Hail, Caesar! is the Coen brothers’ most positive comedy. I admit that I was prompted to think there would be a fair amount of political abuse because of the trailer for Trumbo they showed beforehand, but no-one gets really hurt in the feature. The worst that happens is that Hollywood superstar Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is abducted from the set of his biblical epic by a group of Communist screenwriters who call themselves The Future. Theirs is the friendliest abduction in movie history, which is surprising because the movie is set in the late 1950s. They cannot bring themselves round to telling Whitlock that he has been abducted, but fill his thick head with talk of production and economics and the value of the little guy and that with his studio’s money, they could support the cause. Gentle old Dr. Marcuse (John Bluthal) tells him about the end of history. Whitlock doesn’t get any of it, but he likes it there in that beach villa, reclining in his deck chair, cigarette and martini in hand, still in his Centurion’s uniform. Continue reading →