Hail, Caesar! An Homage to Hollywood

As someone who adores classic cinema, and also adores the Coen Brothers, Hail, Caesar! is right in my wheelhouse. A lighthearted series of vignettes that delve into the random craziness of the studio system and getting pictures made in the golden age of Hollywood (though I doubt things have changed that much), this is a movie that has something for everyone but is particularly tailored to delight film lovers.

Set in 1951, Hail, Caesar! follows the busy life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood executive who needs to clean up the various scrapes the stars and directors of his motion pictures manage to get into. It's his responsibility to keep their scandals out of the press, ensure the movies are running on schedule and on budget, and make both the temperamental artistes and the general audience happy. This proves to be a challenging job indeed, because over the course of two hours, he has to deal with the kidnapping of his main leading man, an unwed starlet's pregnancy, placing a clueless Western star into a posh English film, consulting ministers and rabbis about the potential offensiveness of a picture about Jesus Christ, and a random conspiracy involving Communists and Nazis. On top of all this, he has twin gossip columnists dogging his every move in search of a story. This is a busy man.

Joel and Ethan Coen have kept the tone of this movie snappy and breezy. Nothing gets too serious and there are so many random plots that you need to simply suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride. It doesn't feel like there is one overarching story - ultimately this is an homage to the movies that lightly pokes fun at the tropes of the various film genres that were (and still are) churned out with monotonous regularity by the big studios. A standout scene involves British director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) trying to coach Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich ), a young American actor who has only worked in Westerns. We get to watch Hobie suffer as Laurence forces him to enunciate the words, "Would that it were so simple?" and is given the complicated direction to embody ruefulness with a "mirthless chuckle." It feels like something out of Monty Python, a delicious sketch among many others. The movie features a stellar cast, including George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and more Coen favorites. Through it all, Josh Brolin centers the film, as the competent yet hapless Eddie Mannix tries to untangle the constant stream of crises he is presented with on a daily basis.

Hail, Caesar! features His Girl Friday-esque snappy dialogue, bewildering plot, comic setpieces, and a magical musical number from Channing Tatum featuring fancy footwork that would make Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire marvel. It is a charming movie, a loving satire of all the things that were great and terrible about the golden age of Hollywood. They don't make movies like that anymore, but thankfully we have the Coen Brothers to remind us.

Sisters: Fey & Poehler Bring Down the House

I put off watching Sisters because it did not get stellar reviews. However, having finally watched it, this movie is right up my alley. Two of my all-time favorite comediennes spending two hours delivering one-liners and making fools of themselves: what's not to love?

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler play Kate and Maura Ellis, sisters who are very close but very different. Kate is the screw-up, a single mom unable to hold down a job and a complete disappointment to her extremely responsible daughter, Haley (Madison Davenport). Maura is the good sister, the designated driver and mother hen who thinks it's her job to help everyone she meets. When their parents decide to sell their childhood home, the sisters reunite in Orlando to clean out their bedrooms and read their diaries, which reveal the very different lives they led as teenagers. Kate decides they need to throw one last epic party so Maura can finally have the fun she never had in high school and make out with James, the hot guy who lives across the street (Ike Barinholtz, playing the romantic lead in a role that is very different from his usual shtick on The Mindy Project).

It's not a revelatory concept, and the script follows every movie you've ever seen where a party goes out of control and a house gets trashed. What is hilarious, however, is that this is a rager being thrown by a couple of women in their forties, and when they realize all their friends are responsible adults who show up on time at 8:30 for a party, drastic action is called for. Directed by Jason Moore and written by the brilliant Paula Pell (an SNL writer of long standing), the movie feels like a series of SNL sketches strung together in perfect harmony, featuring cameos from favorites like Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Samantha Bee, Horatio Sanz, and John Cena, who is making quite the name for himself on the comedy circuit.

Unsurprisingly, Fey and Poehler are hilarious and in sync, dancing, bonding, and arguing like a genuine pair of sisters who both love and annoy each other. Sisters features every kind of humor you can think of - one-liners, pratfalls, drunken folly, and a particularly unfortunate incident with a music box featuring a ballerina dancing to Fur Elise. It is over-the-top, profane, and hilarious, exactly what you need when you just want to laugh for two hours. It's nothing new but it's familiar and fabulous and you will find something quotable and memorable by the time you're done. I could watch Poehler  learning how to pronounce her Korean pedicurist's name all day long - is it a joke we've seen a million time before? Sure. Does that make it any less funny? Nope. 

Deadpool: Marvel Makes Merry

From the grim ghastliness of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, we come to the marvelous merriment of Deadpool. Marvel has a reputation for making fun superhero movies that don't take themselves too seriously, but Deadpool is in a class all its own. A self-referential, fourth-wall-breaking piece of comic wizardry, this movie is not as concerned with plot as it is with making sure you are laughing every second.

The movie begins mid-action and then is one long flashback to give us Deadpool's origin story. And what a raucous tale it is. Ryan Reynolds stars as Wade Wilson, an ex-special forces operative, currently working as a mercenary in New York City. He falls in love with the beautiful and sassy Vanessa Carlyle (the inimitable Morena Baccarin), they get engaged, then he finds out he has terminal cancer. He decides to try an experimental treatment to save his life, and ends up becoming an indestructible superhero. Unfortunately, while saving his life, the treatment also left him horrifically disfigured, so he runs around as a vigilante in his spandex Deadpool costume that covers him up completely and lets his fiancee think he is dead and gone. Hey, no one said superheroes can't be vain.

As that description might illustrate, this is a pretty thin premise, and frankly, I didn't pay any attention to this movie's plot. Instead, I was riveted by the joke density and the sheer joy of watching Reynolds and Baccarin banter (and more) on screen. This movie delights in its filthy silliness, and doesn't let any scene play out for too long because there are too many jokes to cram into the tight 108-minute runtime. Of course, there are many action sequences, villains who have to get their comeuppance, and peripheral X-men characters who show up to populate the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. They are all funny and entertaining, but this is really a one-man show with Reynolds never letting up for one instant.

Director, Tim Miller, and writers, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, have taken something that doesn't seem like it would work on paper and made it sizzle on the screen. While I think voiceovers and breaking the fourth wall can be entertaining when used sparingly, I never imagined a movie that talks to the audience the entire time could be this much fun. And yet it never feels gimmicky. You are simply included in the proceedings and have full license to laugh at the goings-on without feeling like you need to suspend your disbelief and clap if you belive in superheroes. Deadpool is a movie that fully acknowledges that this is an escapist fantasy genre, not a serious moral fable. It is irreverent and wonderful, an R-rated piece of rowdy ridiculousness. Turns out, if you make the movie the fans were clamoring for, it will be a crowd-pleaser. Who knew? 

Batman v Superman: D(Y)awn of Justice

Given the terrible reviews and my dislike of Man of Steel, I watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice with absolutely no expectations. Thus, the movie was not able to disappoint me, because it was exactly what I thought it would be. Perhaps there is an audience out there to which this kind of filmmaking appeals. Unfortunately, I'm not the target demographic.

Batman v Superman picks up where Man of Steel left off. As Superman (Henry Cavill) proceeds to smash up most of Metropolis, Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) drives across the harbor from Gotham, trying to save one of his office buildings from impending destruction. He fails, and thus, this gives our two protagonists their reason to distrust each other. Other than that, I can't pretend I understood anything else that happened over the next two and half hours. There are multiple plots that go nowhere, and there's no point in pretending this movie is about anything except Batman and Superman eventually punching each others' lights out.

The movie is a relentless series of action sequences with people whaling on each other and making things explode with numbing frequency. Jesse Eisenberg is entertaining as Lex Luthor, but I'm hard-pressed to explain what his reasons were for antagonizing Superman and Batman and demanding they fight each other to the death. Perhaps it's unreasonable to expect a supervillain to have reasons for his evil, but it's usually necessary to feel like all this wanton destruction is in the service of something. However, director Zack Snyder continues to feel no compunction about toppling the world around his heroes so that an action sequence can have an epic scale. There are some occasional throwaway lines to say a building was empty and no one was harmed, but that's about all the lip service you can expect after the criticisms of Man of Steel's body count.

However, one element of this movie did appeal to me - the heroines. Amy Adams continues to be an unexpected Lois Lane, managing to save Superman as often as he manages to save her. And Gal Gadot languishes on the periphery of this movie for a long time until making a startling appearance in the final minutes that proves Wonder Woman is the only superhero worth rooting for in the entire movie. Cavill and Affleck are gamely doing their best as world-weary superheroes, but they are exceedingly violent and tiresome in their quest for justice. Even the costumes are heavy and dour, a metaphor for these two heroes who are fighting each other for vague reasons that seem to be fueled by a myriad of incomprehensible dream sequences. And of course, they resolve their dispute through some mommy issues, which tells you just how mature these men are after all their posturing.

Batman v Superman is thoroughly lacking in levity and chock-full of religious symbolism and big moral ideas. The color palette continues to be a bleak wasteland with everything black and grey and despondent. The Marvel model is not the only way to make a superhero movie - Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy was no laugh fest, but it was a cinematic marvel that took both story and spectacle seriously. Sadly, Zack Snyder only cares about action and explosions; compelling story telling is a nonexistent concern. If you want the image of cities on fire burned onto your retinas, you will love Batman v Superman. Otherwise, move along, there's nothing to see here.