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Friday B-Movie Pick: Hail Caesar

Friday, August 12th, 2016

Hail Caesar
The Cohen Brothers managed to produce a particularly subversive movie. A very well made movie, but subversive. Frankly, I’m surprised this movie made it out of Hollywood. It’s a story about movie industry in the early 1950s. It was the era of big studios. When the stars worked for the studios and did what they were told, and the studio took care of them. The protagonist is the studio boss, who runs the Hollywood end for the owner in New York. He is dedicated to his job, loves his family, is devoted to his wife, takes care of his stars, and is a devout Roman Catholic. Like I said, this movie is subversive to the Hollywood culture. To fight the current Hollywood culture even more, the bad guys are actual communists. To be fair, they aren’t very competent, mostly whiny writers who are pissed that they are not running the studios and making the big money. I really enjoyed this movie, it was very rich in detail, and provided good insight into the time. The studio didn’t care if you were homosexual, or Hispanic, or had poor taste in husbands (“He was a minor crime figure.” “He was not minor!”). You were part of the studio family and the studio took care of you. Loyalty was expected in return, but that was part of the studio culture of the time. Fire up the popcorn, lean back, and enjoy this well crafted bit of film work. Excellent work by a excellent cast that includes Scarlet Johansson, Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum (singing and dancing), Alden Ehrenreich, and Veronica Osorio.

Friday B-Movie Pick Archive

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