Suburbicon

I'm a huge fan of the Coen Brothers. To me, cinema doesn't get much better than No Country for Old Men or Burn After Reading or Raising Arizona...you get the idea. So when I heard that George Clooney was directing their next original script, naturally I couldn't wait to see it. Fast track a year and a half later and here we are. Clooney proved to me that it takes much more than a Coen Bros script to make it a Coen Bros film. Suburbicon is one of the few films that will come about where the talent attached to the project is so overwhelming and plentiful but the final product is so mediocre and bordering on bad that it leaves you scratching your head.

The film is very beautiful to start off. The cinematography is very crisp and extremely colorful which makes the setting of the 50s suburbs seemingly pop even more so. The production design and basically anything of a technical aspect is amazingly done here by traditional standards. So why is Suburbicon falling flat? Very simple: Clooney is woefully unqualified to direct a Coen Bros script as are most people. This feels like it was made by someone who watched Fargo and Burn After Reading a dozen times and decided to make this. It feels like it is an imitation and, by the end of the film, that is all it turns out to be. The cast is even really dull despite a fantastic performance from Julianne Moore. Damon can't decide whether to play it funny or serious and that really plays a big part in the violence of the film. It is comically set up but brutally executed. It doesn't feel right at all and it makes for a very tough watch.

Overall, Suburbicon is a film that will probably leave your mind as quickly as it came. It is a very forgettable film. It is a frustrating piece of cinema as well because we will always be left with the thoughts of what could have been. With the level of talent and star power, Suburbicon has no business being as dull and ragged as it is especially because in a technical sense, the film is great. But with Clooney's misguided direction and Matt Damon's very erratic performance, Suburbicon is a miss of the most disappointing fashion.

I have a policy that I won't watch a movie unless it has an IMDB rating of 6 or more. With a 5.7 rating, I almost gave this movie a wide berth.

That is, until I learned the Cohen brothers wrote this, George Clooney directed, and of course it's difficult to not enjoy any Matt Damon flick -,period.

Near impossible to walk away from all that - no?

I'm so glad I chose to ignore the 5.7 rating. Everything is teriffic, wonderful script, director doesn't dominate the direction and the kid is sublime. Stole the show,

Matt Damon doesn't disappoint either.

Was gonna give this a solid 8 but I'll change to 9 to nudge to 6+ where it deserves to be.

WATCH IT - YOU WON'T REGRET !!

'SUBURBICON': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

The new crime-drama/comedy from director George Clooney, and written by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Grant Heslov and Clooney (Clooney and Heslov also co-produced the film). It stars Matt Damon as a suburbanite, in a seemingly quiet suburb community, that has to suddenly deal with violent criminals, after his house is broken into by mobster thugs. The movie costars Noah Jupe, Julianne Moore, Glenn Fleshler and Oscar Isaac. It's gotten mixed to negative reviews from critics, and it also underperformed at the Box Office. I enjoyed parts of it, but I do agree that overall the film is a bit of a mess.

The story is set in a quiet small community, that is disrupted when an African American family moves in to their very conservative suburb. Young Nicky Lodge (Jupe) befriends one of his new neighbors, who's about the same age as him, but then he has to deal with criminal thugs breaking into his family's home. Nicky's mother (Moore) is sadly killed, and Nicky doesn't understand why his father (Damon) and aunt (also played by Moore) won't identify the culprits (when the police apprehend them). Things only get more complicated from there, and much more dangerous for Nicky.

The advertisements for this film are extremely misleading, and it's definitely not the movie that I thought I was going to see. Parts of it are well made, and very interesting, and it's also surprisingly dark (especially for a film starring Matt Damon, and directed by George Clooney). I think it would have been a lot better had the Coens directed it though (they're ridiculously better filmmakers than Clooney). As it is, the film tries to blend too many different genres, and social commentary on top of that, and none of it really works. It is a bizarrely interesting movie still (at times) though.

It's not a terrible movie like a lot of people are saying, not at all.

But it feels unfinished. Like they had too many ideas and couldn't decide which way to go with things, so they tried it all. And what could have been a modern classic turned into a movie that I probably won't remember in a few months.

And that's a shame.

SPOILER: I'm all for unique and different when it comes to filmmaking, but when a unique film doesn't do anything to intrigue its audience, aside from a consistent tone and setting, then it's not really all that impressive in the end. Suburbicon is George Clooney's latest attempt at direction, and I feel pretty much the same about this film as I did about many of his other works. A tone, story, and time period is all set up, but the way each of his films play out have seemed to leave a lot to be desired in my opinion. That is once again the case with Suburbicon, being a little too confident in itself when it came to presenting a powerful story. Here is why I think you could probably skip this one in theatres, but the effort put into it may warrant a rental if you're looking for something new to watch.

Gardner's family is tested when a group of men invade his home, killing his wife and leaving only his son and sister-in-law alive. Falling for his wife's sister and becoming a complete psychotic and uncontrollable man, this film quickly spirals out of control into a farce of random occurrences. Throughout the first act of this film, it seems like it's going to be a satire that won't hold anything back in terms of wackiness, but that's very quickly thrown out the window, compensating with many subplots of murder and conspiracy. I found myself taken out of the film when the tone would shift this often, making for a very off-putting viewing experience.

Throughout the majority of this film, you're asked to accept the horrible things that the main characters are doing, or just connect with Gardner's young boy on an emotional level, but he's not quite present enough in my opinion. Not until the third act do you really fin yourself caring about some of the characters, which was too late for me. This movie tries far too hard to be clever, funny, and surprising, that it just comes off as forced more often than not. You will find yourself along for a ride of random events and you won't really know who to root for.

I may seem to be ripping this film apart for being un even, but for throughout all its flaws, there are actually quite a few great aspects, especially the sequence involving an appearance by Oscar Isaac. There is a lengthy scene when secrets are revealed and characters begin to evolve and Oscar Isaac elevated every moment of this portion of the film. Up until that point, there really weren't any characters to grasp onto, but the environment around them, along with the sets and the score, always helped to make the film feel more authentic than what its screenplay was presenting. This may sound confusing, but that's due to the fact that this is a very confusing watch, and I feel that many people will agree with me on that account.

From being written by Joel and Ethan Coen (who's recent track record hasn't really impressed me recently), to being competently directed by George Clooney, to having racial undertones to help give the film depth, to showcasing some great moments of comedy, Suburbicon just feels like a huge missed opportunity, due to the talent involved. Matt Damon and Julianne Moore deliver solid performances here and the score by Alexandre Desplat is definitely what sucked me into this movie, even throughout the moments that annoyed me. In the end, I feel as though the positives slightly outweigh the negatives, so I can generously give it a pass. This is about as average as you can get in terms of having a clever setting and premise, only to never fully deliver on either front. Suburbicon isn't quite worth seeing in theatres, but it may please hardcore fans of the Coen brother's past work.