How is Hail, Caesar?

9,085 Views | 54 Replies | Last: 7 yr ago by $240 Worth of Pudding
Spaceship
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I normally love Coen brothers movies but I can't decide if I want to see this one or not. Anyone seen it yet?
Carlo4
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Same boat. Reviews are ripping it apart. Saying worst Coen Brothers movie by far. Makes me hesitant.
amercer
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The BBC guy loved it.

All the other news I've seen on it has been negative
Sex Panther
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It's got a 79% on RT, right around the same lines of Burn After Reading, O' Brother Where Art Thou, and The Big Lebowski (all Coen comedies interestingly enough).

Although I see the audience score is much lower.
powerbelly
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I enjoyed it
TX AG 88
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a buddy of mine and his girlfriend went and saw it Friday afternoon. Couldn't stop talking about how BAD it was. Said he didn't laugh once and neither did anyone else in the theater.

for reference, he's a huge OBWAT and Raising Arizona fan, but doesn't like Fargo.
Credible Source
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quote:
Same boat. Reviews are ripping it apart. Saying worst Coen Brothers movie by far. Makes me hesitant.


Worse than Lady Killers?
nai06
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I liked it , but it's not what I thought it would be going in.





*************spoilers*************







It's really a story about Eddie Mannix. Everything else is a secondary vehicle to tell his story.






************end spoilers***************









Bruce Almighty
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quote:
Same boat. Reviews are ripping it apart. Saying worst Coen Brothers movie by far. Makes me hesitant.


79% on rotten tomatoes is hardly ripping it apart.
nickstro66
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I enjoyed it. Lot of historical references that I thought were great
jeffdjohnson
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Didn't like it. It was boring and not funny. I feel like if this exact film was made by the Wachowski brothers that it would be sitting at 15% on Rottentomatos.

If you think pronouncing the name Lawrence as Laur-entz is funny then I suppose this is the movie for you. That is a five minute running "gag". If you want to watch Channing Tatum tap dance for 5 solid minutes then this is also the movie for you.
schmendeler
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It came out at the right time of year. It was just empty and ultimately pointless. Ymmv.
DannyDuberstein
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Absolutely love the Coen Brothers and haven't seen this yet, but I'm in the same boat as a few posters above - this one just doesn't look appealing.
Tony Franklins Other Shoe
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Love the Coen brothers. Thought the movie was pretty lousy. Sure, had some historical nods, but just no punch at all.

Sorry I wasted my time AND money. Do not go see unless you are a hard core film fan. Wait for it to be free.
ce1994
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jeffdjohnson nailed it, it was annoying as hell.
Zip 88
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Scarlett Johansen couldn't save it?
jr15aggie
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Really? That sucks... Was looking forward to it.
aggie4231
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Didn't like it. Really no laugh moments. Wanted to fall asleep while watching.
Professor Frick
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I was interested until Scarlet Johannsen. No thanks.
OldArmy71
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SPOILERS















I am a big fan of the Coen brothers, though I believe that they have had their share of dud movies.

This is one of the duds, in the tradition of their comic farces. There are some good moments, but the greater whole just doesn't hang together.

Turns out that Hollywood is filled with hypocrites, bad actors, immoral women, gay men in various closets, and a dedicated cadre of Communist screenwriters who feel exploited and cheapened by their role creating mere entertainment rather than hard-hitting proletarian fiction.

The "story," such as it is, concerns the attempt by this group of writers (they call themselves "The Future") to force Hollywood to take politics seriously, even bringing in noted Leftist intellectual Herbert Marcuse to try to convince the brainless actor played by Clooney to use movies as an arm of Revolutionary Russia (the movie is set in the early 50s, not the 30s, so there is no excuse for these idiots to be swallowing the Leftist Line). Clooney is charming, but it's just not very funny or thought-provoking.

Scarlett has a fairly small role. She performs an extended Esther Williams-type act that is filled with heterosexual innuendo. Channing Tatum is in an even more extended Gene Kelly-type number that is filled with homosexual innuendo. Pretty boring stuff.

If you have seen the trailer, you have seen Jonah Hill's entire role.

George Clooney, who I think is a fine actor, looks old here, though I enjoyed the many tips of the hat to The Robe and Ben Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Very disappointing.

nai06
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I felt it was similar to Paris, Je T'aime in style. A bunch of vignettes linked together.
TXAGFAN
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quote:
It's got a 79% on RT, right around the same lines of Burn After Reading, O' Brother Where Art Thou, and The Big Lebowski (all Coen comedies interestingly enough).

Although I see the audience score is much lower.
I always avoid movies with huge differentials like that where the critic score is higher. They're usually some kind of wet dream circle jerk movie for director/film types. Got seriously burned on "Killing Them Softly" which was the longest one hour and forty minutes of my life.
Lance Uppercut
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In ye olden days, Yahoo used to have a movie page that featured reviews for movies, and it used to be my metric for if a movie was worth seeing in the theater. They'd have a critic score and a viewer score, and if both were B or above it was a pretty good bet.
mazag08
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Sounds like birdman, where a bunch of Hollywood types thinks their **** dosent stink and make a movie trying to be intellectual and progressive while appealing to other Hollywood types.

No thanks.
bagger05
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I thought it was okay. Not great but I didn't think it was awful.
schmendeler
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quote:
Sounds like birdman, where a bunch of Hollywood types thinks their **** dosent stink and make a movie trying to be intellectual and progressive while appealing to other Hollywood types.

No thanks.
bird man was good. this was not.
OldArmy71
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quote:
a bunch of Hollywood types thinks their **** dosent stink and make a movie trying to be intellectual and progressive while appealing to other Hollywood types
Although I agree with Schmendeler that BIRDMAN is a fine movie, I do think you are right in a sense.

Setting their movie during the McCarthy era, the Coens pretend to take McCarthy at his word and find at the heart of Hollywood an organized, Soviet-loving cabal of writers who gather regularly in a "study group" to discuss Marxism and how to transform Hollywood by writing Marxist pictures. In other words, this is satire by exaggeration. It is true that there were numerous leftist screenwriters in Hollywood (just as there are today), but it is wild, silly, and comic hyperbole to conceive of those writers meeting together to argue arcane differences between Communist theories and to compare notes on how they had managed to work some trivial Communist dialectic into various pictures they had been working on. The screenwriters are being ridiculed by the Coens, but so too are the conservatives who exaggerate the importance of leftist influence.

Why? Because Hollywood is like China: it can absorb any idea without being changed by it. The only idea that matters in Hollywood is how to get audiences to spend their money on movies. None of the actors or producers or audience members is sharp enough to have a Deep Thought about anything.

The Coens rather craftily suggest that members of the movie-making industry, as well as those who love to go to the movies, are like the buffoon played by George Clooney, too obtuse to be political in any sort of way that threatens American values. Indeed, American values are precisely the superficiality and obtuseness that reign in Hollywood.

The Red Star of Communism--or any ideology--can never be a threat to such empty-headedness.

It's a pretty vicious attack on conservatives and leftists alike as well as on Hollywood itself, but it fails because it's not very funny.
The Debt
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Iirc lebowski was neither critically acclaimed nor audience appreciated.

It wasn't until months after did anyone get it. Now I haven't seen Caesar, but maybe it's similar ?
nickstro66
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I will say a lot of people walked out of the theater when I went to see it. Started with about 20ish people and only 5 of us stayed until the end.
75AG
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My son and I always laugh about this, but I ALWAYS have to see Coen Brothers movies twice before I like them. Guess I'll be seeing this one again this week.
Tobias Funke
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This was a solid meh for me. Didn't understand the point of some of the characters, and the pacing of the movie made it hard to enjoy
Jeff99
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I really enjoyed the movie. I found myself laughing at places that no one else was laughing, so I may be an aberration. I definitely will need to watch again.
75AG
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Sorry, wrong forum
Dr. Teeth
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Oh, that it were so simple...
Dr. Teeth
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quote:
If you think pronouncing the name Lawrence as Laur-entz is funny then I suppose this is the movie for you.


There was a subtle payoff a little later with "Laurence Laurentz Presents..."

I enjoyed the movie, but I'm a weirdo.
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