Hail, Caesar!

I'm not the biggest Coen brothers fan, but I liked "Hail, Caesar!" All the actors are good, it's fun to see how they used to make movies, and there are a lot of funny scenes.

I'm not a huge Coen brothers fan. I either haven't seen or haven't been that into most of their movies, although I did like The Ladykillers (what) and True Grit. But Hail, Caesar! just looked interesting on its own merit. Roeper liked it; the friend I watched it with had seen it already and didn't like it because it seemed too "disconnected." Maybe I was inclined to like it just to be contrary. I didn't really find it to be disconnected. Everything seemed to go together pretty well. And overall it's exactly what you're promised – a funny look at how they used to make movies back in the '50s.

I *am* a fan of Josh Brolin. I don't think I've ever seen him do anything I didn't like. He's great here. I especially love the way he walked away from Thora (or was it Thessaly? we could just say Tilda), carrying the briefcase. It was so awkward and funny. He's just this poor put-upon guy. Although I do think later in life he might regret having ignored his children. That kind of thing is sort of important.

Speaking of Thora and Thessaly, Tilda did a great job with them. I loved their outfits. Scarlett's role here was pretty small. I couldn't wrap my head around her accent, but she said a couple words in the special features, and it seems like her natural speech might not be as far off from her character's as I thought it was. Alden was saying the Coen brothers write the language exactly how they want it to be said, with the pronunciation and everything, which is crazy.

Alden's scene with Ralph was hilarious – the way he kept coming through those doors was great. I think he could've done better if they had told him more than five minutes ahead of time that he was going to be in a different movie. I loved the whole "Laurence/Laurance" thing – right when he finally remembered it, he switched it up on him. I was thinking, "why doesn't he just show him exactly how he wants the line to be said," but then that went all wrong because he didn't want him to imitate his accent, which was funny.

I didn't like Channing Tatum's part much. I'm not really one for singing. And something about Channing was weird. Maybe because he was supposed to be a communist, although Channing said in a featurette that he doesn't think Burt has any idea what communism actually is. The stunts were weird. So much of it was supposed to be about showing the process of movie-making, but then they kept doing all these stunts with wires, except you didn't see the wires, so you're supposed to think there are no wires, but the stunts look so unnatural, like when Hobie is going around the tree branch. That one was the worst. Or when Burt jumps off the table to the ladder. It was really funny when he did the exact same jump again off the boat onto the sub ladder, though.

The scene with Jonah Hill was great. I loved how he kept saying "I'm bonded, ma'am." Although the funny part was that just like how all Joe had to do was fill the role of "personhood," it also really didn't matter who was in the role of Joe – it could've been anybody and the scene would've been just as good.

George Clooney was good, and I liked the variety of seeing all those writers, and especially the one extra crazy guy they had to keep telling to be quiet. I didn't like being confused about where Baird was and what was going on, but I guess I survived. I thought maybe they were going to blackmail him with pictures of him at a communist gathering. But I guess the whole Red Scare thing hadn't started yet.

I loved how repentant Eddie was during confession at the end, over such small things, and the priest was like "seriously, stop coming so often, you're fine." It must be nice to be able to do whatever you want and then make it all go away just by saying some prayers, though.

I got a kick out of recognizing Jeff Lewis from The Guild. Eddie's secretary was good. All the actors were good, really. And it was fun to cover such a wide array of movies.