Hollywood history gets the Coen treatment in Hail, Caesar!

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      Starring Josh Brolin. Rated PG. Now playing.

      Few filmmakers working today have a deeper love of studio lore than do the Coen brothers, and here the veteran writer-directors render unto Hollywood what is Hollywood’s, and so much more.

      Where 1991’s Barton Fink followed a lefty screenwriter on a nightmare visit to ‘30s Los Angeles, their delightful new effort jumps to 1951 and focuses on management—mainly Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), vice president and fixer-in-chief of Capitol Pictures. That was the real name of the VP at MGM in that period, when the old studios were starting to get killed by television. There are plenty of in-house harmonies, like subtitling the studio’s new bible epic (also called Hail, Caesar!) A Tale of the Christ, just as was done with Ben-Hur.

      As befits that increasingly desperate era, there’s little to hold the plot elements together here. Apart from aloof narration by Michael Gambon, Mannix’s peripatetic problem-solving is what connects them, as he moves from sound studio and screening room to Catholic confessional and meetings with twin gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton, in lethal hats). Plus there’s a headhunter from Lockheed who offers him a more secure, if possibly radioactive, future.

      Among the Capitol projects currently in production, parodied note-perfectly, are an Esther Williams-style water ballet (featuring Scarlett Johansson as the gum-cracking mermaid), a dancing-sailors musical (Channing Tatum in tap shoes), and a low-budget cowboy flick (with young Alden Ehrenreich as the breakout discovery here).

      Some of this golden (and very white)-era stuff will be lost on younger folks who’ve spent no time with Turner Classic Movies. And it’s another sign of how far we’ve fellow-traveled that the anti-Communist witch hunt of the postwar period is turned into a wicked joke when the studio’s biggest star—George Clooney, who spends all his time dressed as a Roman centurion—is kidnapped by commies, and kind of likes it.

      Among the cameos, look for Jonah Hill, Ralph Fiennes, and best of all, Frances McDormand, who proves that editing is the most dangerous part of making movies.

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