{"id":2887,"date":"2016-02-11T19:00:04","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=2887"},"modified":"2016-02-11T19:00:04","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:00:04","slug":"hooray-for-hollywood-hail-caesar-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/hooray-for-hollywood-hail-caesar-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Hooray for Hollywood: \u201cHail, Caesar!\u201d Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Declan Hertel\r\nEntertainment Editor<\/pre>\n
There is a subgenre of movies that I started to enjoy with \u201cThe Big Lebowski,\u201d began to love with 2014\u2019s \u201cInherent Vice,\u201d and have truly begun to appreciate with \u201cHail, Caesar!,\u201d the latest offering from near-legendary filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen: comedic neo-noir that is light on plot and heavy on mood.<\/p>\n
In these films, what is happening is not nearly as important as the world it\u2019s happening in and the people it\u2019s happening to. The mood is what matters, character is what matters, and the meandering, disjointed plotline (or more appropriately, plot-dots (coined it)) becomes secondary.<\/p>\n
I have to admit, I didn\u2019t expect this at all from the Coen Brothers, two of my favorite filmmakers ever. Even the aforementioned \u201cLebowski,\u201d which shows elements of plot-dot structure, still has a clearly visible and comprehensible progression of events, or as much of one as a noir can have. Noir has never been a genre known for easy-to-follow, A-B-C plotting, but these particular sorts of noir films take the inherent complexity and winding stories of the genre to their logical conclusion.<\/p>\n
But just because I didn\u2019t expect it doesn\u2019t mean I didn\u2019t love it. A sunny, comedic neo-noir taking place during the Golden Age of Hollywood, starring an astounding number of supremely talented actors, as created by the Coen Bros? It sure feels like someone asked me what I would really, really dig in a movie, although I don\u2019t remember such an incident.<\/p>\n
There are no real standout performances in \u201cHail, Caesar!\u201d because literally everyone in the film is fantastic and clearly having the time of their lives playing these larger-than-life Hollywood types. Although, one performance that does rise above is Alden Ehrenreich as Hobie Doyle, a slightly dim, yet earnest and kindhearted star of many silly cowboy flicks.<\/p>\n
Ehrenreich is a relatively unknown name in Hollywood at the moment, but I hope that this movie puts him on the map for real. Every moment he\u2019s onscreen is an absolute joy and his adorable rapport with Veronica Osorio\u2019s character in the middle third of the movie melted my heart (speaking of unknowns, I would also love to see Osorio get more work).<\/p>\n
The best thing about this movie is that it not only takes its setting from the Hollywood Golden Age, but it also plays like a movie from the era. It\u2019s a feeling that\u2019s hard to describe, but it\u2019s at least partially due to about half the cast getting at least one moment to be the undisputed star of the picture. It harkens back to when times were perpetually trying and movies were about entertainment: escapism. Before \u201cintellectual\u201d movies, before cinema was an \u201cart,\u201d and film was trying to find what it was. And it was entertaining. That\u2019s what \u201cHail, Caesar!\u201d is; it\u2019s entertainment of the purest form.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t pretend to know what the motivation behind \u201cHail, Caesar!\u201d was for the Coen brothers. But as it is, it is a wonderfully fun piece of entertainment that doesn\u2019t have any illusions of being something \u201cgreater.\u201d It comes in, makes you all happy and fuzzy, and leaves. And sometimes, a film doesn\u2019t need to do anything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a subgenre of movies that I started to enjoy with \u201cThe Big Lebowski,\u201d began to love with 2014\u2019s \u201cInherent Vice,\u201d and have truly begun to appreciate with \u201cHail, Caesar!,\u201d the latest offering from near-legendary filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen: comedic neo-noir that is light on plot and heavy on mood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}