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.

Quite surprised by so many bad ratings, almost as though there was another agenda. I had not read these before watched the film and did not know it was co written by the coen brothers, but I found it better than I expected and only gave it 8 instead of 7 to up the overall rating. It moved along at a steady pace and was pretty lean. I would certainly recommend anyone to that I know well to watch if they get the opportunity.

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.

This will be the first time I have ever written a review for IMDb. After watching the movie the other night, I had to check the scores on the site as I usually do. When I saw the score of a measly 4.8 out of 10 something compelled me to write this review.

From start to finish it was gripping and interesting. It has been a long time ago I saw such an original piece of art. I'm not a cinegraphic expert by any means, but I recognize a gem when I see one.

Go see it !

'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.