‎Hail, Caesar! (2016) directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Hail, Caesar!

2016 Directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Lights. Camera. Abduction.

Tells the comedic tale of Eddie Mannix, a fixer who worked for the Hollywood studios in the 1950s. The story finds him at work when a star mysteriously disappears in the middle of filming.

Josh Brolin George Clooney Alden Ehrenreich Ralph Fiennes Scarlett Johansson Tilda Swinton Channing Tatum Frances McDormand Jonah Hill Veronica Osorio Heather Goldenhersh Alison Pill Max Baker Fisher Stevens Patrick Fischler Tom Musgrave David Krumholtz Greg Baldwin Patrick Carroll Fred Melamed John Bluthal Alex Karpovsky Armazd Stepanian Allan Havey Robert Pike Daniel Robert Picardo Ian Blackman Geoffrey Cantor Christopher Lambert Show All…

106 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 11

What is Hail, Caesar!? What isn’t Hail, Caesar!? It’s a comedy, a noir, a historical epic, a musical (of two different varieties), and a melodrama. It’s a movie about the glory days of the industry that churns them out, and how the system so often resembled 1,000 spinning plates wobbling in perfect harmony for a split second. It’s a film about faith, and the pivotal role that it plays in one man’s search for meaning amidst the chaos of existence. It’s a tale of the Christ, told by two Jews who wouldn’t trust Jesus to save a cat out of a tree, let alone someone’s mortal soul. That is to say: It’s a Coen brothers movie, and one of their…
Review by Evan ★★★½ 13

There was a point in time when I didn't like Channing Tatum; what a fucking idiot I was.

The film is very entertaining, but its kind of all over the place. There's A LOT of great scenes, but the movie itself didn't completely come together for me. Definitely enjoyed it overall though.

Like a good chunk of the Coen Brothers' filmography; this is definitely one I'm going to have to watch more than once to fully appreciate it. Heck, I didn't care much for The Big Lebowski after my first watch and now I've seen it 10+ times. That film is my Bible.
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 9

92/100

"Would that it were so simple.”

Hail, Caesar! begins with the image of a crucifix as a solemn hymn silently sings within a quiet church, establishing an earnest degree of gravity in a surrounding world of profound, bewildering zaniness. It is in this opening image, soon dissolving into a close-up of Christ’s universal display of sacrifice, where we meet the Coens; not as filmmakers, but as autobiographers. That’s not to say that Hail, Caesar! is strictly about any specific experience, but it feels mined from within, a slapstick-y scream of annoyance and frustration that continuously trails back, wounded but energized, to the swelling love of cinema.

Much can be stated about the film’s pure aesthetic pleasures, evoking the classicism…
Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 6

49/100

[original one-sheet]

Not the Coens' worst (though it's close), but easily their laziest. Structurally, it's a disaster, continually and arbitrarily switching back and forth between puckish character study (of a surprisingly bland character) and goofy ensemble piece—it's as if (a blander) Llewyn Davis had wandered into Burn After Reading, which would do neither Llewyn nor BAR's clockwork plotting any favors. More than that, though, Hail, Caesar! plays like 21st-century Woody Allen, which is to say that it feels like they wrote exactly one draft and then immediately shot it. (Casting tons of recognizable faces in forgettable bit parts—did they really need Alex Karpovsky to walk around a room snapping photos?—heightens the resemblance.) So many potentially terrific ideas never amount…
Review by Josh Larsen ★★★★½ 24

Hail, Caesar! is many things: a rip-roaring ode to old-fashioned entertainment (dancing, swimming, lassoing and the like); a silly farce peppered with wordplay, innuendo and wit; and a chronicle of spiritual crisis, in which one man tries to find his ultimate purpose. But mostly it's a creative clarion call to celebrate the way cinema can be all of these things, sometimes even at once. This is the Coens’ Sullivan’s Travels, a meta comedy that wants to deflate the pretensions of Hollywood even as it’s giving the movies themselves a giant hug. As such, it might just be their magnum opus.

Full review here.
Review by josh lewis🌹 ★★★★½ 7

DIVINE PRESENCE TO BE SHOT

the coen's oeuvre is a varied one chalk full of different genres, ideas, characters etc, sometimes light & wacky, other times heavy & serious but there is a constant -- the coen's love to tell stories about individuals pointlessly (but endearingly) fighting the stupid, chaotic, contradictory systems that, for whatever reason, control human life. whether it be the existential grasping of A Serious Man or Barton Fink, or the straight-up moronic confusion of Burn After Reading ("all bureaucracy, no mission"), the coen's never fail to argue for the little guy's individualism in systems that see no value in them. they're just as humanistic as they are nihilistic. and in this regard Hail, Caesar is the coen brothers…

Recent reviews

Review by revchu ★★★★

Dolph Lundgren ... Submarine Commander (uncredited)

Heh
Review by Usman ★★

Don't make the big mistake I made, don't watch a Coen Brothers' classic like The Big Lebowski and then watch Hail, Caesar! You will not be pleased.

To point out some positives, this movie is bright, colorful, vibrant, and appealing. It is all just misused badly. The story is bland, tasteless, and leads to absolutely nowhere. Actually, I'm not even sure how this qualified as a story. There's no big payoff or climax. What's worse, however, is the decision to have such a stellar cast with absolutely no goals for them. Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and Ralph Fiennes are all equally useless and unimportant to this film. Thankfully, the Coens could rely on Josh Brolin and Alden Ehreinreich to save this mediocre mess.

Overall, I was told by several people that I would be disapointed with this one but decided to give it a go anyway. Bad decision. The movie is nothing terrible, but it definitely is pointless.
Review by jess ★★

so boring
Review by Nag Champion ★★★★

Lower tier Cohen Brothers is still better than the highest rung of most other directors. Hail, Caesar! is a lot of fun and boy that Alden Ehrenreich is one handsome fella.
Review by Chris Turner ★★★★

This is a classic Coens film. It has a lot of cameos, a good sense of odd humourous bewilderment and is superbly directed. Channing Tatum is superb, comes close to stealing the show with only a few scenes. Elden Ehrenreich gives the most rounded performance with the most rounded character. All the cast are game, Clooney, Swinton and Fiennes give very amusing performances. Josh Brolin is the only one slightly miscast, as he is possibly over serious for the film. However, there is much to recommend here.
Review by Bryce Thompson ★★★

It's be a lot better if it had a plot
Review by stankface ★★

That was weird

And who in their right mind reduces Jonah Hill to a cameo?
Review by Malwan ★★★★

It's really enjoyable! There are some good laughs in it!
The cast is really good!
The ending is rather eehhh!
Review by Ivan Sikorski ★★★

Nada espetacular, mas ainda assim muito divertido. Gostei bastante.