Second tier Coens still equals a great movie

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2016)

Maybe not one of the Coens' masterpieces, but easily in their second tier, which means it's great. It depicts a day in the life of a Hollywood studios in the 1950s, with Josh Brolin as the studio head whose job it is to keep things running smoothly. The main plot revolves around the kidnapping of the star of the studio's gigantic Biblical epic, Hail, Caesar!, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). Several other movie stars play parts on the sidelines, including Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams-type swimming musical star, Channing Tatum as another musical star, and Alden Ehrenreich as a Western star who has been transferred to a more sophisticated drama. Ehrenreich, despite being the least familiar actor among the cast, steals the show. There are tons of familiar faces in the film (Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Wayne Knight, Fisher Stevens, David Krumholtz, Frances MacDormand, Tilda Swinton - playing twins!) and many of them don't get more than a minute of screen time (Hill, for example - you've seen his entire performance in the trailer, and he made it onto the poster), but everyone's highly amusing. The plot might not amount to much, but it's all a lot of fun, and, as you would expect, wonderfully shot and directed.