It is as though Denzel Washington wanted his performance as the title character in Joel Coen’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH were conceived and executed as a tribute to the famous sleepwalking scene played by Lady Macbeth. He speaks the lines not trippingly from the tongue, but rather mumbled with little emotional affect, albeit with admirable… Read More »
HAIL, CAESAR!
If Douglas Sirk had directed a film noir written by Billy Wilder, it might have looked something like HAIL, CAESAR!, the latest thoughtful tangle of philosophy and whimsy from the Coen Brothers. Taking place in a 1951 Hollywood not entirely unlike the one that actually existed, it mixes Cold War paranoia, carefully managed studio PR… Read More »
BURN AFTER READING
It is a suitably perverse twist that the only person who has the clearest idea of what’s she is doing in the Coen Brothers latest offering, BURN AFTER READING, is Linda Litzke, the inadvertent femme fatale of the piece played by the miraculous Frances McDormand. Not the CIA operatives, not the Treasury Department guy, not… Read More »
THE LADYKILLERS
The Coen Brothers remake of the perfect and perfectly exquisite Ealing Studio comedy, THE LADYKILLERS, isnt just a misfire, its an annoying misfire, irksome, tedious, and on the whole, unnecessary. The original, as you recall, was perfect. It was, if you recall, a resolutely deadpan and black comedy that nonetheless taught a valuable lesson about… Read More »