satire
It’s no secret that Sacha Baron Cohen makes comedies that age badly, no matter how well-regarded they are upon their release. His reputation as a satirist with his finger on the pulse of contemporary societal prejudices ensures that days and weeks after initial release they become regarded as documents of America’s unforgivable past. With Grimsby, Cohen makes his first British movie in fourteen years, after his execrable debut Ali G In Da House – and it is the first time his brand of social satire feels not just outdated, but tired prior to release.
The Coen Brothers have managed to put their own twist on noir, the buddy comedy, crime drama, romantic comedies, westerns, and spy films. They are clearly film historians, so they want to show their love of movies by tackling classic genre films that cannot be sold to modern audiences. How did they manage to do this?
Some films parody the media, others predict what effect it will have on us in the future, other movies just have fun with the subject. Whether its a streaming network, printed journalism, television or radio transmissions the media is massive, and inescapable, so why not make movies about this oppressive facet of life? These films vary in years, themes, genre’s and that’s why they are so important.
Maps To The Stars is about the aspects of Hollywood that, as a film fan, I‘d rather not think about. Written by the acerbic Bruce Wagner, it is about the cynicism of the industry, about the actors who are motivated by vanity and the money-minded executives who exploit them. These people’s heads have been long removed from their shoulders, their molly-coddled lives are run by other people as they incessantly try and top up their serotonin through drink, drugs, sex and bastardised spiritualism with increasingly less success.