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

Don Jon

What Jesse said:

The next movie I want you to watch is Don Jon. Should be right up your alley…

Mike’s verdict:

Jesse hasn’t seen this one – his “recommendation” was actually meant as a thinly veiled insult because I implied he was lame for thinking The Conjuring is scary. But Jesse doesn’t understand what this movie is actually about. All he knows is that Scarlett Johansson is in the trailer and the IMDB blurb mentions porn. Well Jesse, you can’t trust everything you find on the internet.

Don Jon is not about sex. It’s not about addiction, or unrealistic expectations. It’s definitely not about Scarlett Johansson.

Don Jon is an unpretentious and insightful portrayal of the love that develops out of total, genuine, unflinching honesty. This is not the Hollywood-fairytale-ride-off-into-the-sunset love; it’s the complete release from anxiety that only happens when nerves are exposed and there’s no reason left to hide.

I think Joseph Gordon-Levitt is an amazing actor. He has an unbelievable range (have you seen Hesher?), so I didn’t need the recommendation from Jesse – I would have watched Don Jon even if only to find out what kind of writer / director Gordon-Levitt is. He does not disappoint – especially considering this is a first attempt at writing a feature film.

But Gordon-Levitt doesn’t hold up the film alone. Julianne Moore, for one, is fantastic. You don’t end up feeling like you fully understand her character, but I think that’s intended – and it works. Her role reminded me a lot of what she did in Chloe. Johansson also does a good job – she’s totally believable as a Jersey girl – but she was clearly type-cast for the role.  Tony Danza on the other hand was definitely not type-cast and he was a pleasant surprise. I probably wouldn’t have even recognized him if I hadn’t noticed his name in the opening credits. Finally, one actor I think most people will over look is Brie Larson. She plays Gordon-Levitt’s sister and does an incredible job with very little. She only speaks in one scene but her character’s personality manages to come through as well as any of the leads’.

Obviously, I really liked Don Jon. It’s honest, it’s unashamed, and it ends exactly when it should. It gets 9/10, losing a single point only because a lot of the nudity was unnecessary to the story. Certainly some of it was needed to force a point, and I understand that in some sense the excess was intentional. But I think that it makes the film inaccessible to exactly the audience that most needs to see it. Even so, if you’re not a prude Don Jon is definitely worth seeing.