Hail Caesar (2016) Coen Brothers, George Clooney – Movie Review

Set in Hollywood of the 1950s, Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, an executive of the fictional Capitol Pictures film studio who is tasked with ‘fixing’ a host of extracurricular scandals that their contracted star performers are engaged in before the tabloids get a hold of the stories and ruin their big-budget prestige pictures they’re set to appear in.  One such problem involves their most bankable box office draw, Baird Whitlock, who goes missing from the set of his sprawling biblical epic of a Quo Vadis or Ben Hur type, kidnapped (kinda?) by a group of Communists in the industry to impart their philosophies in private meetings, requiring much of Mannix’s attention to keep anyone from knowing about until he figures out what’s going on.