With the current fashion for adding typographic and punctuation flourishes to movie titles (The Bride!, “Wuthering Heights”), I was reminded of an earlier entry that seemed as if it were designed to confound attempts at citation.
The Coen Brothers’ star-studded Hail, Caesar! just happened to be reviewed by me ten years ago this week so it had to be today’s recommendation.
I really loved this film and felt that it was – a bit like The Bride! is today – unfairly maligned by local critics, to the point that I made a crack about it on Facebook that got me into some trouble with my contemporaries. As usual, I was excited by subtext:
On the surface, it’s a loving screwball satire on Hollywood’s golden age. But in fact, it’s a serious treatise on faith and how we humans find ourselves following representatives of the truth rather than seeking the truth ourselves. Heavy, man.
This is one of my favourite video reviews from my time on the staff at RNZ. The edit comes together really well, I think (and it’s only 3 minutes long).
I see there’s a brand new Blu-ray on TradeMe – that might well be coming to this house next pay day.
Where to watch Hail, Caesar!
Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and India: Digital rental
USA, Ireland & UK: Streaming on Prime Video
Further reading
Here’s a gift link to this lovely NY Times article about the mangling of film titles by visitors to Film at Lincoln Center:
After the woman departed, correct tickets in hand, Welch turned to the box office computer, opened a Google doc called “WRONG MOVIE TITLES,” and entered “Upside Down, Anyways” onto an eternally growing list of incorrect film names given by patrons.
For more than three years, the box office staff at Film at Lincoln Center has been diligently cataloging all the delightfully incorrect movie titles given by theatergoers, noting everything from near misses like turning “In the Mood for Love” into “In the Name ofLove” to baffling mutations like changing “Anatomy of a Fall” to “An Economy of a Murder.”
