The Coens take on '50s Hollywood

Great cast, but Hail, Caesar! is enjoyable only in bits and pieces. Fortunately, some of those bits are inspired.

Despite the exclamation point in its title, the new Coen brothers film, Hail, Caesar!, isn't the sharpest or most emphatic of their many amazing efforts. A collection of sketches that both satirize and celebrate Hollywood of the 1950s, Hail, Caesar! lands the Coens in what for them is strange terrain: They've come up with a middle-ground addition to their idiosyncratic oeuvre with -- and this deserves underlining -- touches of entertaining brilliance.

There's a whisper of a story here: Fictional Capitol Studios finds itself in the midst of a major production. The movie is called Hail, Caesar!, and it carries the same heavily freighted subtitle as Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ. The plot, which offers echoes of The Robe focuses on a hardened Roman officer who eventually sees the light, rapturously submitting to a new faith when he encounters Christ on the cross.

Capitol's mega-buck epic stars Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a slightly dissolute movie star who is also slightly dim.

During the filming of a scene, Whitlock is drugged and spirited away by extras who demand a $100,000 ransom. As it turns out, they are rebels with a cause, leftist screenwriters enamored of the Soviet Union who meet regularly to be lectured by Professor Marcuse (John Bluthal), an unveiled reference to Herbert Marcuse, a hero of the New Left during the 1960s.

It falls to Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), the studio's tough but perpetually burdened mogul, to return Whitlock to the set so that his mega-production can wrap. Eddie's part businessman and part fixer, a guy who's accustomed to covering the tracks of the studio's frequently wayward stars.

Eddie Mannix is modeled on a real-life MGM studio fixer of the same name. Here, Mannix is treated as decent but beleaguered man who's trying to keep the studio from running aground -- not an easy task when its stars have a penchant for landing themselves in embarrassing positions.

As Eddie puts out one Hollywood fire after another, he also entertains an offer from Lockheed, which wants to give him a high paying job that would allow for a more regular and presumably respectable life.

Now, very little about the plot matters. What makes the movie palatable are several winningly ludicrous snippets from Capitol's movies. Think of them as footnotes that are more interesting than the main body of the work.

One of the best involves a bone-headed decision to turn the studio's acrobatic cowboy star into a romantic lead, jamming him into comedy in which characters dress to the nines and speak in the kind of faux British -- or British-ish -- accents that were popular in some movies during the '30s and '40s.

Director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is stuck with this egregious piece of miscasting. The scene in which Laurentz tries to prepare cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) for sophisticated patter might be enough to justify the price of admission.

The same goes for brief appearances by Tilda Swinton, who plays two roles -- gossip pedaling, twin columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker. Listen to the way Swinton says Eddie's name, giving it a twist that evokes the pleasures of a whole era of studio filmmaking.

And if you don't smile during a production number featuring Channing Tatum as a tap-dancing sailor who, along with his shipmates, contemplates life at sea without "dames," you're in an even worse mood than I usually find myself in.

And then there's a broadly comic bit involving Frances McDormand as C.C. Calhoun, a chain-smoking film editor.

For me, those were highpoint to be savored, along with numerous small touches.

Alas (to be as stilted as some of the dialogue in Capitol Studio's productions), not all of the sketches work so well. Though beautifully produced, an Esther Williams' style swimming number featuring Scarlett Johannson might have been included just to show that the Coens could do it.

Johansson plays DeeAnna Moran, a pregnant movie star who forces the studio to find ways to cover the fact that she's not married. Her story eventually leads to Jonah Hill, whose role amounts to little more than a forgettable cameo. Hill plays Joseph Silverman, a man who specializes in "personhood," a joke that's not really worth the trouble of explaining.

In A Serious Man, the Coens took on religion; their attempts to do the same here aren't nearly as rich. The movie opens with Mannix in a confessional booth where he establishes himself as a serious Catholic who's addicted to confession. Mannix feels guilty because he lies to his wife about having quit smoking, but his real guilt comes from working so hard to support a morally dubious and often lunatic enterprise.

Stretches of Hail, Caesar! proves only mildly amusing and some of the humor built around the Hail, Caesar epic struck me as more obvious than we expect from the Coens who've taken swipes at Hollywood before, notably in the feverishly brilliant Barton Fink.

Hail Caesar! may not rank at the top of Coen's impressive list, but it should do nothing to sour anyone on their work. My advice: Treat the movie as a smorgasbord. Pick what you like; forget the rest.

Hunting 'Treasure' in Romania

The Treasure, a subdued film from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, opens a window into contemporary Romanian society, revealing a less-than-rosy picture that's marked by economic duress, bureaucracy and a few lingering mementos of the Communist era.

That may sound like a formula for an explosive political movie, but Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest and Police, Adjective) seldom pushes the dramatic pedal to the floor. He's interested in quiet desperation, but he sees it through a sensibility that's so attuned to absurdity, it has become almost commonplace.

Costi (Cumin Toma) lives in a cramped Bucharest apartment with his wife and son. He likes to read the boy stories about Robin Hood, an activity that's probably meant to remind us of the moral of a popular folk tale: Rob from the rich; give to the poor. This may be ironic.

One evening, Costi is approached by Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu), a neighbor who wants to borrow 800 euros. The neighbor doesn't plan to use the euros to pay debts or stave off hunger. He wants to rent a metal detector and search for a treasure that he believes his great grandfather hid on a rural property that Adrian shares with his brother and mother.

The evidence supporting Adrian's treasure claim hardly could be skimpier, but Costi joins Adrian's quest. He'll pay for the metal detector, and, in return, will receive half of whatever treasure the duo unearths.

Costi rents a metal detector and hires a man (Corneliu Cozmei) to operate it. He sets out with Adrian to find what he may hope will be life-changing largesse.

The protracted scenes of treasure hunting are dryly funny, and nicely conceal the fact that Porumboiu has a few surprises up his sleeve.

I began by saying that The Treasure is about Romanian society; it is, but by the end, you may have remembered that it's not only Romanians who make half-baked decisions based on inadequate information.

No fair telling more, but know that Porumboiu wisely ends his film in a way that's either crazy, instructive or redemptive. Maybe all three.

Another look at wayward priests

A difficult, perplexing and punishing movie from Chile.

Just what the Catholic Church needed, another reminder about wayward priests.

Like it or not, Chilean director Pablo Larrain has weighed in on the issue of church scandals with an odd and difficult movie that focuses on four defrocked priests, a nun, an inquisitor from the Vatican and a greyhound dog.

The movie's quintet of exiled religious rogues lives in the isolated coastal town of La Boca. They've been sent to this sleepy, seaside village for a mixture of punishment and penance -- and to be hidden from public view.

Things seem to be going smoothly enough until a new resident arrives. The others rightly see the presence of this recently defrocked priest as possibly disruptive. It doesn't take long before one of the town's fishermen -- a former altar boy -- is outside the house screaming at the new arrival, describing -- in excruciatingly graphic detail -- the way in which he was sexually abused.

Clearly disturbed, the priest responds by shooting himself in the head.

That's a bit of a spoiler, but you should know that most of the movie involves the repercussions felt by these sinning priests and the wily nun who tends to them.

The situation becomes critical when another priest -- this one a representative of the church -- arrives to conduct an investigation.

It should be noted that the men are free to leave; they're not prisoners; they've consented to this strange banishment, a situation in which none totally admits to wrongdoing. They seem to reinforce their communal sense of denial.

The priests still observe Catholic ritual, but they allow themselves one diversion: They train and race a lone greyhound, putting their winnings aside for expenses.

Larrain tries to see these priests in clear-eyed fashions. They're flawed men burdened by bitterness, defiance, self-aggrandizement and, in one case, dementia, but they're not particularly remorseful.

The former altar boy, whose relentless taunts echo throughout the movie, wobbles his way through the story as the church's representative conducts his inquiry.

It takes some time before we get any sort of handle on this interrogator, who has his own ideas about how to balance compassion with the institutional need of the church to insulate itself from scandal.

I can't say that I totally understand the ways in which Larrain plays with symbolism; a bizarre and difficult to watch late-picture event -- part sacrifice, part punishment -- makes a cruel piece de resistance to a cruel, arduous and, I'm afraid, perplexing exercise in bleakness.

Larrain's movie is commendably serious, but it also brims with the kind of rabid determination that feels as if it's rebuking those who might raise even the mildest of objections to its thoroughgoing rancor.

Of course, no one approves of pedophile priests or a clergy that collaborates with torturers, but The Club seems to regard aberrant behavior as an excuse to flagellate not only the movie's characters, but the audience, as well.

If I had to articulate a point to all of this, it might be that every status quo will go to great lengths to preserve itself and those whose interests depend on it, and that, in the process, there will be pain.

Bland on land; better at sea

In the rescue film The Finest Hours, it's the storm that stars.

In 1952, a small Coast Guard team attempted to rescue members of the crew of an oil tanker that had been sheared in half during a vicious winter storm off the Cape Cod coast.

This story of heroism and high seas adventure makes a natural movie subject, and for the most part, Disney's The Finest Hours gives it decent enough treatment. Moreover, the fact that the story may be unfamiliar to most audiences adds a bit of freshness.

It's also true that The Finest Hours can tend toward blandness whenever the crew of a small boat isn't battling the ferocious waves of a nor-easter as it tries, in what seems to a doomed mission, to make its way out of a harbor and into storm-tossed seas.

Chris Pine plays Bernie Webber, a by-the-book member of the Coast Guard, which -- in the movie -- seems like a cottage industry staffed by locals who know the potentially treacherous Atlantic coastal waters.

Pine goes for all-American, cereal-box steadiness, and, achieves it, perhaps the point of boredom.

The rest of his three-man crew are mostly treated as props along for a February ride that -- if nothing else -- leaves you feeling chilled to the bone.

Ben Foster, an actor capable of high intensity, is pretty much wasted as one of the crew's members, and Eric Bana, with a southern accent, doesn't do much to distinguish himself as the Coast Guard station's commander. He's clearly ignorant about New England waters, but insists on having his way.

The fate of the ship that's under duress lies in the hands of a boiler-room engineer, Casey Affleck's Ray Sybert. After the ship -- The Pendleton, by name -- breaks apart, the stoic Sybert must convince his comrades that their best opportunity for survival rests on running the ship aground.

Sybert's shipmates don't trust him, and some argue that everyone should take to the lifeboats, a move that would bring about instant death in impossibly rough waters.

Affleck is not an easy actor to cast; here, his quiet brooding turns him into the movie's least routine character. Eventually Sybert figures out a way to maneuver what's left of the ship toward a shoal.

Holliday Grainger turns up as Miriam, a love interest for Pine's Bernie. She cajoles him into an engagement for which he professes not to be ready, and then spends the rest of the movie worrying that he'll be lost conducting a rescue mission that the town's craggy older residents believe is ill-advised.

Director Craig Gillespie too often leaves the high seas to follow Miriam's efforts to discover what's happening to her fiancé.

But in a way, none of what I've just said matters all that much because images of half of a four-story ship tossing in the seas or of a 36-foot boat trying to make it out of the harbor to find the lost vessel are what count the most.

The movie's ocean sequences are good enough to make The Finest Hours an acceptable -- if not great -- piece of January entertainment.

A footnote: I got no extra kick from the 3D presentation; The CGI storm was enough to hold my interest.

Charlotte Rampling in a subtle role

45 Years looks at a couple whose marriage is unsettled by a strange piece of news.

Your marriage is approaching the 45-year mark. You assume that there isn't much about your spouse that you don't know. You're living in the placid region where issues have been settled or, at minimum, productively ignored.

You are reasonably content.

And I say "reasonably" only because you're not an idiot, and you know that complete contentment lies beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.

And then...

Something happens that makes you wonder how right you've been about your partner. This unsettlement may not arrive in the form of a huge revelation, but it's enough to upset a carefully built balance. Think of it as a crack in the foundation, worrisome because it's likely to grow.

In the case of Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay), the main characters in the British movie, 45 Years, the news that upsets the apple cart of their childless marriage arrives in the form of a letter. It seems the body of one of Geoff's former girlfriends, lost on an Alpine ski trip they shared more than 45 years ago, has been found in tact, preserved in the mountain ice.

From that point on, life changes, most particularly for Kate, who's in the midst of planning the couple's 45th anniversary party.

Kate isn't exactly jealous; it's more that she's baffled, concerned about her ability to peer into her husband's heart. And what if it turns out that she was Plan B, the woman Geoff accepted after he lost the woman he really loved?

To make this quiet drama work as well as it does requires actors who can operate in the subtlest of modes. For that, director Andrew Haigh has chosen well.

Rampling, who has been nominated for a best-actress Oscar, gives a fine, reflective performance as a woman who knows how to maintain composure while her insides are in turmoil. Almost entirely reliant on nuance and suggestion, Rampling's performance qualifies as one of her best.

Courtney upholds the male end of the bargain as a character who mostly keeps his inner life to himself. A retired manager at a local factory, Geoff begins looking at slides of his former girlfriend that he has kept in the attic. He also renews his smoking habit.

The movie, which culminates with the anniversary party, ostensibly tells the story of a couple, but 45 Years really focuses on Kate, and it leaves us to ponder how exactly she's going to continue with the rest of her life now that her relationship has been thrown into an unsettling new light.

A movie star meets his demon

Mojave is the kind of failed movie that offers occasional glimpses of what might have been, most of them concentrated in Oscar Isaac's impressively inflated performance as Jack, a dangerous loner who encounters a dispirited movie star (Garrett Hedlund) who has taken a solitary trip to the desert. Headland's character seems to be engaged in a metaphoric pity party: He wants to escape the pressures of fame that have plagued him since his teen years. Jack may quote Shakespeare, but he comes on like a demon sent to taunt Hedlund's Thomas. In a line that sounds more like it derives from a term paper than a living character, Jack tells Thomas he's into "motiveless malignity." After a pivotal incident, Thomas returns to LA, but we know that Jack won't be far behind, and that he'll bring violence with him. It's possible to view Jack as more a figment of Thomas' imagination than a real character. After all, Thomas has been living an unreal celebrity life for years. Writer/director William Monahan, who wrote the screenplay for The Departed, can't quite balance this screenplay's contempt for Hollywood with elements of film noir and silly bursts of intellectualism. Whatever is intended, Mojave proves only intermittently arresting.

Maggie Smith is the 'Lady in the Van'

The story of a homeless woman and the playwright who helped ... er ... tolerated her.

Homeless and a bit hostile, Mary Shepherd became a fixture in the London neighborhood where she parked her decaying van. Vagrant that she was, the feisty Shepherd eventually was allowed to park her van in the driveway of playwright Alan Bennett.

Amazingly, both Shepherd and the van remained in Bennett's driveway for 15 years. She sometimes popped into Bennett's home to use the bathroom. She became a part of his life -- albeit in frequently frustrating ways.

The Lady in the Van tells Shepherd's story, which in 1999 became the subject of a Bennett-written play starring Maggie Smith. On screen, Smith reprises her role as a woman of demonstrative opinions and slovenly personal habits.

Alternately exasperated and caring, Bennett (played here by Alex Jennings) tolerates Shepherd's presence long past the point where most of us would have found a way to move her somewhere else.

Director Nicholas Hytner, who directed The Madness of King George, which Bennett also wrote, sometimes shows us two versions of Bennett, both played by Jennings. One Bennett represents the writer; the other, a man trying to handle life's ordinary burdens. Not surprisingly, they argue.

If any actress knows how turn a line of dialogue into an ego-piercing dart, it's Smith, and the material gives her ample opportunity to emphasize the spikiest parts of Shepherd's personality.

Additional plot currents appear: During Shepherd's 15-year-residence in Bennett's driveway, the playwright's mother slipped into the fog of dementia. Bennett seems to pay more attention to Shepherd than to his own mother.

I could have done without references to Shepherd's decreasing bowel control, but, even in rags, Smith remains her estimable acting self.

That self has a reliable candor, as well as a capacity to touch us. At one point in her life, Shepherd was a budding concert pianist. Smith makes us aware that something valuable has been lost in a life that has veered off the tracks.

It may not be more anecdotal than epic, but Lady in the Van should be welcomed for giving Smith an opportunity to add another memorable character to an already substantial portfolio.

Plenty of creativity in 2016 Oscar shorts

One of the few things I consistently enjoy about the Academy Awards is the spotlight, however fleeting, Oscar shines on short films, still one of the most creative outlets for aspiring and even established filmmakers.

Although it's impossible for me to describe and analyze all 15 entries, I'll make this generalization: Much of what you'll see will leave you with more to talk about than many of the features you've probably paid good money to watch throughout the year.

If longer films sometimes seem short on substance, the same can't be said about the live action shorts that have found their way onto Oscar's shortlist.

Ave Maria, for example, mixes humor and heft in a 15-minute look at the culture clash that results when the car of a family of Israeli settlers breaks down outside a West Bank convent as the Sabbath approaches.

-- Day One takes on us on an unsettling journey when a new translator, an Afghan-American woman, joins US troops searching for terrorists in Afghanistan. Authenticity seems guaranteed: The movie's director, Henry Hughes, served two combat tours in Afghanistan.

-- The German entry, Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Okay) deals with a desperate, divorced father who's trying to cling to a relationship with his eight-year-old daughter.

-- Shok tells the emotionally affecting story of the remembered friendship between two boys during the Kosovo war.

-- Although most of the shorts take place against a backdrop of war or turmoil, Stutterer (the UK and Ireland) charts the inner journey of a stuttering young man who has been involved an on-line relationship with a young woman. He faces a deep crisis of confidence when she suggests that they meet in person.

The animated shorts can be sorrowful and poignant (Bear Story from Chile) or artistically ambitious (Prologue, which takes place during the Spartan-Athenian wars). They also can be culturally significant: Sanjay Patel's Super Team introduces us to an Indian-American boy who's caught up in the conflict between American popular culture and his family's Hindu background.

The Russian entry, We Can't Live Without Cosmos revolves around the unbreakable bond between two cosmonauts.

Not surprisingly the documentaries are equally good -- and in some cases better that their fictional counterparts.

-- Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman team for an usual entry. Employing hand-drawn cells, Last Day of Freedom focuses on the heart-rending story of Bill Babbitt, a man who turns his mentally disturbed brother over to the police when he suspects that his brother has committed a terrible crime. Personal and provocative, the documentary also manages to speak to broader social issues, including the plight of veterans. We hear Bill's voice, but see only drawings of the story he's telling.

-- Chau, Beyond the Lines, from filmmakers Courtney Marsh and Jerry Franck, tells the story of a 16-year-old Vietnamese boy born severely disabled after his mother was exposed to agent orange. Chau dreams of becoming an artist and fashion designer. There's no direct critique of the US for its use of Agent Orange, but the point proves inescapable as we realize that the effects of this toxic defoliant are still being felt in Vietnam.

-- Body Team 12 (David Darg and Bryn Mooser) takes us to Monrovia, Liberia, for a look at the work of Garai Sumo, the only woman on a team devoted to collecting the bodies of those that have died from Ebola.

-- Claude Lanzmann: Specters of the Shoah from filmmaker Adam Benzine is built around interviews with Lanzmann, who recalls the 12-year struggle to complete Shoah, a 9 1/2 hour documentary that's arguably the most important Holocaust film ever made. Unlike this illuminating short, Shoah never was nominated for an Oscar.

-- In A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness , director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy introduces us to 18-year-old Saba, a young Pakistani woman whose father and uncle disfigured her face in a botched honor killing. Saba made the mistake of marrying a man who didn't meet her father and uncle's standards.

Obviously, each of these films could (and should) lead to lengthy conversations, and all of them demonstrate just how much filmmakers can accomplish in when working in the short form.

*In Denver, shorts packages -- including animation and live action -- will be playing at the Mayan. The documentary shorts will be available in two packages at the Sie Film Center.

No splash from predictable '5th Wave'

In what appears to be another hunt for franchise gold, The Fifth Wave is now reading across the nation's multiplexes. A big-screen adaptation of a 2013 novel by Rick Yancey, 5th Wave stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan, a high school student whose normal life is disrupted when an ominous alien spaceship appears above her Ohio hometown. Dull, predictable and, at times, laughable, The Fifth Wave turns Cassie into a quasi-action figure after she loses her parents; she's also put in a position where she must rescue her younger brother (Zackary Arthur) from soldiers who say (wink! wink!) that they're members of the US Army. Liev Schreiber portrays the commander who leads these supposedly helpful troops. Cassie eventually receives assistance from a hunky young man (Alex Roe), who learns about the girlish crush she once had on high school footballer Ben Parish (Nick Robinson). Just about every character seems to have been cut from typical YA cloth, and even the aliens are strictly off-the-rack: They're able to assume human form. Only Maika Monroe's Ringer brings any edge to the proceedings. She's a young woman who can out-tough any young man. Director J Blakeson occasionally allows the movie to fall into soporific lulls, and I wouldn't call it fun to see a perpetually troubled-looking Moretz running around with a semi-automatic weapon. Add a few medium-grade effects sequences depicting alien-induced catastrophes, and you wind up with a movie that may offer something to young fans of the novel and little for anyone else.