is a 2016 black comedy mystery film written, produced, edited, and directed by the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.

An American-British co-production, the film stars Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum, with Michael Gambon as the narrator.

His duties as the studio "fixer" find him covering up for its scandalous stars and fending off twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker.

He convinces Thora to withhold a story in exchange for information on singing Western film star Hobie Doyle.

Hobie has been hopelessly miscast in a sophisticated comedy of manners and, despite the efforts of director Laurence Laurentz, cannot overcome his thick Western American accent.

The pair are accosted by the Thacker sisters, but Hobie spots the briefcase of ransom money, carried by musical star Burt Gurney.

Thora tells him that her column will reveal Baird won his role in an earlier picture by having sex with Laurentz, but Mannix threatens to ruin her reputation by publicly naming her source as Burt, a Communist and recent Soviet defector.

Hollywood responded with escapist fare: westerns, highly choreographed dance and aquatic spectacles, and Roman epics with massive casts.

[43] In The Washington Post, Kristen Page-Kirby wrote that nostalgia for Hollywood's golden age is heavily filtered by time.

uses the uniformly terrible fake movies within it to show that while we all remember 1946 for stuff like The Yearling and Notorious, it also gave us Tarzan and the Leopard Woman.

"[44] The Coens cited their own examples of subpar films and performances from the era that they saw as television reruns while growing up: That Touch of Mink (1962), and Laurence Olivier co-starring with Charlton Heston in Khartoum (1966).

[25] The following month, Christopher Lambert was cast as Arne Slessum, a European filmmaker who has an affair with Johannson's character.

[22] Norman Lloyd was considered for the part of philosopher Herbert Marcuse, but claimed that, owing to safety concerns regarding his centenarian age, the role ultimately went to the younger British comedian John Bluthal.

[47] Costume designer Mary Zophres began work 12 weeks ahead of shooting, researching period wardrobe from the late 1940s on the assumption that most people routinely wear clothes purchased over the past few years.

Photos from the MGM library and the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences showed that film crews dressed more formally than today—no shorts or sneakers.

Zophres produced about 15 boards of preliminary sketches, including "sculptural Technicolor gowns" for the ballroom drama inspired by the work of Charles James.

Her double-breasted suit for Brolin was intended to blend with his skin tone, his moustache was styled after Walt Disney's, his hair was permed, and his character alone wore a fedora.

The costumes in Ben Hur in particular served as references for the gladiator sequences, although Zophres employed the contemporary technique of using painted hard plastic foam instead of metal.

trilogy influenced the Coens' decision to widen the shot to reveal film crew members pushing the set into place.

Ultimately, film proved a limited palette due to the narrowing choices of stocks and processing options in the wake of digital cinematography.

The Warner Bros. studio, which has retained its vintage buildings, stood in for most of the fictitious Capitol Pictures Productions after trailers, electrical hookups, and other contemporary fixtures were removed.

The office of general counsel Sid Siegelstein was shot at a 1929 building in Los Angeles's Arts District later owned by Southwestern Bag Company.

The burning film frame in McDormand's Moviola scene was created by Sam Spreckley, a Scottish visual artist who experiments with the technique.

[63] Back Lot Music released the film's soundtrack album on digital download and physical formats on February 5, 2016.

[2] The film was released in North America on February 5, 2016, alongside Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Choice, and was projected to gross $9–11 million from 2,231 theaters in its opening weekend.

[77] The New Yorker's Richard Brody called the film "a comedy, and a scintillating, uproarious one, filled with fast and light touches of exquisite incongruity in scenes that have the expansiveness of relaxed precision, performed and timed with the spontaneous authority of jazz.

"[78] In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan called the film a "droll tribute to and spoof of Hollywood past [that] amuses from beginning to end with its site specific re-creation of the studio system and the movies that made it famous."

"[79] John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal wrote: "A dispiritingly vitriolic, only sporadically funny satire of '50s Hollywood, Hail, Caesar!

the answer is given, and it's as hopeful as one could expect from the Coens: Cinema's somber, weighty moments matter, but equally crucial are the frivolous, joyful bits of entertainment—watching Channing Tatum tap-dance on a table, or George Clooney ramble overwritten monologues.

may not be one of the Coen Brothers' finest efforts—and it might not engage viewers beyond Los Angeles or those who truly understand or work in the film industry—but it's nevertheless a fun, charming, and oft-hilarious take on Hollywood's Golden Age.