{"id":203,"date":"2016-10-04T16:44:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T22:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=203"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:20:47","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T22:20:47","slug":"movie-hail-caesar-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/04\/movie-hail-caesar-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Hail, Caesar! (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/a\/a9\/Hail%2C_Caesar%21_poster.png\/220px-Hail%2C_Caesar%21_poster.png\" alt=\"Hail, Caesar!\" width=\"220\" height=\"326\" \/>Hail, Caesar!<\/u><\/strong><u> <\/u><br \/>\nYear: 2016<br \/>\nRating: PG-13<br \/>\nLength: 106 minutes \/ 1.77 hours<\/p>\n<p>I like movies as much as the next connoisseur of film, but clearly the Coen Brothers like them more than I do. Specifically, they like the films made during the \u201cgolden age\u201d of Hollywood: the 1950\u2019s. From action-packed westerns, to Biblical epics, to underwater choreography, to big-budget musicals, these films exemplified a Hollywood that was on top of its game. Unfortunately, as is the case with any great success, it can be hard to maintain over time. In what could be considered a \u201clove letter\u201d to a Hollywood of the past, the Coen Brothers bring all these films together in <em>Hail, Caesar!<\/em> (2016).<\/p>\n<p>While I could appreciate the references made throughout this film, many of them felt quite disjointed. Sure, there\u2019s the tie-in to real-life Hollywood fixer, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), but he merely acts as a link between scenes of grandeur meant to show how well the Coen Brothers can follow the homages of the famous films they\u2019re parodying. In fact, some of these segments are almost uncomfortably long, with little point other than to show off a well-known genre or style (or to beat a joke to death). As a result, the pacing of this film feels quite staggered and the plot on the light side.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, <em>Hail, Caesar!<\/em> is fun, with some good bits interspersed throughout. The \u201cred scare\u201d starting to gain relevance in the timeframe leads to quite a bit of comedy, the meeting to ensure nobody is \u201coffended\u201d is hilarious, and even some of the film segments are amusing as well. We do get to Channing Tatum\u2019s singing and dancing skills on full display in this film, but it\u2019s hardly enough to save it from itself. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I appreciated what the Coen Brothers were trying to do here (and it wasn\u2019t necessarily to poke fun at <em>Ben-Hur<\/em> (1959)), but it never felt coherent enough to be good.<\/p>\n<p>Working more as a history lesson in film than a straight-up comedy, I give <em>Hail, Caesar!<\/em> 2.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h1><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hail, Caesar! Year: 2016 Rating: PG-13 Length: 106 minutes \/ 1.77 hours I like movies as much as the next connoisseur of film, but clearly the Coen Brothers like them more than I do. Specifically, they like the films made during the \u201cgolden age\u201d of Hollywood: the 1950\u2019s. From action-packed westerns, to Biblical epics, to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2],"tags":[9,173,175,174,13,8],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-5-stars","category-movie","tag-9","tag-coen-brothers","tag-film","tag-hail-caesar","tag-movie","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":741,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}