Hail Caesar! (2016)

Okay, it's confession time: much as I love the work of the Coen brothers, much of their work tends to make me feel just a little bit intellectually inadequate. I am used, let's be frank, to being the smartest person in the room, so I've never quite got over my shame at the fact that after around five viewings, I still don't have the first idea what The Big Lebowski is about. No Country For Old Men baffled me too, and I'm still not totally sure what was going on in Miller's Crossing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy their films immensely, it's just that these days, even their frothier efforts tend to leave me wondering what hidden dimensions I might have missed.

Take Hail, Caesar!, their love letter to 1950s Hollywood. It's a delight from start to finish, ranging from gently amusing to flat-out, laugh-out-loud funny, but part of me still worries that the joke might be on me for missing something obviously allegorical. Goodness knows there's plenty of material there for allegory, as George Clooney's amiable hellraiser Baird Whitlock is stolen from the set of the titular Christian epic to be brainwashed by the Commies, but try as I might, I  couldn't quite work out what it's all supposed to mean.

What it mostly means, in any case, is a rattlingly good time that comes primarily in the form of a series of vignettes linked by the travails of hard-working fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). We follow him as, for the sake of his beloved Capitol Pictures he attempts to keep any number of different balls in the air. Thus in addition to the situation Whitlock we have him attempting to find a husband for the pregnant star of the aquaballet, DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson, verging on self-parody), and to placate effete English director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) after the studio insists on casting amiable singing cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich, in what may prove his breakout role) in his frightfully mannered melodrama.

The Coens keep it fast-moving and playful, with a number of juicy cameos mixed in amongst the set-pieces. I'm always happy to see Tilda Swinton, and here we're given two of her as feuding twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker. My favourite, however, was Frances McDormand, whose single scene is one I wouldn't dream of spoiling for you.

Wonderful fun, then - and if you ever tire of watching George Clooney pretending to be a bad actor, you're almost certainly tired of life - but I can't shake the sneaking suspicion there's something a little deeper going on. Still, this is one I'll always be happy to re-watch.

Unrelated, but have you seen the trailer for the Ghostbusters remake? I know I hold no love for the original, but I think I may have to give this one a shot. If nothing else, I can no longer complain that movies never star anyone who looks like me.