Alden Ehrenreich

ON THE SILVER SCREEN: FOLLYWOOD (HAIL, CAESAR!)

 

By Brian Lafferty

February 5, 2016 (San Diego) – Hail, Caesar! (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 2016) falls under a category I like to call a “Love Letter Movie.” Defining the term is hard. However, I can easily point to a classic example, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (John Hughes, 1986), which was the beloved director’s love letter to Chicago. It showcased Wrigley Field, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Von Steuben Day parade, and Chicago’s other fine attractions with affection and pride. Hail, Caesar! is the Coens’ love letter to classic Hollywood in much the same way.


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ON THE SILVER SCREEN: SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT (BEAUTIFUL CREATURES)

By Brian Lafferty

February 15, 2013 (San Diego) – The Twilight movies are easy targets for online hostility and teasing.  But at least those movies, as lifeless as they are to me (I gave up after the second one), respect their audience, especially their target young adult audience.  They don't insult anyone’s intelligence.  Beautiful Creatures, inspired by (or, rather, ripped off from) the Twilight series is offensive, rife with exaggerated phony accents, Southern stereotypes, hammy acting, and dialogue so awkward and bad that it confounds the actors who have to say these lines.  I’m surprised my neck didn’t get stiff from all the double takes.  Beautiful Creatures is downright insulting towards not just the general audience, but also particularly its target young adult audience and their intelligence, and the flagrancy of it is appalling.


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Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.