Trick or Treat: Suburbicon: A Back-Drop For Horror or A Nasty Bit of Film Noir?

Released just before Halloween, George Clooney's sprawling comedic thriller takes to the screens nation-wide and here in Mesa on Friday, October 27th just in time for Trick-or-Treat:

So far what's in the bag for this 1950's-era action-packed oh-so-retro slow-slam are mixed audience reactions.

The question is open how it will play both here in Mesa - a Melting Pot of Diversity where [to borrow a phrase from one reviewer]

We demand our civil rights to live where we want and with who we want. And with God's help, we will overcome."

The new movie joins the big screen line-up for cinematic interpretations of that great American Promised Land arrives in Post-World War 2 Suburbia where white couples get married and breed, the wives do the shopping, the husbands do the working and the kids like to play baseball . . . too good to be true for sure. It became the Utopia we created for what is now three generations after The Baby Boomers. 

Suburbicon (2017) - Official Trailer - Paramount Pictures

Views: 2,275,752

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Some reviews:

 

'Suburbicon': Film Review | Venice 2017

COMMENTS > We've sniffed the rot beneath these manicured lawns too many times before

5:06 AM PDT 9/2/2017 by David Rooney

"It's almost inevitable, while watching Suburbicon, that you find yourself wondering about the movie Joel and Ethan Coen might have made of it, had they gone ahead with their original script. Perhaps an anarchic comedy in the constantly surprising vein of Raising Arizona? Or a daring mix of grotesque violence and deadpan humor along the lines of Fargo? In the hands of director George Clooney, the material has some nasty charms, for sure. But it pushes too hard from the start, then steadily goes off the rails from dark to dyspeptic, lacking the originality, bite or tonal consistency to make up for dipping from a very familiar James M. Cain well. Its bigger problem is a timely subplot about virulent racism among white Americans that comes off as a mishandled afterthought.
Paramount's best bet is to push the novelty of Matt Damon and Julianne Moore playing characters who appear on the surface to be regular 1950s archetypes — the dependable breadwinner and the sweet-as-pie homemaker, respectively — before being exposed as amoral schemers when their bad decisions unravel. But there's been a long history of more incisive movies about the poisonous soul lurking beneath the reassuring cookie-cutter order of suburban America, and this one ultimately brings little that's fresh. . .
A cute opening sequence, styled as a video promo for potential residents, touts Suburbicon as "a melting pot of diversity," drawing folks from places as far apart as New York, Ohio and Mississippi. But every happy family in the kitschy illustrations is lily-white, signaling a restrictive environment, even if it's not declared as such.
The cheery mailman gets a shock when he knocks on the door of a new resident and discovers that the African-American woman he assumes to be the maid is actually the lady of the house, Mrs. Meyers (Karimah Westbrook). That alarm instantly spreads, sparking a rabid town hall meeting at which homeowners protest the perceived violation of their community and the inevitable drop in property values. While it's not subtle, their appropriation of liberal language for their cause gets the point across: "We demand our civil rights to live where we want and with who we want. And with God's help, we will overcome."
Link > http://www.hollywoodreporter.com includes a podcast and video of three stars
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How movies like ‘Suburbicon’ attempt to deconstruct American suburbs

October 19, 2017 12:27 PM
By Rafer Guzmán  rafer.guzman@newsday.com 

The wives do the shopping, the husbands do the working and the kids like to play baseball in “Suburbicon,” a fictional American town that lends its name to George Clooney’s new film, which arrives in theaters Friday, Oct. 27. As it turns out, this clean-cut, post-War scenario is too good to be true. Although “Suburbicon” begins as the story of a wholesome-seeming family — Matt Damon and Julianne Moore play dad and mom — it ends in violence, bloodshed and murder. . .

To a generation that lived through World War II, the suburbs promised peace, quiet, fresh air and a relief from urban congestion and crime. (It also drove white flight, as “Suburbicon” makes clear in a racially-charged subplot.)

Over the years, the suburbs have served as a backdrop for horror (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”), social commentary (“The Stepford Wives”) and, lest we forget, feel-good comedy (“Mr. Mom”).

Here’s a quick survey course in suburban cinema, broken down into five categories:

READ MORE an excellent round-up by reporter Rafael Guzman

Link > Newsday

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Forbes says it's a somewhat low-profile debut for such a promising picture, with reviewer Scott Mendelsohn adding, I like what Clooney was going for, but he didn’t quite pull it off. Ironically enough, while Suburbicon may not be the movie we need right now, it may well be the movie we deserve.

Link > Forbes.com

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival to mixed reviews, and as we know movies of this nature (adult-skewing, non-tentpole, not necessarily crowd-pleasing) are at a comparative disadvantage even compared to three years ago. Absent much in the way of Oscar buzz or positive narratives, this one may struggle. The good news is that director George Clooney usually makes a point to keep his budgets in check when he makes old-school, adult-skewing studio programmers like this. I don’t have the exact budget for this one, but I’m betting that Clooney didn’t spend too much of his investors’ money.

Scott Mendelsohn's Review:
There are three distinct movies somewhat at war with each other in Suburbicon, and only two of them really mesh together while the third essentially sabotages the overwhelming narrative. To wit, the George Clooney-directed film, written by a discarded Joel and Ethan Coen screenplay (from 1986) isn’t content to just be a nasty bit of suburban film noir. The film also contains a subplot loosely based on the true story of Daisy and William Myers, an African American couple (with a young son) who moved into a lily-white suburban neighborhood and were greeted with jeers, vandalism and riots from their tolerant Northern neighbors.
At a glance, the story of the Myers is itself ripe for a cinematic telling, even if it didn’t have a conventional three-act structure (they lived in the home for four years and protests just trickled out after about two years). So, while Clooney and friends may mean well in exposing the outright racism present in supposedly liberal enclaves, the choice to use that story as topical seasoning for a black comedy about duplicitous white folks feels like a metaphor for Hollywood’s feelings on racial inclusivity in general. . .
Suburbicon is a story about a middle-class dad (Matt Damon) who attempts to cope with the home invasion murder of his wheelchair-bound wife (Julianne Moore). I guess this is a first-act spoiler, but you can probably guess that Gardner and Aunt Margaret (also Moore) had something to do with it. Noah Jupe is terrific as the young son, and the film’s best moments are when he’s dealing with the unthinkable truth about his father and his aunt. At times, with its "child’s eye view" of the crime melodrama and racial strife, it feels like Clooney is trying to craft a more cynical take on To Kill a Mockingbird.
Had that been the entire movie then the Myers’ subplot might have been applicable (Espinosa gets the most dialogue among his family) as part of a child’s-eye view of societal bigotry and parental betrayal. But, perhaps because Matt Damon and Julianne Moore are movie stars, we also get a bunch of scenes of Damon and Moore doing their best to dig themselves out of a hole. This stuff is not without entertainment value, and it picks up when Oscar Isaac shows up as a suspicious insurance investigator. But the emphasis on the adults just makes the racial strife subplot look that much more exploitative. . . Away from would-be Oscar contention and away from the current conversation about racial and gender inequities in mainstream Hollywood, Suburbicon is an entertaining potboiler that looks great and boasts a fine cast. Even within context, Matt Damon’s growing reputation as maybe not the greatest wonder boy in Hollywood history is put to good use (his final scene belongs on a highlight reel). I may have been offended by how the film appropriated painful black history for seasoning in an otherwise lily-white crime melodrama, but I was mostly entertained and it’s at least one-third of a great movie. Whether that counts as a recommendation is up to you. . .