The Coen Brothers’ cesarian cut and paste job

HAIL CAESAR! directed by Joel & Ethan Coen (USA,2016)

Friends, Romans,countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Hail Caesar!, not to praise it.

We all love the Coen Brothers, and not without cause, yet I am sad to report that this is one mess of a movie.

It’s as if the siblings decided to do a cut and paste job based on ideas left over from earlier films, then phoned round all their favorite actors to see who was available for a two hour love in.

There are some clever and amusing scenes but none of them lead anywhere because there is no coherent storyline to tie them together.

Along with the equally dire Burn After Reading from 2008, it is plain that what we have here is an ensemble cast that had more fun making a movie than the audience have watching it.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF STEPHEN HAWKING

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING directed by James Marsh (UK, 2014)

The doctors who told Stephen Hawking that he only had around two years to live must be feeling pretty silly. They obviously weren’t counting on the man’s superhuman willpower or what the love and dedication of a good woman can do.

In some ways Hawking’s story is like one of those Sci-Fi movies where a brain is alive when the rest of the body is dead. In Cold Lazarus, for example, Dennis Potter’s final play for television, a preserved head is tapped for the brain waves it generates.

In the recent movie, Transcendence (a turkey by all accounts) starring Johnny Depp, there is a similar theme of a scientist’s brain surviving the death of his body.

Hawking’s case is different in one crucial respect, however. The fact that he has still been able to father three children is proof that his ‘muscle of life’ is unaffected by the motor neuron disease. Bizarre tabloid reports of him attending sex clubs and enjoying the attention of lap dancers also shows that his sex drive remains high.