Suburbicon

You know how first-time parents act? Like they’re the only people on earth who ever had a baby? Director George Clooney is like that with his baby, “Suburbicon” (2017). Clooney has big ideas about the great suburban migration of the 1950s (don’t tell anyone, but it involves racism), and he collaborates with the Coen brothers to create a pretentious, pseudosatirical horror story that delivers these big ideas in the most unentertaining, derivative, downright disgusting way possible. Clooney’s like absolutely nobody has told that story before. (Actually, Georgey, many people have, and mostly all of them told it better than you.)

No Country for Old Men

Whenever I hear about Hollywood executives forcing a movie to re-shoot its ending, I roll my eyes. Can’t they just let the filmmakers’ vision unfold and not worry about whether a focus group thinks an ending is sufficiently upbeat? But then I saw “No Country for Old Men” (2007), which could have been re-titled “No Payoff For Patient Moviegoers.” I mean, you spend two hours immersed in mesmerizing acting and brilliant dialogue as drug money leaves a bloody trail across West Texas. And then Tommy Lee Jones tells a story about a dream he had. The end. Seriously? Seriously? WTF?