Coen Brothers fans will recognize the backdrop of “Hail, Caesar!,” the new screwball comedy from the prolific siblings. Fifteen years ago they doomed screenwriter Barton Fink (John Turturro) to a hellish stint fighting writer’s block at Capitol Studios. This time around the fictional studio is the setting for one day in the life of a Hollywood fixer.
James Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, a shady figure from Tinseltown’s Golden Age. Loosely based on the legendary MGM “producer” of the same name, he solves star’s problems, using his influence to keep some of the most notorious crimes and scandals on the LAPD blotter under wraps. He is, an associate says, a babysitter to “oddballs and misfits.”
As Capitol’s “Head of Physical Production” he’s about to have the busiest day of his career when an up-and-coming starlet is caught in a compromising “French postcard situation” while his leading lady, DeeAnna Moran’s (an Esther Williams-esque Scarlett Johansson), is about to have an out-of-wedlock baby. “is there any way she can adopt her own child?” he wonders.
If that wasn’t enough Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the studio’s biggest star, is drugged and kidnapped from the set of his sword-and-sandal epic Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ. “This is bad!” exclaims actor Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich). “Bad for movie stars everywhere.”
The action revolves around Brolin’s character, but this is truly an ensemble piece made up of many moving parts. Maybe too many.
“Hail, Caesar!” is a buoyant movie and when it is firing on all cylinders it can only be described as delightful. Clooney’s stagey reaction to meeting Jesus in the movie-within-the-movie—“Squint against the grandeur!”—and Ralph Fiennes as the marvellously named director Laurence Laurentz giving southern hick Hobie an on-set lesson in elocution—“Would that it were so simple.”—are a slices of comedic heaven. An editing mishap involving Frances McDormand, a scarf and a cigarette and Johansson’s hard-boiled dame accent are great character pieces while Channing Tatum channels Gene Kelly in an athletic tour-de-force dance number called “No Dames.” Add to that a breakout performance from Ehrenreich and the wonky Coen sensibility and you have a movie with much to admire.
It’s the other stuff, the connective tissue, that doesn’t hold up. In “Hail, Caesar!” the Coens seem more interested in set pieces than story. In between inspired bits—see above—the movie meanders looking for Mannix to bind it together. Brolin certainly looks the part of a 1950s tough guy but he is a device more than a character. His job is to connect the various story threads but he gets lost between the subplots. From communism to wayward movie stars to nosy twin gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton) and manufactured romances the Coens leave no old Hollywood stone unturned.
“Hail, Caesar!” doesn’t quite come together as a fully formed movie but it does play as a love letter to the cinema. Its a satirical portrait of Hollywood’s Golden Age and the underlying message about the importance of movies should appeal to cinephiles but may have less impact on casual viewers.
In Trainwreck, a new comedy directed by Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer plays a promiscuous New Yorker who finds love.
It’s a side-splitting movie that will be Schumer’s big-screen breakout, but the film is also populated by a very funny supporting cast, many of whom are Schumer’s Manhattan comedy peers.
“I got to give my friends work,” Schumer, who also wrote the script, says, “and they did great in it.”
Colin Quinn and Dave Attell are two standups and friends who make big impressions in the film.
“I consider Colin to be like, in vampire terms, the maker,” says Attell.
Quinn, a legendary comedian and former SNL Weekend Update anchor, co-stars as Amy’s father, a cranky old man with an attitude and a possible drug problem.
“With actors, it’s not about the lines, it’s about the behaviour,” says Quinn. “With us, it’s just about the words. We love it, so if you come up with something funny and it’s quiet behind the camera and they yell ‘Cut’ and everybody starts laughing, that’s the best.
“In so many things it’s not about the words, but in stand-up, it’s all about the words, the order of the words. I feel more than any other art form, the audience matters so much. You have this contentious relationship with them, but they are so much a part of it. I feel like musicians get together and they jam with one each other. We need the crowd to jam. To rehearse.”
Attell is a club veteran, best known for his TV show Insomniac with Dave Attell and dark-edged lines like, “You know, men and women are a lot alike in certain situations. Like when they’re both on fire — they’re exactly alike.”
In the movie, he plays a homeless man who talks to Amy everyday.
“This is the character, of the four characters that I’ve ever played in movies, that is most like me,” he says. “That’s me in five years. That’s me after the last season of Last Comic Standing, physically and emotionally.
“I’ve been in like, three other movies, and this movie was the most fun. You show up and they want you to riff around and you go for the jokes and you keep going until you feel you got it. I love that, especially for people who aren’t classically trained actors.”
You get the feeling that as much as these guys enjoyed making Trainwreck, they are more comfortable on a stage in front of a crowd than they are on a movie set. Both agree that hostile audiences fuel them creatively.
“When it’s not going well, you still have to do the job and that’s what makes it a job,” says Attell. “That’s also often when you come up with the most enlightening stuff, in the tough crowd moment.”
Quinn may prefer live venues but according to Jimmy Fallon he may have more movie work coming his way. The Tonight Show host predicts an Oscar nomination for the comic’s work in the film.
“Why not?” Quinn deadpans. “I wasn’t expecting one but an Academy Award would not affect me now, because after I didn’t get nominated for Grown Ups 2 I feel like it’s a rigged game.”
“Trainwreck,” the new film from director Judd Apatow, is a romantic comedy with a pure heart and a dirty mouth.
In descending order of importance Amy (Amy Schumer, who also wrote the script) is a party girl, drinker and journalist. Her serial womanizing father’s mantra, “Monogamy isn’t realistic,” made an impression and she has grown into a promiscuous woman whose main relationship rule is “never stay over.” She inappropriate, sometimes cruel—“You are not nice,” says one ex—and occasionally clueless but nonetheless is handed a plum assignment by her editor (Tilda Swinton) to write an article on hotshot sports doctor Aaron Connors (Bill Hader).
Breaking both her personal rule and the first law of journalism, she gets involved with her subject. She leaves a toothbrush at his house, introduces him to her family and for once stays monogamous. Their relationship blooms until she allows self doubt—Why would this guy want to go out with me?—to get in the way of enjoying a happy, functional relationship.
There’s more to the story. Subplots about Amy’s ailing father (Colin Quinn), her sister’s (Brie Larson) suburban life and LeBron James’s cheapness—“I don’t want to end up like MC Hammer!”—are woven into the fabric, but the heart of the tale is about Amy and Aaron. Their roles are flipped—she plays the traditionally male commitment-phobe role, while Aaron wants to settle down—but it is their chemistry that keeps us interested.
Like most Apatow films “Trainwreck” is frontloaded with outrageous laughs that slowly give way to a funny but more restrained resolution. Schumer delivers most of the raunchy stuff but is never less than likeable, even when her character is reckless and immature. It’s a fine line that she treads in her stand-up comedy and it translates to the screen. Perhaps it’s because of the deep core of truth that props up even the more outrageous moments or perhaps it’s her way with a line. Either way her charm in the comedic and dramatic is the stuff of movie stars.
Hader is an unlikely romantic lead, but for many of the same reasons Schumer succeeds he scores a home run as Aaron. His scenes with Schumer have a comic ease about them, but his funniest work is reserved for his back-and-forth with LeBron James. The basketball superstar is the film’s unexpected secret weapon, delivering lines like, “Do you see his face when you look into clouds?” with the ease of a seasoned comic.
“Trainwreck” is complex and laugh out loud funny—you’ll likely miss some of the best lines because you’ll be laughing so hard—not a mix you get in many rom coms. Featuring edgy, interesting performances from its leads and supporting cast—especially Colin Quinn and Tilda Swinton—it is an auspicious big screen debut for Schumer and is Apatow’s most focused and interesting film to date.
“Snowpiercer” may be the oddest film of the year so far. The set up sounds like a standard dystopian world scenario… to a point.
Set just seventeen years from today, the movie, written and directed by Joon-ho Bong, takes place in a dystopian world where global warming has turned the planet into one giant snowball.
So far this could be “The Day After Tomorrow,” or “The Colony” or any number of icy thrillers set in a sub zero world.
All of humanity now lives on a train, owned and operated by a mysterious industrialist named Wilford, hurtling through what’s left of ice-covered planet. It’s an ecosystem with its own class system. In the front of the locomotive people live a life of luxury, dining on sushi, partying in nightclubs, tending orchids in greenhouses, while the folks in the back, “the freeloaders” are forced to live in atrocious conditions. Imagine the steerage section in “Titanic” only WAY worse.
Crammed in like sardines these “tail section” passengers are treated like prisoners, forced to eat “protean bars” of dubious quality and tortured for the slightest of infractions. “Know your place,” commands Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton). “Accept your place.”
It’s an atmosphere ripe for revolution, but can ringleaders Curtis (Chris Evans), Gilliam (John Hurt) and right hand man Edgar (Jamie Bell) fight their way through the train (and all of the story’s allegories) to the front and freedom?
Based on the French graphic novel “Le Transperceneige,” “Snowpiercer” is the nerviest actioner to come along in a season crowded with movies that go crash, boom, bang. It’s an environmental thriller—if you haven’t already seen Bong’s “The Host” do so now!—that is unapologetically weird, keeping the audience off balance for the entirety of its two-hour running time.
Tilda Swinton as the train’s Iron Lady, the minister of discipline, plays like a cross between a prison guard, Benny Hill and Margaret Thatcher. It’s a loopy performance that embraces and embodies the movie’s weird spirit.
In the world Bong creates surprises are around every corner, characters come and go, but it never feels odd for odd’s sake. The story rips along like a rocket (or thousand car train, if you like), sometimes in several directions at once, but Bong controls the chaos, keeping the story plausible (OK, plausible-ish) and above all, entertaining.
Over the course of eight films Wes Anderson has developed a style that is absolutely singular. He spins worlds out of the smallest details with an idiosyncratic style that some call twee and overly theatrical, but whatever you call it, one thing is clear: No one makes movies like Wes Anderson.
In his latest project, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” he has once again created a movie that future film scholars will coin terms like Wesesque or Andersonian to describe.
Told in flashback, the movie is like a nesting doll, a story within a story, with in a story. Beginning in present day Tom Wilkinson plays The Author, an older man reflecting on one of his greatest books, the story of M. Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), the legendary concierge at the Grand Budapest
Cut to the late 1960s. The Grand Budapest is no longer so grand, the home to a handful of tenants left over from the place’s glory days. One visitor is the Author, now a young writer played by Jude Law. One day in the steam bath he meets the hotel’s enigmatic owner Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham). Moustafa agrees to tell the writer the story of the hotel and the legendary Gustave H over dinner.
Flashback to 1932, the heyday of the glamorous hotel. Gustave H rules the place with an iron hand when he isn’t sleeping with the older female guests. A flamboyant gigolo he has a special connection with Madame D (Tilda Swinton), an insecure but impossibly wealthy woman who has fallen for his unctuous charms.
When she is found dead at her home, Gustave H and his most trusted employee, Lobby Boy Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), visit to pay respects. At the reading of the will Gustave H is endowed with a priceless painting much to the displeasure of the deceased woman’s family. Angered, her son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) frames Gustave H for murder.
Amid a whirlwind of hired henchmen (Willem Dafoe), helpful concierges (Bill Murray and Bob Balaban), talented chocolatier (Saoirse Ronan), tattooed criminals (Harvey Keitel) and mounting war on the continent, Gustave H is captured and jailed. With the help of his trusted Lobby Boy, must escape and clear his name.
In keeping with Anderson’s style, the story of Gustave H and the hotel is rich with nuance and detail but never feels overwhelming or tiresome. It’s a wittily whimsical story that feels transported in from a bygone era. It’s funny and elegant, feeling like a throwback to the Ealing Comedies complete with social commentary, farce and laugh-out-loud situational comedy.
At its twee little heart is Ralph Fiennes in a strangely mannered performance that not only provides many of the film’s best moments—his Benny Hill style escape from the police is hysterical—but also it’s heart.
Like the movie itself, the performance is original, unexpected and oddly affecting.
With “The Grand Budapest Hotel” Wes Anderson has found a balance between his highly stylized artistic vision, story and heart.
While Kevin may be the titular star of “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” after seeing the movie the person everyone is talking about Tilda Swinton, who hands in an unforgettable performance as New York suburbanite, mother of a monster and social pariah.
Swinton plays Eva Khatchadourian, travel agent, wife of Franklin (John C. Reilly) and mother of Kevin (played as a child by Rock Duer and Jasper Newell, as a teen by Ezra Miller). Kevin is a constant thorn in her side, from his colicky childhood to his troubled teens, she is at odds with her own son, convinced he is trouble. As her worst nightmares slowly come true the film studies, simultaneously by jumping back-and-forth in time, the build up and aftermath of Kevin’s violent behavior.
Based on a bestseller by Lionel Shriver, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a hauntingly stylized look at a deeply troubled relationship. Using a fractured timeline director Lynne Ramsey allows the viewer to decide whether Eva’s interaction with her son turned him into a beast or whether she gave birth to bad seed. It’s a fascinating character study that asks more questions than it answers, but is given real depth by the performances.
Miller is chilling in the role, the personification of troubled teen, but it is Swinton who steals the show. When she utters the line, ““I’m going straight to hell. Eternal damnation, the whole thing,” it would be funny it wasn’t so ripe with self-hate and pain.
“We Need to Talk About Kevin” is made for adventurous viewers; those who can stand watching real ennui played out on screen.
One of the big buzz films from last year’s Toronto International Film Festival was No Country for Old Men from directors Joel and Ethan Coen. After going on to win a load of Academy Awards they returned to TIFF this year but with a much different kind of film. Burn After Reading is a crime caper film that has more to do with their previous films like Raising Arizona than the dark feel of No Country. They call it the third paret of their “idiot trilogy” which began with O Brother Where Art Thou and Intolerable Cruelty.
Set in Washington DC, the film, which stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton, sees a disk containing the memoirs of bitter ex-CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) falling into the hands of two greedy gym employees (Pitt and Frances McDormand) who attempt to sell it, first to Cox then to the Russians. Their plot has far reaching effects, complicating not only their lives but that of philandering Treasury Department employee Harry Pfarrer (Clooney) and his mistress, Cox’s wife Katie (Swinton).
Burn After Reading comes with high expectations. The Coens made their name mixing off-beat comedy with crime stories; Fargo was an Academy Award winner, Raising Arizona redefined quirky and The Big Lebowski is a cult classic. Add to that pedigree an all star cast ripe with Oscar winners and tabloid favorites and you have the makings of a classic Coen Brothers film, right?
Unfortunately the answer is “no.”
Burn After Reading has moments of greatness—Pitt makes goofy look good, Swinton is icy perfection and J.K. Simmons as the head of the CIA walks away with the movie—but is less than the sum of its parts.
I know I am about to commit film critic heresy, but I found the film’s overly clever story left me cold. Fargo and Raising Arizona succeeded because the Coens made the audience feel empathy for the lovable—and sometimes not so lovable—losers that populated those films. Burn After Reading, on the other hand, has contempt for all its characters. They are all awful people who more or less deserve their respective fates. What’s lacking is warmth. What’s lacking is compassion. What’s lacking is the magical Coen Brothers touch.
Burn After Reading isn’t a waste of time, but it is middling Coen Brothers.
