bernthal/Daniel Kaluuya/Jeffrey Donovan/Maximiliano Hernández.
As London Film Festival comes to a close this weekend there is still plenty to see out in theaters. Sicario is the next installment in movies about the Mexican/American border cartel crisis, but it’s not what it seems. Rather it follows FBI kidnapping crisis leader Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) as she’s roped into a border crossing mission that has her out of the loop and into the line of fire.
Veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins whose responsible for so many favorites (Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, A Beautiful Mind, Skyfall) is in full command here. Aerial shots and thermal cameras work with long shots to create an aura of surveillance and threat. Yet the character connections are not lost on camera either. Deakins pulls us into Kate’s world, but never relies on extreme close ups to deliver the punch.
Working for the second time together, Deakins and Canadian director Denis Villeneuve are slated to work on the Blade Runner reboot. Villeneuve’s mind cringing film Enemy might make you say WHAT? when it’s over, but it’s better handled than his child snatching who-dun-it Prisoners. Clear in both of these film, as well as Sicario, is good acting. No one in Sicario plays anything over the top, rather disgust and confusion help build suspense. Suspense that is fantastically illuminated by Jóhann Jóhhannsson’s score. He won a Golden Globe last year for scoring The Theory of Everything, but this time the score reverberates through the seats building the most beautiful dread.
Blunt straps on Kate’s glock quite well, she is believable as an FBI buster but with less guts than her role in Edge of Tomorrow. Blunt’s relate-ability doesn’t come across as ordinariness rather she is everyone and herself at the same time. In other words, she is able to encourage the audience to root for her and identify with her, but never loses her singularity. Benicio Del Toro’s sexy-weird-creepy-silent Alejandro grounds the film’s nebulousness giving the violence a grim reaper sheen to it. Daniel Kaluuya is nice as her partner and Jon Bernthal’s small role is well crafted.
Sicario feels fresh because it’s a hitman movie not about the hitman. There are small flaws in the scripts, a few cheats and tricks that you can see coming. In line with the feminism in Hollywood hot topic debate of late it is nice to see a female led action film that brings depth, Blunt continues to make good choices. Overall it’s a solid film built around character rather than action, we shall see what this duo can do with Blade Runner.