Hell or High Water
Directed by: David Mackenzie
Written by: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Gil Birmingham

The West Texas of David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water is a series of near ghost towns that seem frozen in time.  Its restaurants, stores and, most crucially, banks are all but empty, save for the employees.  The movie’s only hints at modernity are the frequent references to the 2008 financial crisis, as two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) drive from town to town robbing those nearly empty banks, they pass many a billboard telling them how to relieve debt.

Mackenzie is not subtle about the hitting home the economic turmoil that pushes Toby (Pine) to ask his wild, recently-released-from prison brother Tanner (Foster) to help him with the robberies.  Toby is trying to raise enough money to pay off the debt he owes the bank to save their family ranch and establish a trust for his sons.  The brothers don’t go for the vaults when they hit the banks, or take packets of money that are more easily traced.  They go for small bills, which means they have to pull off several robberies to earn enough money.  It also means they aren’t big time enough to draw the attention of the FBI, and are instead pursued by a pair of Texas Rangers, the soon-to-be-retired Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and his younger but no less world-weary partner Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham).

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Suicide Squad
Directed by: David Ayer
Written by: David Ayer
Starring: Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie and Viola Davis

For more than a year, Jared Leto’s antics to show how he prepared for the role of The Joker have dominated the discussion of Suicide Squad. To discuss the movie was to discuss how he sent used condoms, anal beads or a dead hog to cast mates.  The marketing hype behind his capital P Performance was nauseating and annoying, and pretty (sorry) laughable given how much screen time he has.

Leto’s take on the Clown Prince of Crime takes up 10 minutes of Suicide Squad, if that.  He appears mostly in the flashbacks for Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former psychiatrist he twisted into joining his criminal dealings.  They are a pair of insane lovers, guided by raw impulse and a gleeful desire to create anarchy. Leto’s performance conveys this well enough, though it’s far from the most memorable take on this character.  His Joker has a deep, focused stare that is often overcome with a broad, silver-toothed grin.  Robbie fares much better as Quinn, a chaotic swirl of baseball bat swinging and demented giggling.  She is a menacing, dominating screen presence, something director David Ayer utilizes well throughout the movie.

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Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising — Neighbors 2 is not as consistently funny as Nicholas Stoller’s surprisingly hilarious original, though it does take admirable strides to be more inclusive and address some of the issues that held the first one back.  Sorority Rising goes out of its way early on to confront some of the homophobia that plagued the first movie, with one of the frat bros (Dave Franco) getting engaged and booting his former leader Teddy (Zac Efron) out of their apartment.  Teddy is having a hard time adjusting to life outside of college, especially with the extensive criminal record his feud with former neighbors Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne).  He fills the void (and a half-hearted desire for revenge) by helping a group of freshman women (led by Chloe Grace Moretz) start up a sorority in the same house.  That backfires when the sisters get weirded out by Teddy and kick him out of, and Sorority Rising really kicks into gear when he decides to team up with Mac and Kelly.

The women’s desire to start their own sorority is spurned by the gross sexism of the established Greek system, which only allows frats to throw parties.  Those parties largely revolve around debasing women, which makes the sisters’ struggle for independence much more sympathetic than the frat brother’s struggles in the first movie.  Their generational feud with Mac and Kelly is more poignant, if not as funny, than the first.  Sorority Rising is lacking in the manic energy and vibrant set pieces that helped the original overshadow its shoddy story.  There is one notable exception: a hilarious weed heist that Mac, Teddy, Kelly and a couple of their friends stage at football tailgate.  Teddy gyrates around on a stage to distract the sorority sisters while the others grab the drugs, and the resulting chase when they catch them mid-theft gives the movie a much needed spark.  Though there aren’t enough scenes like that, much of what worked in Neighbors still works well enough here, namely Rogen and Byrne’s comedic and romantic chemistry and Efron’s raw, warm physicality.  Grade: C+

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The Invitation
Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Written by: Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi
Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Michiel Huisman and Tammy Blanchard

Will wants to believe something is wrong.  From the moment he arrives at his ex-wife’s sleek home overlooking Los Angeles, everything seems a bit out of place.  It’s not just what Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman) are hiding, it’s what they’re telling everyone.  This is the first time Will (Logan Marshall-Green) has visited the home in two years, since tragedy did irreparable damage to he and Edie’s relationship.  He is still shaken up by it, but she seems much more composed.

Eden’s newfound serenity is eerie and disingenuous.  In The Invitation’s well-placed flashback sequences, triggered by Will’s memories of particular rooms in the home, she’s frantic and violent in the aftermath of the tragic event.   Now she slinks through the same home like Lana Del Rey with a less well guarded secret. What are she and David hiding, exactly? They reveal quite a bit, like how they went to Mexico and learned to purge themselves of guilt and sadness with a mysterious organization.   Everyone at the dinner party, which includes Will’s new girlfriend Kira (Emaytzy Corinealdi), five of he and Eden’s mutual friends and two that she and David know for this cult-like healing group, is shown a kind of recruitment video for the group.  In it, a calmly assured man hovers over a dying woman, explaining how the others in the room are absorbing her spirit as she passes away.

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Hail, Caesar! — Joel and Ethan Coen’s Hail, Caesar! is a detective story set amid the extravagant musicals and melodramas of a ’50s Hollywood studio.  The “detective,” Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), is actually a fixer for Capitol Studios.  He’s out to find Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the star of the studio’s latest epic (also titled Hail, Caesar!).  Whitlock is drugged and abducted from Capitol before his crucial closing monologue scene.  His location is just one of the many things on Mannix’s plate; he’s also balancing intrusive twin gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton), an actor who can’t really act (a scene stealing Alden Ehrenreich) and an actress (Scarlett Johansson) who the studio wants to make marry for a third time so she doesn’t have a child out of wedlock and ruin her image.

The Coens stage Mannix’s search for Whitlock not as something urgent but as something that will likely sort itself out.  (Minor spoilers ahead) Whitlock’s abduction is an inside job staged by writers looking to stage a revolt in the studio to make more money.  In a lavish mansion overlooking the ocean, they explain to him how they’re using him to seize the means of production from the studio heads.  Whitlock later explains to Mannix that they taught him about Kapital (“with a K” he makes sure to add).

Hail, Caesar!’s script is as sharp as anything the Coens have done, but it also basks in the glories of old Hollywood productions.  Long stretches of the movie abandon the central plot altogether to revel in some fantastic set-pieces; these include a show-stopping tap-dance sequence in a sailor musical (led by the effortlessly charming Channing Tatum) and a synchronized swimming number for a mermaid film that is shot almost entirely from above.  In this way it reminded me of Paul Thomas Anderson’s recent film Inherent Vice, another recent detective story that conjures up a mood of mystery rather than focusing on the process of solving one.  Hail, Caesar! ends on a similar note as the Coens’ previous film Inside Llewyn Davis, leading right back to its beginning and suggesting that the protagonist is doomed to repeat the entire thing over again the next day.   Grade: B+

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