A featherweight farce from the Coen brothers that seems to spite its own best qualities, Hail, Caesar! is a most dysfunctional feature - remarkably so, and regrettably so. It burgeons over with inspiration, such that Ethan and Joel almost appear afraid of the potential consequences of relenting to the demands of any one particular component, and proceed instead to waffle on with something else. There's trepidation to their approach here, papered over with political intrigue that's second nature to these boys, and whose aggressive intellectualism only reconfigures the rest of the film's flippancy as fluff. And yet Hail, Caesar! thrives on this dichotomous side to its character, procuring strange suspense at each juncture, whether the film will veer right or left, good or bad, dead funny or deadly serious. The skill in the screenplay shows up in superb characterisations from a brilliant ensemble, relishing their withering one-liners with flair as fleet-footed as Channing Tatum, whose choreographed sequence is among the film's finest. And there's plenty more to find in Hail, Caesar!, from a wondrous recreation of an old aquatic picture, to virtually every single scene featuring the excellent Alden Ehrenreich, harnessing a level of comedic motivation he's never before even had the chance to hint at. Ehrenreich and his co-stars keep the film afloat, as the Coens themselves threaten to sink it - even their most permissible impulses, such as the studio sheen of the visual scheme, or the inherent ephemerality of the concept, don't quite fit together as flush as they surely should. Hail, Caesar! fully intends to be disposable; it's a slight, but certain disappointment that it's as easy to dispose of as this.
The new trailer for the Coen brothers' Hail, Caesar!is even better than the first one. It's tempting, in any way you think about it (thank you, movie gods, for the gift that is Alden Ehrenreich). It's funny and fabulous in equal measure. It's sure to be remembered as one of the best trailers of the year, for a film that's sure to be remembered as one of the best features of the year... surely. Out in North America on the 5th of February and in the UK on the 4th of March wtf.
A simple thriller about a complex time, Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies neatly balances the typical Spielberg directness with which it makes its point with the innate indirectness of that point. The politics and the particulars are twisty, but the moral thread is straight and strong, a sturdy comparator upon which to relate varying degrees of blinkered patriotism and to ground the film. Would that it actually needed grounded - Bridge of Spies isn't exactly designed as the kind of film to take flight exatly, its restraint being all too central to its success, but its plain, uncomplicated efficiency both stabilises and neutralises its political hysteria, forming both balance and barriers for the film. But it's an easy film to read into, and intentionally so, as Spielberg intends to put forward the purpose of the screenplay, by Matt Charman and Ethan and Joel Coen, with clarity. His depictions of the different motivations behind East and West during the Cold War may not be measured, but they needn't always be anyway, and the film is incisive on the matter of the manifestations of patriotism from one nation to the next, and its potential to make integrity its first casualty. American injustice seeps down from the top; Soviet injustice has been hammered into mass consciousness. And the distinction between right and wrong becomes erased entirely, opposite extremes revealed as arbitrary end points on a circle, meeting in precisely the same place. Bridge of Spies has much more to comment upon politically than stylistically, but it's a finely crafted drama-thriller with smart technical and artistic credits and a reliably steadfast moral centre.
So Ethan and Joel Coen have a new film coming out. Remember those other months of the year? Remember the way the cinemas don't just shut down during those months? Yeh, well that's where we're set to stand with Hail, Caesar!, which Universal has set for a 5th of February bow in the US (26th of February in the UK), proof that Universal dgaf about the Oscars because lbr they rly don't need to, and that nor do the Coen brothers, not after what happened to Inside Llewyn Davis... Look for this to screen at the Berlin Film Festival next year too.
This isn't the first look we've gotten at Steven Spielberg's upcoming spy drama Bridge of Spies, co-written by Ethan and Joel Coen. It's not even the second. Nor is it the best! But it may be the last before the film screens to attendees at the New York Film Festival, where it'll receive its world premiere. Spielberg hasn't directed a non-Oscar-nominated film in 11 yearsand before that, 14 more,so expect this to be a major awards player come December. Out in the US on the 16th of October and in the UK on the 27th of November.
