Popular reviews

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  Review by karen h. ★★★★★ 5

  would that it were so simple

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 13

  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…

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★★ 27

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  When I saw this in theaters I loved it but I let other people's reactions to it convince me that it's a film that works as a collection of great individual scenes, but not as a cohesive picture. Wrong! I love this movie. I think everything single thing about it is absolutely wonderful. A gorgeous and truly joyful farce about communists and the studio system era that feels like it celebrates each just as much as it admonishes them. A studio slave is abducted by communists only to return for production on a film decrying slavery and extoling the virtues of the most famous communist of all. Feels like the Coens taking a much lighter, less fantastical stab at the…

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★★ 13

  [seconds before the Channing Tatum dance scene starts)
  me: oh man, this scene’s so good. have you seen it?
  cheyenne: yes. you showed it to me several times before we shot the last september video

  unbelieveable how much this movie is like a reverse Babylon. like if it was released tomorrow, we’d all be like “oh cute, a Babylon parody.” almost every scene has an equal! i liked babylon enough, but i love this movie. and it looks soooo ducking good, deakins nails the aesthetic of 50s films spectacularly. kind of like the best sketch film of all time

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  Review by Lucy ★★★½ 5

  "would that it twuuuuuuh so simple"

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  Review by cinephile... 🕯️ ★★★★

  channing tatum's homoerotic tapdancing sailors musical number saved my life

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  Review by Evan ★★★½ 10

  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.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 8

  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…

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  Review by ellie ✨ ★★★★½ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  don't talk to me unless ur gay communist channing tatum

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  Review by Karst ★★½ 3

  Wasn't bad, wasn't great. One of the most average films I've ever seen. Pretty disappointing considering what I was expecting but oh well.

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  Review by Branson Reese 1

  I think this is possibly the platonic ideal of how to use Channing Tatum in your movie

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 16

  49/100

  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 to anything,…