Hail, Caesar!

What Jeff said:

You should check out the cinematic production, Hail, Caeser!. It’s an entertaining comedy/musical and my favourite scene is the dance number with the Navy guys getting ready to ship out in a closing bar.

Mike’s verdict:

I didn’t know this was a Coen Brother’s film until the end when I checked, but I was fairly certain that it had to be one. It has the characteristically pompous cleverness that pervades (sometimes to great effect, often not) through many of the Coens’ more recent offerings.

In this case, the cleverness is a little too clever for its own good – more than once I was left trying to figure out if I had missed something, only to realize that I hadn’t missed anything at all. Somehow the film feels accidentally disjointed, as if it had a traditional flowing plot that was mixed up and pieced back together by an intern who wasn’t supposed to be in the editing room alone. To be fair, the Coens’ are known for attempting to weave stories through interconnected mini-plots – and usually they are able to strike a decent balance between confusion and entertainment. But Hail, Caeser! misses the mark. Much like Burn After Reading, it has a proper story that each act is meant to contribute to (I think), but those acts are so disjointed and patchy that they come across more like the vignettes in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. In fact, it is easy to draw a line of increasing vignette-ification through the three films, but Hail, Caeser! really fails to pull it all together at the end.

I’ll accept this film as a learning exercise on the way the Buster Scruggs, but there’s a reason nobody gets points for “showing the work” once high school math class is finished.

The film isn’t all bad. Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and Jonah Hill each give convincing and entertaining performances. They are all completely forgettable and feel like pieces of 4 unrelated puzzles, but in the moment they are definitely entertaining. George Clooney was good too, but his portrayal of a confused actor seemed a little too on the nose – like he read the script and knew that none of it made any sense, but the Coens’ were offering enough money. Scarlett Johansson‘s segment is by far the stand-out performance, unfortunately it has no bearing on the plot at all.

To address Jeff’s favourite part, I agree that Channing Tatum‘s musical number is a bit of a highlight – mainly because it’s fun to laugh at Channing Tatum. Unfortunately, it’s way, way, way too long. It’s more than 5 minutes! Even real musicals don’t make the audience listen to the same song for that long. It goes on so long that I actually got tired of laughing at Channing Tatum. I didn’t even think that was possible.

But the biggest disappointment is Josh Brolin‘s lead character. Brolin does a fantastic job of playing the secretly stressed Hollywood ‘fixer’, but the character is really hard to identify with. The film sets up a central tension for Brolin’s character to make a decision on, but the right choice is so clear that it’s hard to understand why he would even need to consider it. And in the end he chooses wrong.

Despite all of the entertaining components, I was ready for the film to be over long before it was. And when we did reach the end too much was left disconnected.

6/10

Nothing but Trouble

What Jeff said:

This is a bizarre film which I vaguely remember from childhood.  When I rediscovered it, it turned out to be technically awful, but a tremendously entertaining distraction.  I recommend it for the lulz.

Mike’s verdict:

This movie is basically The Hills Have Eyes. The unlucky family on vacation has been replaced by a pretentious businessman who has been bamboozled into giving a woman he’s just met a ride to Atlantic City, and the unforgiving desert has been replaced by a house full of dangerous traps and gizmos. But the violent and disfigured rural family is the same, and so is their sense of “justice”.

Of course, there are a few differences between this film and the classic horror trope. The businessman, played by Chevy Chase, is a bumbling idiot, and all of the eyes belong to John Candy and Dan Aykroyd.

These hills have googly eyes.

Movies written and staring Dan Aykroyd – especially those including John Candy and Chevy Chase – can’t really be critiqued. You can ignore the fact that Aykroyd received a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie; this film is meant to be a technically awful, tremendously entertaining distraction – and that is certainly what it is.  Some of the best bits involve a barely recognizable Daniel Baldwin getting exactly what he deserves, Tupac in his film debut as a member of Digital Underground, and a cameo by what must be the first ever in-dash GPS navigation system. Demi Moore is a somewhat surprising inclusion, given that this is the immediate follow-up to her Golden Globe-nominated performance in Ghost and only a year ahead of the release of A Few Good Men. In any case, Moore does a good job as the sole but futile voice of reason in an Aykroyd/Candy/Chase universe.

Good fun. 10/10

The Big Lebowski

What Jeff said:

You gotta watch this film, The Big Lebowski. It’s about a nobody who got tangled up in some nonsense. Turns out, the nonsense was legitimate, but didn’t include this actual “Dude”. Still, the Dude did a good job navigating the scene that life presented him with. It is genuinely entertaining, and full of oddness. I think you will appreciate it as much as I did.

Mike’s verdict:

Nonsense. That is the right word.

I have to admit upfront that it’s possible my feelings toward this film have been skewed by the fact it was viewed only days after, North by Northwest.  Sometimes two unrelated films can play off each other and it’s to the benefit of both – even when they are very different.  On the other hand, sometimes the virtues of one film will shine blinding light on the shortcomings of the other.  In this case, the two films start with exactly the same premise (a guy minding his own business gets caught up in a fantastic plot after being mistaken for someone else), use similar plot devices (the rich and evil antagonist, the mysteriously attractive woman with an unknown agenda), and even have overlapping character actions (pencil shading the notepad to see the last written note).  But despite these similarities, the two films take character development off in near polar opposite directions and unfortunately for The Dude, I like Roger Thornhill more.

Films work best when the audience can imagine itself in the story’s universe; particularly when one can identify with the main character. Hitchcock‘s hero is thoughtful, articulate and composed under pressure – exactly the kind of person you want to be when suddenly thrust into an unpredictable situation.  The Dude is… not any of those.  In fact, I found him to be a hard character to like at all because the way he communicates (or fails to) is so aggravating. Half of the time (usually when what he needs to say is critical) he spews a series of utterances that impart no information whatsoever. The rest of the time he dead-pans extremely well thought-out phrases but with an aggressive pretentiousness that seems entirely out of place. I can only suppose that the intention is to present The Dude as someone that could be a high-society intellectual if he wanted to, but he’s chosen a simple, relaxing existence of weed and bowling instead because he’s ever so enlightened. Bullshit. The Dude hasn’t chosen anything; he is living exactly the life that he has to live. If nothing else, the plot of the film is evidence that The Dude lacks the ability to consider the consequences of his decisions and, especially, his indecisions.  While he certainly has an innate ability to roll with the literal punches, it’s clear that he has no ability to choose where he rolls.  Anyone can point The Dude in the direction they want him to go and Newton’s laws of motion take over until someone else comes along with a different agenda. That’s not chill, it’s sad.

There a few other issues that stand out too.  For one, I feel like I have to say something about the dog. It was very clearly not a Pomeranian. Was that supposed to be an inside joke?  Did the writers expect their audience would realize the joke and laugh, or were they expecting to laugh at an audience that failed to notice? I don’t get it.  And then they throw in the “marmot” that is very clearly a ferret. Who is the butt of this joke?  It isn’t even properly sustained – you can’t call an animal both a marmot and an amphibious rodent.  Sometimes absurdity works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you laugh at a movie, and sometimes the movie laughs at you.

This is not to say that I entirely disliked the film. On the contrary, I actually agree that it is quite entertaining as an odd-ball comedy.  Some of the dialogue is genuinely witty: “Obviously, you’re not a golfer”, caught me right were it was supposed to and I very much appreciated the satirical homage to Kraftwerk.  The whole film has a rambling absurdity (obviously mirroring its protagonist) that doesn’t make any effort to impart a message (again, obviously mirroring its protagonist). It’s just there, filling up two hours in a generally pleasing way.  I can appreciate that.

I also enjoyed the cast and really can’t find fault in the choice of actors.  Even if I can’t see The Dude as a hero, I thought Jeff Bridges did a good job portraying the hapless loser. I can honestly believe that his life would be a string of absurd occurrences.  Of course, John Goodman is never disappointing.  Make no mistake, his character was awful; but supremely well illustrated.  And who knew that’s where the “Am I the only one around here…” meme came from? I guess they’re making memes from movies now. Julianne Moore was a bit of a surprise as the mysterious woman but she added a nice distraction from the idiocy of the rest of the plot.  I had all but forgotten about Philip Seymour Hoffman; but it was nice to see him.

I especially liked the inclusion of the completely unnecessary characters. John Turturro‘s Jesus Quintana has no purpose in the film at all other than to add colour to the universe, and add colour he did.  On the other hand, Jon Polito‘s private eye feels like he was part of some other cross-over story line that I’ve been left out of. I wouldn’t mind seeing a spin-off that focuses on how he ended up driving around in the least inconspicuous vehicle imaginable.

I suppose I should mention Tara Reid, but her character was really more of a caricature than a person. Was she even a known actor in 1998?  Either way there wasn’t much screen time to work with.  And how on earth did Flea end up in this?  I wouldn’t even have noticed him at all except that his name stood out rather awkwardly in the opening credits. I guess he was one of the nihilists, who also had no purpose than to add colour.  Either way, I have no complaints with either of their performances; they filled their rolls as much as was required.

But then there was Steve Buscemi‘s Theodore Donald ‘Donny’ Kerabatsos – without question the only sympathetic character in the entire film.  Certainly not an unflawed character (his timing was conversationally terrible). But as the only one of the group who (for the most part) managed to keep himself distanced from The Dude’s mess, his fate was heartbreaking – especially considering his final frame. Such a shame.  It would be fun to see a re-imagined version of this film made entirely from Donny’s point of view.  It would have The Dude just popping in once in a while at the bowling alley as a colourful side character.

Overall, a generally enjoyable film that I am sure to forget until it pops up as a recommendation on Netflix.

7/10