Not much on tv tonight. Until suddenly there was.. Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney and written by the Coen brothers, sounded interesting, and was one I hadn't seen. So I watched that.
Matt Damon is a resident of this neat, modern 50s American housing development. He's VP of finance in some large corporation or other - it looks like a well-paying job, and it'd have to be for him to live here. Julianne Moore plays both his wife (blonde) and sister-in-law (brunette). And he has a little boy, Noah Jupe. It's a picture-perfect scene. Until the (whisper) black family moves in next door, to everyone's shock. How topical. But while the community protests against their new neighbours (after all, as they say, black people never try to improve themselves - they're a bad influence), are they looking in the right direction for what's wrong in the neighbourhood?
With the Coen brothers in charge of the script, it was never going to be a straightforward story - and there are enough OTT twists and turns to keep anyone entertained. It's billed as a comedy, but played very straight - I didn't laugh through the entire thing, although I gaped in disbelief through much of the latter half. The disbelief, of course, was down to the plot twists - I have to wonder whether, had the Coens themselves been directing, it'd have been funnier. Certainly, I tend to find their films funnier than this.
Don't get me wrong - that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it! Julianne Moore, in particular, is excellent, and there's a terrific juxtaposition between the protests against the unfortunate black family, and the insanity that's quietly happening next door. It just feels like a little bit of a lost opportunity - it falls kinda flat. Never mind, it's interesting enough to have a look, if you come across it.
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